On Pity and Mashed Potatoes

soulshaker

I was walking along Taft the other day early in the morning. When suddenly, I saw Batman happily swinging towards mashed poatatoes.
Well, anyway, a poster of him.
I stopped in front of KFC Taft and drooled over the mashed potatoes peacefully sitting beside the bucket meal. This is the conversation as follows:
geek lizette: Oi, teka, mag-aral ka muna! Dun ka sa library! Test sa math!
glutton lizette: Di mo ba alam kung ano ang nakikita ko?
geek: uhm...mashed potatoes.
glutton: ano nasa taas?
geek: ahhh...gravy...
glutton: napapansin mo ba yung thermos nun sa loob?
geek: uhm...
glutton: ano uli sabi mo?
geek: Oo nga dali tumira ka na ng patatas!
In verbatim form. I ended up staying at KFC for an hour or so and eating cholesterol-rich french fries and hamburger, plus of course, the coveted butter-rich potatoes. Maybe it was because of Batman. Or maybe I'm just another stupid consumer lured in by highly effective ads into spending my money.
I know impulsiveness does not solve anything. It didnt help my (eherm) weight loss program, that's for sure. I wasted time I shouldve spent for studying that dreadful torture, math.
Next time, I shall control myself. I will not look at Batman whenever I pass by him in Taft Avenue.
Right.
*Sigurado ka ba sa sinasabi mo Ms. Minerva?*

There are parts of Manila where everything is clean and green, new and shiny. Where it's either historic, or modern, but as a whole, beautiful. Those parts are what the innocents see. By innocents I mean those people with big blue eyes looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Those people who have enough money to live comfortably inside their own little worlds, believing that the whole universe goes the same. They have problems, true, but their problems only involve their immediate circles and not the others outside them. They know the world is not perfect; but just as far as that.
They dont know HOW imperfect.
I used to be one of them. I still am, I guess, by still a large degree.
I havent seen the world. I havent seen all of Manila.
But Ive seen a part of it. The dirty, miserable part of it, where the denizens of Pedro Gil reside.
Ive seen children half-naked sleeping on the streets. Young men walking around with red eyes as if lost. The dirty women who seem to have no tomorrow.
One would impulsively feel sorry. In other words, pity. But it goes only as far as the feeling.
There would be no action.
Ako ay taong walang awa para sa mga mamamayan na tulad nila.
What I feel is a strong impulse to understand them. I want to know how they ended up that way. What made them into what they are now. They werent born that way.
Why? How?
And maybe I can help them.
But these are only words. Im not doing anything either, like the people who only feel pity. Empty, meaningless pity, erased from the heart the moment the object is out of sight.
Those people are not like mashed potatoes I can buy off, and go away happy and satisfied. I want to change the way they are living.
But how?
I will wait. See options which may come up. I have time.
I will not be impulsive.