March 29, 2024

IN THIS PRESENT Context of the Pandemic, how does the old-as-life saying, “Man is a social being” fare?
IN COLLEGE DAYS, such saying was just one of the many quoted – and re-quoted, in classrooms, in the corridors, inside (and outside) campus: enjoyed and almost immortalized – but only explained in its ‘ideal’, perfect sense.
NOWADAYS – OR IN these times, you don’t need to be a Philosopher or Academician, or the like, to get grasp of the said saying in its factual, verifiable occurrences or instantiations.
YES! ASK THOSE who have gone through quarantines, lockdowns, isolations. Their momentary separations – from people or society are mute testimonies: that man cannot be happy to live – unless he is given back ‘society’ (in general) with which he has grown by the years, lived happily along in Pre-pandemic times, and enjoyed the sunshine – until his/her ‘segregation’ from it, due to illness or contamination:
RECOVERED AND BACK now with ‘society’, he sings in his heart and relates with Ardor – how ‘unlike it was’ where only the confinement/isolation room served as his ‘society’ per se.
IT IS TRUE there are the radio, the cellphone – you-tube, and other electronics substitutes, and they’re.. Yes – good ‘substitutes’; but: only for some valuable times. At the end of the day, you self-question or ponder: my family members, my relatives: yes, my friends – even my neighbours, I wonder how they are right now? What they’re presently doing? For sure.. they’re not as I am now; not feeling like they’re ‘excluded’ and ‘abandoned’ – naidasin tan ataynan.
[AND ANTICIPATING THE smiles and/or glances of his audience signifying their discomfiture, unbelief, unverbalised ‘response’ of ‘exaggeration’ – as contained in their exclamations of: e.g. Ang angsan nem! (“Beyond imaginable!); or, haan met siguro! (“Maybe not as that worst!”); etc., he/she emphatically affirms}:
DEPERENSIYA NGA AGPAYSO! Apay kowan jo oh! (Transl: “Truly, it’s not an ordinary case! You cannot just ‘shake it off’, IMPL even just the mere thought of it!”). To you, he’ll say
‘AS YOU LOOK at the walls enclosing you, you begin to get ‘disturbed’ by their planed, painted, [even] newly-cleaned appearances; and the door, the moment it gets ajar by itself, you wish there’s someone to come in to talk with you – say Hello! and warmly accord you: “how are you?” In worst times of your isolation and confinement,
‘YOU’LL FIND ANY movement – even of ‘some things’ – like: rats, cockroaches, and flies – far more pleasurable, than the still, silent, deaf, and plainness of the walls, the doors and the windows.
AH, ‘MAN IS a social being’ – how true it is, after all! Not just a saying – for Art, or Philosophy’s sakes; but a true, and proven ‘guide’ – we humans need to live by! Ayuhh kha!