It is Truly Sad

It is truly sad, Pinoys and Pinays born of poor families existing in the
slums of our major cities. A few of them, somehow, by hook or by crook,
able to go to grade school, high school, and college. Then happily get
a menial job in the Philippines, and then even more happily get a better
job, with better wages, working in a foreign country. And yet, by and large,
they choose to remain poor, especially poor in spirit. They continue to
negate the reality that the greatest of wealth can only come from mental
health. Indeed, the worst kind of poverty is the poverty of the mind and
heart. A great many of these well-employed Filipino workers overseas have
neither the interest nor the courage to explore and admit the horrors of
poverty still uncontrollably spreading in our poor and backward country.
Surely, they remit monies for their families back home. But I have yet to
hear from these college-educated Pinoys and Pinays lessons they learned
or their own ideas, explanations or the reasons why exactly foreign countries
are able to hire them. Why, for example, these foreign countries enjoy a
higher standard of education thus enjoy the pleasures of a higher standard
of living and thinking.

I too was born of a poor family. I also managed, somehow, to export myself
to live and work, for some seventeen years, in a foreign country. But never
was there ever a day in America where I was utterly thoughtless or mindless
of the plight of poor fellow-Filipinos I had left behind in the only
Christian country in Asia – my beloved country – the Philippines. Oh yes,
I love my country. Not necessarily for what she is, but for the potentials
she has to become too, one the healthiest, wealthiest, and the greatest
country in all of Asia. Poch Suzara