By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

LAST night, my sister noticed that there were piles of construction materials dumped on the adjacent lot we had maintained cleaning for several months now. The ampalaya (bitter gourd) was buried under the rubbles, and its leaves wilted from the weight carelessly dumped at its base. This is not the first time the neighbors dumped their refuse on this vacant lot, they have done so for years. We started clearing it, mainly because it has become a breeding ground for mosquitos and snakes that sometimes find their way inside the front yard. Literally, it was a dumpsite, a sad story of neglect and convoluted consciousness, hidden by the talahib, tall reeds that grow anywhere, under any condition.

A month ago, I chanced upon a kasambahay, a live-in househelp of the residential house in front of us, dumping the contents of a fully-loaded trashcan where the ipil-ipil (river tamarind) tree stood.

“Please don’t dump your garbage around the tree, just gather them in a plastic bag and wait for the garbage truck to collect it.”

“Ma’am, we ran out of trash bag, and the garbage truck does not collect discarded construction materials. My boss told me to dump it in an empty lot.”

“But you are aware that we are cleaning that empty lot which the village administrators also clean once a month. There are vegetables and flowering plants already growing there. I would like to speak to your boss.”

“I am sorry, Ma’am. They are on tour, in Europe.”

The plain arrogance, no apologies. And I see this happening at Filinvest, a gated village, where supposedly middle-class people live. It is no different from the stories I hear from the provinces, where some neighbors also gather their own dirt and sweep it away into a neighbor’s yard. It is the same attitude of people throwing their candy wrappers and discarded paper cups out on the window in their speeding cars.

Worse than this is the practice of throwing cigarette butts, discarded plastic, straws and other items in drainage areas, where rainwater is supposed to flow unimpeded to avoid street floods in urban areas. Even some street sweepers do this, after their attention had been called several times. How do you explain the logic of such consciousness?

That is not the only thing. Alleged animal lovers walk their dogs on the streets and allow them to defecate on the street, particularly on the sidewalks where people often step on the dog shit and spread the smell faster than you can cover your nose. Yesterday’s news also mentioned a passersby whose legs were severely wounded by a Rottweiler, released every morning by its owner to move its bowels outside his own property.

Environmental consciousness is not enough. We have to cultivate that caring attitude, recover the lost connectedness to our own goodness radiating outside ourselves. There has to be a deeper love, one that transcends beyond family loyalties towards the welfare of our own communities.

We perish without caring, and we perish together, ultimately. That is the message I remember in the preface of a book, “The Old Man and the Sea” written by Ernest Hemingway, quoting John Donne in “No Man is an Island”:

“Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

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