Heal A Nation

PHILIPPINE SOCIETY: To heal a nation
BY DR. MINGUITA PADILLA, MALAYA, January 28, 2006

(NOTE: This essay was forwarded by Dr. Padilla)

IMAGINE finding out that you have a cancerous tumor just beneath your skin. Imagine a doctor cutting you open and exposing the festering mass within, a mass that is gradually eating up the healthy tissue around it, eroding bone and insidiously spreading by blood to almost all parts of your body. Imagine that after doing so, the doctor sews you up again, and then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, tells you to simply go on with your life, to just pretend the cancer is not there, because removing the tumor would be too much trouble, too messy. And to all your protestations he replies that he is the best there is; he knows best.

How would you feel? Could you do as the doctor says and go on with your life, knowing that you have within you a disease so deadly that unless it is excised and treated aggressively, you would certainly die?

Absurd as this may seem, it is what the present leadership has done to us. If anything good came out of the political scandals of the past year, it is to expose like never before the extent of the illnesses that plague our national life. Like most cancers, these illnesses had been allowed to grow and feed on us for decades but we did not really know how serious and widespread they were until we heard the "Garci tapes" and then witnessed the ruthless cover-up that ensued, a cover-up so shameless and so crude that it only served to expose more of the nation’s decay. Yes, we had always known we were not well, but only then did we get to glimpse the hideousness and smell the stench of what truly lies within.

This would have been well and good if we had seen the process to completion, if we had been offered a definite cure. Unfortunately, this was not the case. And so today we have a people more wounded than ever before. No one has been spared this assault. Nothing was left unscathed. And the saddest thing is that while the poor and ignorant have continued to suffer; a great majority of the "thinkers," the people who could hold the key to changing our course, have been left more cynical and more hopeless. Because it has become too painful to think and to feel, many have taken refuge in apathy.

Among the most wounded of all are the professionals: physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, soldiers, and many others; men and women who have tried, despite all the odds, to contribute to nation building in the most noble and honorable way they can. Many can no longer stand to read the newspapers which have become sad reflections of empty, inane maneuverings of politicians and big business, actors in a mad play who can no longer address our true problems because they too are trapped within a system where only the wily can survive, and where noble dreams and aspirations are shot down by a culture of corruption that we are expected to accept as "realpolitik," Filipino style.

But as in all things, any excess is eventually met with the universal need to restore balance. And so like the proverbial "darkest night" that always comes before the dawn, I know in my heart that our dawn is fast approaching.

I cannot remember a time when I had to give so many "inspirational talks" to so many groups of graduating doctors as this past year. In all of them, the graduates had one common question: "How can we survive in our country today where staying and serving our people has become so difficult to do?" And to this question I had one general answer: "The only way to survive is not to make survival your goal. You must strive to excel so that you don’t become just doctors, but true healers."

One of the principles healers have known since ancient times is that one cannot effectively heal unless one is healed himself. The Navajo medicine man and woman call this "good belly." Unless one feels whole and good in the "gut," one cannot heal another. This principle will always hold true. But in a country of the walking wounded, how does one heal?

First we must accept and recognize the disease. We have a serious cancer eating up our nation from within. It has been there for a long time; a variant of the same cancer that Rizal spoke of over a hundred years ago, albeit deadlier and more widespread now than before. It cannot be cured by the opium of athletic victories or the diversionary burlesque called charter change. No less than a skilled surgical excision of the bulk of the tumor will be necessary to help in our healing. And while we ordinary men and women are not capable of such a surgical excision, we can help by starting what we in medicine call the "adjuvant" therapy. In short, rather than just pull our hair and wait for a coup to happen or for a hole to suddenly open up and swallow the majority of our politicians, we can do something.

And so I’d like to share with you the last portion of one "inspirational talk" I gave to some graduating UP doctors early this month, and which moved many to tears. I believe that whether doctor, lawyer, soldier, teacher, judge, government worker, or whatever noble calling one has chosen, the message will still hold true:

Rather than feel helpless, we can choose to be instruments, not just of physical healing, but of hope. "Big Medicine" is what we must practice. Like the babaylan of our ancestors, let us not limit ourselves to the physical because this is not what our times call for. Our people are in desperate need of inspiration, of something and someone to believe in amidst all the confusion, the treachery, the lies, the deception, the betrayal all around them. We can be this to our people, simply by being true to our calling.

In a country where apathy and cynicism abound, let us show them empathy and compassion. While corruption seems to have penetrated every nook and granny of our government and its institutions, let our clinics and offices be havens of honesty and integrity. And while honor seems to have disappeared from the Filipino’s vocabulary, let us show them just how much they can trust us with their lives. As long as the nobility of our profession remains, then there is hope.

Not all of us will have the chance to speak to large crowds or get their essays or thoughts published. But we all occupy such a privileged and powerful position; second to God in many ways. Let’s use this power to the utmost. Each patient we see belongs to a family, that belongs to a community, that belongs to a province, that belongs to this benighted nation of ours.

We are all UP graduates. We are our people’s scholars, and they look to us for healing. Never have our people been as wounded as they are today. Go then and heal the nation. And you can do it, even if you must do it one patient at a time.

(Dr. Ma. Dominga "Minguita" Padilla is the founder and president of the Eye Bank, the current president of the Philippine Academy of Ophthalmology, and the president of Sinag, a People’s Crusade for Good Governance. She was honored as a Centennial Awardee for Community Service by the UP College of Medicine in 2005.)