The restlessness of the moment hangs thick in the air. It's only towards nightfall that a nation, who just this morning has rudely awakened to the shocking news of retired general Angelo Reyes' suicide at the tomb-site of his parents, has slowly come to grips of the sheer magnitude and awful implications of the on-going and still unfolding revelations on the massive and cancerous corruption in the military establishment and the past regimes in general (pun intended). Most everyone at this time is glued to his or her television and transistor radio following every bit the news reports in an attempt to make sense of the fragmented and surreal bytes on what has exactly happened earlier this day. There is this disorienting and numbing sensation that seem to swirl in my head and chest as I too try to follow the news on TV.
Neither one among us (my three friends and me), who trooped earlier at the Marikina riverbanks for a good morning brisk-walk and lugaw, had the slightest inkling that a "hara-kiri" of sorts has already transpired at the memorial park which is just a few kilometers away from where we were having our sunrise fellowship.
Everyone now seems to have something to say on what has just happened. Opinions and unsolicited theories and interpretations of the late general's last actuations and eventually his snuffing out of his own life are aplenty.
All these, however, would lead to nowhere nor be of any help to anyone if the shattering event will not be brought to humble prayer and an honest to goodness examination of our collective soul as a people.
Now is not the time for any finger-pointing nor the empty and oftentimes annoying couch-debates of those who always turn into instant experts and authorities on any issue that happens to be the buzz of the moment. If there is one thing everyone could lay a hand on as his or her take in this morning's rather grim breakfast, then that could only be a serious self-scrutiny as to how in some way one has contributed in the creation of this monster that now haunts and eats up the nation.
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