Disclaimer: This is pure biased opinion. I may hit some nerves but I am only voicing out my opinion. Feel free to comment as well.
“Mahirap manggising ng taong gising”
(“It’s hard to wake someone who’s already awake.”)
For someone who has made sleeping a hobby, you would know this. People who pretend to sleep just wouldn’t wake up no matter how hard you nudge them. The same goes with people who cannot allow themselves to see the truth in front of their eyes. Some people may not be oblivious to the truth, but they just can’t accept it or just pretend it isn’t there.
Is Budoy sending the wrong signals? | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online.
A week after the article was published, talks surrounding the Budoy TV program still continued. Apparently, the show seemed to have deceived a lot of people.
Most of my colleagues have admitted that parents were asking if the things that happened to the character would also happen to their children. It’s sad to think that a lot of parents have been deceived by the same TV program that originally sought to provide awareness and information to the masses.
I admit though that I have not seen the program to judge it in this manner. In fact, I don’t watch TV at all. Yet the TV program seemed to have affected most of the therapist netizens of the country. Lots of them posted blogs, notes, and statuses on Facebook and other social media regarding the issue. Most of them showing disappointment over the program or relief that somehow someone took notice that the program was not doing what it originally intended to do.
Passing judgment though might not be appropriate since these media giants are also business empires. They are solely driven to earn profits no matter how many times they deny it. To do thus, they’ve allowed their programs to hit the soft spots of the Filipino masses. They produce drama that would really make the people relate to the emotion rather than understand the story or become aware of their supposed cause. They even try to make it cute to attract kids, and adults. Because of a seemingly noble cause and a play on the emotions of people, the program will surely get a huge following despite all the factual and logical errors presented.
What most of my colleagues also forget to see is that the excitement felt at each progress on an individual patient could be limited to the doctors, therapist and the parents alone. Most people might really appreciate the effects, but are ignorant by the number of days or months or years or the process and emotional anxiety it took the therapists, parents and doctors before any progress manifested. Some may not even be as sympathetic as others. Some may simply try to laugh at our every effort. Not everyone has sympathy.
In addition to this, presenting a series which features the things most special children goes through like consulting a doctor, then going to therapy and then progressing after say 3-6 months may not be that appealing to most people. It does promote information but not entertainment. We need to understand that when a regular working person enters the house at the end of an 8 hour work shift, his focus is not to be informed but to be entertained. He or she would rather feel happy over a good comedy series than get overloaded with information. People want entertainment. They lose interest if there’s too much information.
Parallel to this is the impeachment sessions with the senate. While I reserve any opinion on the matter, we could presume that the place and the event is one for the politically and legally knowledgeable. A lot of comments from some of our countrymen revealed that most didn’t understand some of the legal jargon mentioned during the trial. While the coverage gives us an appreciation on how these processes go, we need to admit that the longer we watch, the more information we get. Thus most would just end up losing track of the conversation or the trial.
The danger with films or series that try to raise awareness is that when you pile up information, most people would lose interest. There are very few films or TV series that wherein information was piled beautifully that really made people aware. Not everyone is just that sympathetic or even interested. Not everyone is willing to open their eyes. Most prefer to sleep and live in their own dreamland. We should know how to deal with these. They need as much understanding as everyone else.
In the end, let’s do our jobs as therapists, parents or doctors and try our best to manage our kids. Whether people laugh, mock, or jeer at us doesn’t matter. The joke is always on them because they are the ones who are apathetic to everything that is happening around them. All we have to do is prove them wrong. After all, the loudest cans are usually the empty ones.
Still More Things I Don’t Understand
I recently saw a video about a woman who was initially diagnosed with a brain tumor. Upon surgery, the doctor couldn’t help but chuckle. The patient would live longer. It wasn’t a brain tumor after all. It was a worm.
While it was good to hear that the woman’s life was not in danger any more, it is scary to think that a worm could convert your brain into its home and enjoy every minute of it while you suffer. The exact nerd term for the worm was not divulged in the report, but it was said to have come from eating half cooked pork or not washing your hands after using the bath room.
I guess the latter would be far fetched. I know and have seen some guys in public restrooms who never washed their hands after doing their thing in the bathroom. I don’t know though if there’s already a colony of worms in their heads, but I guess the former is more likely. We could also say that it might be a one in a thousand occurrence, but the doctor who performed the operation admitted that this woman was not the first case in the past five weeks. This means that many people can have it.
So how does the worm get into your head? Is it like love that won’t go away unless operated on? Why do fools fall in love?
Imagine the number of things we don’t understand? In the tradition of the first two posts a few years ago, namely Things I Don’t Understand and More Things I Don’t Understand, here are some of the things I still don’t understand.
Issues like these are like worms in the head. It hurts like a tumor or a cancer until you remove the worm. Perhaps this just tells us that what happens in a micro scale happens in a similar fashion in more macro set-up. That is, the way an individual person gets sick is similar to the way society gets sick. It happens in small seemingly innocent events but would only reveal itself once the disease has full control of your functions. A cure cannot be found unless the source is extracted.
While prevention is better than cure, could society’s diseases be cured by hygiene and avoidance?