I was reminded that behind every storm is at least a little sunshine. In a brief respite from the rain, I noticed blue skies and a shining sun. There are storm clouds out there, and we should wizen up and prepare to take the right actions.After the storm the sun will shine again. For individual citizens and for society as a whole. Just as it was during Liberation time, taking a wrong turn, making an unwise decision by listening to the wrong voice could be a matter of life or death. Like my dad and his sisters, navigating the dark streets of Intramuros searching for a way out, listening to the voices in Filipino (and English) guiding them to safety, we will need to know which voices to heed, and which to ignore. That is, of course, if we know what to do. And in about five months’ time we can take an active step and do what we can to banish those clouds – or weaken their impact. Lucky for you and me we have a built-in system meant to help us overcome storm clouds. That’s why NASA recently launched a program of developing rockets that will be sent skyward to target meteors and asteroids to blast them into smithereens so they could do no harm. These are asteroids and meteors that abound in space, with one or two potentially coming so close to Earth to harm it. NASA, the US space agency, also has its own version of storm clouds that it monitors. But I see other threats – COVID being the primary one and a potential economic crisis being another – looking like the invasion force that was impossible to resist. It would get me every time, whenever he gets to the point of the story where in pitch darkness they hear voices shouting at them in Tagalog to hurry up, followed by the same instructions in English and at that very moment realized they’ve made it out of the hell that was Intramuros in the last days of the war in April 1945 I could imagine the overwhelming sense of relief they must have felt – four of them, my dad aged 16 and his three older sisters – followed by the grief of knowing that a brother and their father had been marched off to Fort Santiago just a few days earlier – and weren’t as lucky.Įighty years later I am grateful no threat of a military invasion looms. But nothing moved me more than my father’s story of having to escape the bombardment of Intramuros during “Liberation,” of how he and his three surviving sisters had to gather all their worldly belongings in their arms and navigate the streets through fallen debris and dust-filled dark roads. I grew up hearing tales of the end of “Peacetime” and the hardships of the invasion and the occupation, tales made more vivid and personal because of the uncles half my current age who lost their lives during that period. Before anyone knew it, the country was reeling under the might of an invasion force that it could not resist. A day later, the US military installations in the Philippines were also bombed. Being a heavily Catholic country, the birth of Jesus Christ was the best occasion for festivities.īut all that changed on December 7, 1942, when the Imperial Japanese navy launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, effectively wiping out the US Pacific fleet. The air was clear, the rovers and beaches were spotless, and you can choose to go savor the pine-scented air of Baguio city or the beaches at Cavite just off Sangley Field.Īnd it was December – always a time for celebrations and much-awaited get togethers of families and friends. SOME 80 years ago the Philippine islands were an idyllic location for a vacation, or even a posting. ‘Lucky for you and me we have a built-in system meant to help us overcome storm clouds.