“Kindness has no religion. Religions are like narrow tracks but kindness is like an open sky.” – Amit Ray in Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

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In these days of information superhighway and crass materialism, a little kindness goes a long, long way. But to some people, they expect kindness to be offered to them on a silver platter – and without any return.

Recently, I went to Davao City and rode in a bus. In Sta. Cruz, the bus stopped to drop some passengers.

But there were more passengers going to Davao so by the time the bus left, it was fully loaded.

Near the place where I was sitting, a woman was wondering if someone would offer her a seat.

Being a gentleman, I stood up and the woman took the place. Without smiling at me or even thanking me for what I did, she immediately went on texting.

The incident reminded me of a story related to me by a friend. The same scenario happened on a bus. When the woman felt that no one was offering her a seat, she started complaining loudly.

“Well, those days of gallantry when men gave their seat to women who are standing in a bus,” she said.

And looking at the man who was sitting beside her, she added, “There are men who know a woman needs a seat and he won’t even bother to give her his seat.”

The woman kept on rambling. Twenty minutes later, the man shouted, “Stop!” Still, this didn’t stop the woman to grumble, “Finally, he is going down. He could not take what I said.”

But before the woman could say another word, the man asked the conductor to give him his crutches.

He was having a hard time going down and all eyes were on him. The woman, who took the place, pretended to sleep until it arrived at its destination.

In an office of a non-government organization, this passage was posted in an area where everyone could see and read: “If someone were to pay you P100 for every kind word you ever spoke and collect P50 for every unkind word, would you be rich or poor?”

“Kindness is more than deeds,” C. Neil Strait once reminded. “It is an attitude, an expression, a look, a touch. It is anything that lifts another person.”

In Wonder, R.J. Palacio wrote: “What I want you, my students, to take away from your middle-school experience,” he continued, “is the sure knowledge that, in the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible.

“If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary – the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God,” Palacio added.

But there are some instances where a person who has rendered kindness gets in trouble because of the kindness he extended to the other person. If that sounds equivocal to you, let me share the story of an Indonesian journalist who attended an international conference in Cairns, Australia.

It was a long trip from Jakarta to Sydney. Now, she was ready to take her final flight from Sydney to Cairns.

She was already sitting for a few minutes inside the plane when the lone seat next to her was taken by a little Australian boy. “Are you alone?” she inquired. The boy answered negatively. “My father is sitting out there,” he pointed out.

The flight was fully booked and there was no way the father and son could be together. Since it was still a three-hour flight, she stood up and told the father he could take her seat so the two could be together.

They were already flying when she remembered that she placed her notebook computer at the back of the seat where she previously occupied. She stood up and asked the father of the little boy if he saw the computer.

“Yes, I did,” the man replied. “I gave it to the stewardess. I thought it belonged to a previous passenger before this flight.” The journalist answered, “But you know that I occupied this seat before. Why didn’t you bother to ask me first?”

The journalist went to the stewardess and asked for her computer. She was told that it was left in Sydney because they thought it was left by a previous passenger, as what the man told them.

All throughout the flight, the Indonesian journalist was fuming mad. “And this is what I get for extending kindness to them?” she told herself. It was not until two days later that she took hold of her computer again.

“Constant kindness can accomplish much,” said Albert Schweitzer. “As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”

“I hope you choose kindness,” urged Kirsten Robinson in Evergreen. “Even when others are being cruel. When someone asks you to give them your heart all warm and full of trust, they give you something makeshift and full of barbed wire in return: be kind. Some people need to feel your heart wrap around them more than you know.”

Remembering the works on social activism of our heroes like Jose Rizal is made easy through the use of different platforms like movies, plays and TV series.

Music, literature and social activism are intimately linked with each other due to their complementary nature.

People write, raise their voices to highlight injustice, and sing songs to memorialize their struggle.

Rizal’s two novels , “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” inspired many of those who fought for freedom, including Katipunan founder Andres Bonifacio. In turn, many playwrights and composers have honored Rizal through their works.

Rizal dedicated his novel El Filibusterismo to the memory of GOMBURZA which stands for the surnames of the three priests who were implicated in the 1872 Cavite mutiny and later executed via the gruesome garrote on February 17, 1872 — Fr. Mariano Gomez , Fr. Jose Burgos and Fr. Jacinto Zamora.

“Let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your unknown tombs, and let it be understood that everyone who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands in your blood!,” Rizal said.

The film GOMBURZA won seven awards during the 2023 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) including best actor for Cedrick Juan as Fr. Jose Burgos , best director for Pepe Diokno, 2nd best picture, Gatpuno Antonio Villegas cultural award, best cinematography, best production design and best sound design.

The film focuses on the rise of the secularization movement led by Roman Catholic priest Pedro Pelaez (Piolo Pascual ) in the Spanish Philippines as well as the struggles and execution of GomBurZa. In the opening scene, Peláez argued against parishes being taken from “seculars” (priests who were not members of a religious or friar order) and turned over to Spanish friars who discriminated against native priests and even “Filipinos” (Insular Spaniards who were born in the Philippines rather than Peninsular Spaniards born in Spain). Aside from Juan, Dante Rivero played Fr. Gomez while Enchong Dee acted as Fr. Zamora.

It was considered the first spark of patriotism that forged the “Filipino” identity that eventually united inhabitants of these islands into one nation in the last quarter of the 19th century.

It depicts the martyrdom of GomBurZa from the perspective of a young witness—Jose Rizal who was mentored by his brother Paciano, who in turn was mentored by Padre Jose Burgos, and who, in turn was also mentored by Padre Pedro Pelaez.

The story of GomBurZa was shared to Jose Rizal by his older brother Paciano, who was also one of the students of Padre Burgos.

I earlier watched Piolo Pascual as Crisostomo Ibarra of the award-winning musical play “Ibarra” (original title Kanser) written by Jomar Fleras. It had its run June 2023 at the GSIS theatre that coincided with the country’s 125th Independence Day.

It is based on Rizal’s book “Noli Me Tangere,” published in 1887 and written in Spanish, which is a sweeping and passionate unmasking of the brutality and corruption of Spanish rule in the Philippines (1565–1898) that are seen as a disease of the society, thus the title, Latin for “touch me not.”

The story follows Crisostomo Ibarra, who went back home after his European studies. He rekindled his romance with childhood sweetheart Maria Clara, but triggered an old rift with the town friar, Padre Damaso. As the story progressed, Ibarra realized that the malady of oppression and colonial brutality has been killing not only his town, but his motherland as well.

Fleras explained that “Kanser” was retitled into “Ibarra” so that the younger generation will associate the play more to the iconic character of Crisostomo Ibarra than the meaning of Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer).

“Ibarra” bagged nine major awards during the recent 36th ALIW Awards including best lead actor in a musical for Piolo Pascual, best musical, best ensemble performance, best musical director, best composer, best director for Frannie Zamora, best lead actress for Myramae Meneses, best child actor for JD Tena, and best featured actor for Jon Joven Uy.

Directed by Zig Dulay, “Maria Clara at Ibarra” is a TV fantasy series aired over GMA Network that follows Klay Infantes (Barbie Forteza) , a Gen-Z nursing student who gets transported into the setting of Noli and El Fili where she met Maria Clara (Julie Anne San Jose), Crisostomo Ibarra (Dennis Trillo), and other characters. It had a total of 105 episodes that premiered on October 3, 2022 and concluded on February 24, 2023.

It won a Bronze award in the 2023 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards in the Entertainment Program Drama category.

The ideas behind the novels of Rizal evolves through the years but the message remains solid: Filipinos must not be silenced in the midst of ills and injustices in society.

(Peyups is the moniker of University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 0917-5025808 or 0908-8665786.)

The characters Dr. Henry Jekyll and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde were a creation of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. Actually, they are one and the same person. Dr. Jekyll is good while Hyde is evil. It has been adapted into the silver screen several times already.

From time to time, you may have encountered such a person – people who lead a double life. But unknowingly, water can also be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Life, as we know it, is useless without water. “(Water) is the basis of life,” stressed Dr. Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project.

Ideally, a person should have at least 50 liters of water each day to meet his basic needs – for drinking, food preparation, cooking and cleaning up, washing and personal hygiene, laundry, and house cleaning.

It is when there is a shortage of water that the Jekyll-and-Hyde paradox comes alive: from giving life, water turns into a “killing machine.” Dr. Klaus Toepfer, during his term as executive director of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program, said, “Unlike the energy crisis, the water crisis is life threatening.”

Contaminated water causes 90 percent of cases of diarrhea among children. Acute diarrhea is one of the five leading causes of sickness and death among Filipino children—for every 100,000 live births, 914 die of diarrhea, leading to almost 12,000 infant deaths every year from a preventable and easily curable illness.

“I understood when I was just a child that without water, everything dies,” Marq de Villiers once observed.

Other common water-related and water-borne diseases are malaria, dengue fever, cholera, filariasis, typhoid fever, dysentery, hepatitis A, and schistosomiasis.

The notion that water can carry disease first occurred to the ancient Greeks. The physician Hippocrates, the ancient innovator of medical ethics, advised that polluted water be boiled or filtered before being consumed.

Today’s crisis in water and sanitation is – above all – a crisis of the poor,” says the UN Development Program study, Beyond Scarcity’: Power, Poverty and the Water Crisis.

In Tawi-Tawi province, 82 out of every 100 residents lack safe water. (Compare that with three in Bataan province and 39 in Capiz.) It is obscene “if people cannot drink water without courting disease or death”, Postel wrote in The Last Oasis.

“Bad water quality is a major cause of diseases in the Philippines,” read one headline. Studies worldwide have shown that programs to encourage the habit of washing hands with soap can reduce diarrhea by between 30% and 50%.

In the Philippines, surveys showed that nearly all people regularly wash their hands before eating. But only 26% of households regularly wash their hands before handling and preparing food, and less than 50% regularly wash their hands after going to the toilet.

The majority of the health burden from water pollution, poor sanitation and hygiene is due to contact with human waste, a single gram of which can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, and one million parasite cysts, according to the Global Water Foundation.

“Water is fundamental for life and health,” the UN Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights said. “The human rights are indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite to the realization of all other human rights.”

Perhaps, one of the most important recent milestones has been the recognition in July 2010 by the United Nations General Assembly of the human right to water and sanitation. The Assembly recognized the right of every human being to have access to enough water for personal and domestic uses, meaning between 50 and 100 liters of water per person per day. The water must be safe, acceptable, and affordable.

“You cannot wash filthy water,” the Arab proverb says. A World Bank report said that studies of groundwater quality in some parts of the country found 58% of the sampled groundwater were tested positive for coliform bacteria. Surveys done by some local government units have indicated that one half or more of their public water systems do not meet drinking water-quality standards.

“Water, water everywhere,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “but not a drop to drink.”

Residents of Davao City, the country’s largest urban center in terms of land area, may soon wake up one of these days without water flowing from their faucets.

It may be unthinkable but a study done in 1991 by the Japan International Cooperation Agency identified Davao City as among the nine major cities in the country as “water-critical areas.” The other eight are Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Baguio, Angeles, Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, and Zamboanga.

Postel believes water problems will trail climate change as a threat to the human future. “Although the two are related, water has no substitutes,” she explained. “We can transition away from coal and oil to solar, wind and other renewable energy sources. But there is no transitioning away from water to something else.”

Dr. Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the global water report and senior research fellow at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institution (IFPRI), shared the same view. “Water is not like oil: there is no substitute,” he said. “If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food – or both.”

In either case, “the poor will suffer most,” he added.