Coping with COVID-19 and ‘acts of God’

By Herbert Vego

 

CONTRASTING “readings” on why we suffer the pandemic known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have flooded the social media. The most prevalent among them is that it is one of the many plagues predicted to hit before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

“God is angry,” somebody posted on Facebook. “We have government leaders who pretend to be gods with power over life and death of their constituents.”

“It’s our karma,” another man posted. “Soon there will be typhoons and floods. We produce too many children who grow up irresponsibly and pollute the environment.”

A jeepney driver deprived of his only means of living hollered before a TV news reporter, “More people will die of hunger than of COVID.”

I wonder whether the dead are already better off than those they have left behind –anguished, what with the wealth they had worked for in a lifetime suddenly gone away. They could die, not of COVID but of depression

One of my worried relatives, a young, married seaman who is no longer sure of boarding again due to the prolonged pandemic, sought me for advice.

“Be tough,” I said while holding his shoulders. “ You could recover what you have lost. Visualize the spider that never gives up rebuilding a ‘home’ web each time man destroys it.”

I recited to him a famous quotation: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Plagues, fires, floods, earthquakes, and many other natural disasters that are inappropriately called “acts of God” should be taken as tests to be passed to win the game of life.

I passed one 12 years ago. It was typhoon Frank which devastated Iloilo City with floods and landslides on June 18, 2008. It destroyed my expensive camera, books and an old typewriter.

I look back to past misfortunes to recover my composure. Why worry?  Like typhoons, COVID-19, too, will pass and pave the way for the future of our children.

Worry is the culprit responsible for toppling the foundation of positivism. So many business empires have crumbled because the big boss spent too much time worrying over problems instead of acting upon them.

Thomas Edison, instead of worrying about dark nights, buckled down to invent the light bulb and popularized this quotation: “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99% perspiration.”

Have you ever stopped to think how often your wishes have come true to the degree you wanted them? I recall an incident at the Manila North Harbor four decades ago. I was about to board a ship bound for Iloilo when I suddenly changed my mind, remembering a job I had left unfinished at the office.

Just then, I saw a woman crying behind the gangplank. I overheard her badgering the ship’s purser for a favor, but he would not give in to her request to board because all tickets for that trip had been sold out.

I walked to where the two were and offered my ticket to the lady for a refund. It was supposed to be non-transferable, but the purser relented.

“My God!” the lady hollered. “Would you believe that I have been praying for this ticket? I have to be home in Iloilo in time for the funeral of a relative.”

One vital lesson that disasters teach us is that the rich and the poor may lose everything and suddenly find themselves on equal footing. There are even instances when the poor emerge more comfortable because they are already used to poverty and so have a better coping mechanism.

Life is never meant to be easy. Once there was a man who, desirous of having an easy job, sought the advice of the late American preacher Henry Ward Beecher.

“Young man,” said Beecher, “you cannot be an editor. Do not try the law. Do not think of the ministry; neither manufacturing nor merchandising. Abhor politics. Don’t practice medicine. Don’t be a farmer or a soldier or a sailor. All these require too much study and thinking. My son, you have come into a hard, hard world. There is only one easy place in it and that is the grave.”

Miracles could happen to anyone with sufficient faith. You and I have read that Bible story where  Jesus Christ walked on the sea and asked Peter to do likewise. Peter believed him and walked on the sea, too, but later sank when he began doubting.

Like me, you must have seen that TV documentary showing South Africans walking barefooted on burning coal. Oh, they of amazing faith!

 

-oOo-

 

REST IN PEACE, CONGRESSMAN GORRICETA. I woke up very early yesterday morning to read an FB message from colleague Florence Hibionada about the passing of former Congressman Arcadio Gorriceta, 74. Felt sad. He was one of our coffee mates at Hotel del Rio.

Cong Cadio, as we called him, had an amazing zest for life. Even when he could no longer walk after surgery, he would often join us for morning coffee at Hotel del Rio.

We will surely miss him as he had missed coffee mates from the media who had left ahead of him, namely Sammy Julian, “Danny Baby” Foz and Danny Fajardo.