The visit is done. The souvenirs scattered all over. Most people lost a lot, some everything. Some, everyone they love.
When you’ve lost practically everything, how do you begin?
How you start over when the very reasons for your existence and perseverance are all gone?
When your future has now become littered with uncertainties, what is there to look forward to?
As the devastation wrought by typhoon Ondoy lay before us, we find ourselves faced with the tedious task of rebuilding — shoveling mountainous mud, scavenging through debris and an overwhelming pile of unrecognizable items, of what used to be known as kitchen wares, electronic appliances, books, toys and shoes.
Parallel with ongoing relief, rescue and retrieval operations, calls for disaster preparedness seminars, doing Ondoy post-mortem analysis and suggestions for preventive measures and active participation in climate change awareness is the need to rebuild communities.
We have to rebuild –in the backdrop of a gloomy atmosphere, in the absence of inspiration, in a state of shock and disbelief, under time pressure and the fear of another imminent danger.
We have to rebuild. Knowing that our lives will never be the same again, aware of the fact that this may not be the last ordeal lined up for us in this lifetime — we have to rebuild.
Even as we feel help is too little or too late, even as we think we may have been forgotten — we all know, we still have to rebuild.
We rebuild not because we want to. We rebuild not because we are prodded. We rebuild because we know that regardless of how hardly hit we were, regardless of how bruised and battered we may have become and regardless of how much suffering we may have endured, we know the world doesn’t stop for our grief. We know that life inevitably and naturally “goes on”.
So we rebuild –not because we want to, but because we have to. Because in reality, we don’t really have much of a choice.
The entire citizenry, public or private, rich or poor, pessimist or optimist– we will all have to rebuild. We will rebuild homes, roads, schools, institutions — yes, even fractured lives.
The typhoon has left. Its winds may have taken our roofs, but not our hearts. Its raging flood waters may have swept our hard-earned belongings, but not our courage. Its wrath may have robbed us of those we love, but not of our resilience. It may have submerged entire cities, but it has not dampened our spirits.
So now, armed with faith even as small as a mustard seed, carrying flickering hope in our hearts, huddled together in this cold, ghostly towns of utter desperation, we add up each other’s “mustard-seed-sized” faith and aspire to move mountains, we rekindle each other’s flickering sparks of hope and aim to keep it burning, we stay close to give warmth to each other.
We are Filipinos — descendants of heroes. Heroism — what others can only aspire to runs through our veins.
We do not falter, we alter. We know not wane, we win. We do not retreat, we defeat.
My dear fellowmen, the challenge of rebuilding is now before us. When do we begin? What about now?
RJMarmol.com 
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