You cannot embrace a man who is full of sores because the only thing he will feel is pain.
- ANONYMOUS
One of my law professors once told me that our job as lawyers is to prevent, avoid, or resolve conflicts. In my short stay in the ALS, I have found this increasingly difficult to accomplish. Many people these days have this tendency to be oversensitive. They hurt very easily. Nobody can make an honest mistake nowadays. Nobody can take a joke anymore. Today you have to be politically correct in whatever you do and say. People no longer want to hear the truth. They want you to feed them with feel-good lies and expertly-manufactured BS in the guise of positive affirmations that only make them stop trying to improve themselves. You can no longer call a spade a spade without being shrugged and given all kinds of strange looks.
We cannot afford to have feelings anymore… not when everything around us is falling to ruin. “I’m sorry, it was an oversight. Please forgive me”. We just don’t want to tell people that they are wrong. Now, I am not saying that we stop having compassion for those who deserve and need it. I’m saying that we should just stop being so oversensitive. It is just not proper in our calling. One cannot be impartial and oversensitive at the same time. Justice has no feelings. We need to be up and alert, sharp, and discriminating with surgical precision. We are ordinary human beings called to do extraordinary tasks.
People should learn to, once more, stand up on their own two feet. We need to be the Filipinos who once stood tall and proud against our oppressors. Dr. Rizal did not sit at home and cry about hurt feelings. When the Spanish friars offended him (although this might be too much of an understatement), he wrote two books and started a revolution. This is the kind of person that we are being shaped to become.
In the world today, truth is not as important as meaning. Knowing this, we should be watchful in allowing the truth to be drowned in a sea of faulty meanings. We have become a nation of blabbering crybabies while the wealthy reach the top because they don’t give a damn what people say about them. We die with our petty concerns and allow the real opportunities to pass us by unnoticed. People always want to see themselves as the victims. This country has no room for any more victims! With the massive privileges and responsibilities dropped on our laps, we have no choice but to become heroes.
How?
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and do your job.
That is all the hero ever has to do.
