Typhoon Sendong glooms the holiday

I was completely taken aback and disheartened by what my eyes were seeing early today as the devastation wrought by Typhoon Sendong (Tropical Storm Washi) made it to international news. Who would ever thought that a week before Christmas the whole country would be ravaged by this catastrophic storm? In contrast to the colorful and sparkling Christmas lights and adornments at this Yuletide season are murky waters, houses and vehicles washed ashore, and bodies lying dead. I was trying to look closely at the picture of this man carrying a lifeless body of a child, wanting to empathize. Sure it breaks my  heart; but I know that I couldn't entirely feel the deep pain he must be grappling with.

Today, and for the next few days or weeks, the whole country would still be grieving about the hundreds of lives lost and many that are still missing. Local and international aids will rush in. Media will hover over and over again over the same images in the name of news.

But how do we really make sense of what happened? Is this just another tragedy that people learned to live with...somehow? Is this just about  resilience during hard times?

I really don't know what to think. I just know that more than the result of environmental misgivings, this kind of tragedy -  this gloomy circumstance, is a reminder of one basic truth: that life is ephemeral. We are left clueless as to when it could be taken away from us-  in the same way that people down South of the Philippines did not anticipate the heavy rains and the floods.

This is one tragic end at the end stretch of the year. One gloomy day...

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/18/world/asia/philippines-storm/index.html



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