A letter to those who ridiculed Davao after the bombing.

Dear my fellow Filipinos,

Being Filipino knows no political color, it knows no boundary, it shouldn’t hold any grudge or propagates preconceived prejudicial thoughts; more so if our fellow Filipino were caught between a catastrophic and not to say demonic act such as bombing. The bombing, I can understand but the ideology and the rancid thinking of some of our countrymen are more destructive and injurious than the bomb that exploded in Davao last Friday.

When our countrymen die, he or she carries with him a piece of our nation, and a piece of you. A part of aspiration and history are rubbed from us forever. We lose a kin, a member of our big family, who like us, hopes and dreams for a unified and peaceful nation.

How can we laugh at them? How can we judge them instead of giving our purest sympathy to the living and our prayers to the dead? No true Filipino will be jubilant while seeing his or her countrymen being bodily dismembered because of the sadistic bomb.

It is not only that the bomb separated the living and the dead in Davao but horribly it divided us into many pieces. There are some who speculates that the incident was staged, there are some who believe that there is a big plan to overtake the government and there are funny conspiracy saying that it was the government who planned the bombing.

I too, don’t know the truth. Finding the truth should only be secondary, and caring should be the priority. The truth will always come out and soon to unveil itself. But the suffering and the abused deserve a n immediate attention.

My dear countrymen, we survived super typhoons and many deadly catastrophe in history, we made it because we placed our faith into our neighbours, friends and even enemies. During these difficult times, we should try to open our hearts, adopt a positive and constructive thinking and extend our arms to those who need us.

When Paris was bombed, we immediately posted “PrayforParis” but when our country was terrorized we chose to swallow our condolences.

Maybe this is now the new characteristic of being a FILIPINO. Seeing and experiencing kindness and compassion are as fugacious as the snitch in Quidditch and genuine Filipino now is evanescent like the shooting star in our dark and vast skies.

-Mutya