Think about it
Dr. Ado’s counsel to journalists
By Jun Velasco
THE eldest of the Duque brothers, Dr. Salvador, or fondly called “Kuya Ado,” never fails to counsel journalists who regularly visit him at his Lyceum Northwestern University office to “go slow in hurting people.”
Because, he says, it might hurt the “hurter.”
The elder one who just relinquished the Metro Dagupan Chamber of Commerce presidency to former Sta. Barbara Vice Mayor Jun Calaguio after serving it for quite a time says there’s so much pain and sadness in the world and ask those who are in a position not to make matters worse.
“Consider life as a temporary provision from the Lord, the Divine Creator.” To hurt people who are in pain is abjectly inhuman, he says.
There’s a tinge of humane love in Kuya Ado’s words.
He continues, “Will you lose anything if you instead pat the guy and have a cup of coffee and speak your piece warmly? I think you would even get him to do what you want done involving his participation.”
How often do we join him in his rounds in a number of projects most people are not aware of: creating schools, improvising and rebuilding churches, helping friends who can’t finish their houses and others.
When the l99l earthquake reduced Pangasinan to ruins, Dr. Ado literally went out of his way to get his network of barkada — Dr. Vivien Villaflor, Macky Samson, Voltaire Arzadon, Al Fernandez, Benjie Lim, Cecil Maala — and all the civic-oriented folk to a concerted action in rescue and relief work.
The group’s amazing civic spirit must have inspired the government, which lost no time in empowering it to do more than civic action, by actually making it an adjunct in the gargantuan effort to pull the city and province from destruction.
Government action was expected, but the usual bane of bureaucracy almost stymied relief and rebuilding work were it not for then Governor Rafael Colet and Congressman Joe de Venecia who kept hounding President Cory Aquino and Executive Secretary Oscar Orbos in the rescue and relief work.
When the smoke had cleared, so to speak, it was through Dr. Ado’s never-say-die spirit that has forever held and welded together Pangasinenses and kept government agencies on their toes so that reconstruction was done on record time.
The rest is history.
We recall this poignant moment amidst Dr. Ado’s lament in the short-sighted way most journalists cavalierly do their jobs, as if they had all the right to browbeat, intellectually maim, and damage reputations! It’s so easy to attack and destroy. All you have to do is put to work your arsenal of dirt, hate, and lethal ideas and unleash them to your pet peeves!
One wonders where we got the right to hurt and kill people, besmirch reputations at the drop of a hat? Is the attack the best way to settle a wrong or a grievance in our society?
America’s adversarial press may not do much damage to a solid democracy. But what about us in this fragile democracy …in this country that has plummeted from Number 2 most prosperous in Asia to Number 2 down under?
Could it be our penchant to destroy others (and destroy ourselves in the process) that has pushed us to where we are now?
The press regulars the likes of Ruben Rivera, Ike Palinar and Jess Perez who hang around Kuya Ado like a Socratic guru at his enclave at Lyceum may find him old-fashioned, but these days when there’s so much throwing of brickbats, mud and dirt at one another, his counsel is the freshest and newest shower from heaven. It might even recharge our batteries and re-chart the community to greatness.
Think about it.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/think-about-it/)
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