The Bearable Lightness

Yesterday, Vertigo Climbing Center had their bouldering competition, Psyche Up: Conquering Heights for Yolanda Victims. I saw great feat of balance, strength, and grace. I was left feeling inept for my climbing skills. But my greater awakening is for the typhoon Haiyan.

It was not until this weekend that the enormity of the storm has sunk into me. I have been avoiding the news because I am all too wimpy about death, dying, and suffering. Expressing how I feel about the storm and describing that pain of other people will only make them too banal. It is just all too much. And I am even more amazed that the people who have lost their loved ones and their living are much better at overcoming the typhoon’s wreck.

Probably it is their proximity to it that leaves them no choice but to overcome it. Or maybe they are simply strong. I am left with very few things to say, I just want to repost what I posed on my Facebook wall 18 November 2013:

“People who have been displaced by the typhoon have also been cut off from their past, from the geography that has defined them. This loss place is punctuated by their lost of loved ones. They are now struggling with a reality they did not choose. They are exiles in every conceivable aspect of human life. They are now stripped bare of everything they had--down to their very core. When they reached that unwanted place of exile, some felt the need for violence. But many (a far greater number that cannot be specified since optimism is beyond the reach of statistics) have held on to Hope.

We are a seven-thousand-island nation united by a Haiyan. The displaced people of Tacloban and many other places will find their way home. And we will be with them until they do.”

I would like to thank the good people of Luxembourg who have extended their help to the people of Northern Cebu.

“i like the people i met. they do not feel that their humanity is diminished by asking for/receiving help. at the same time they are not relying on help. there's a lot of rebuilding and laughter going around. many parts of the north is an incomprehensible mess of trees, tin roof, leaves, roots, plastic, and dried-up mud. i don't know why those weren't cleaned up after a week. i did see a lot of work going on yesterday. they asked us why we're helping and i told them that i'm running for congress”

Here's a video of Jay-jay's Dino during the competition yesterday: