I Can’t Breathe

These words penetrate into and wound my heart. It’s how I feel when things suffocate me, badly needing to come up for air (and it has nothing to do with a face mask). It’s how I feel on this 122nd day of the Covid-19 lockdown. 

“I can’t breathe” has also become an international buzzword of oppression, particularly the “Black Lives Matter” movement after George Floyd uttered it just before he was killed by the police. The same phrase was also said 10 years earlier by Eric Garner, before his life was snuffed out by uniformed men. Many others spoke these words in police custody before they died.  

"I can't breathe" has likewise struck a profound chord in us during this time of pandemic. Our fears choke us. Many feel like we are being strangled and gagged, “Don’t criticize. Just follow!” “Turn a blind eye to selective justice.” “Stay home!” 

“I can’t breathe” goes beyond being deprived of justice and freedom in our land. It's being deprived of one's voice.  

Fear of the virus (and its offshoots such loss of businesses and jobs, resulting in hunger) is bad enough, and yet we seem to be self-flagellating as a nation by prioritizing other less urgent issues that have been taking much of the lawmakers’ time and stoking ordinary citizens’ emotions, on all levels of anger and frustration: 

- the passage of the anti-terrorism bill (certified urgent by the president), emboldening unscrupulous law enforcers to maltreat helpless victims;

- the closing down of the biggest TV network, ABS-CBN (which has offended the president during the presidential campaign four years ago), leaving 11,000 employees and suppliers jobless.  

- the changing of the airport NAIA to some three obscure Filipino words, shortened as PPP.   

These three issues have greatly divided us. Our disunity is flagrantly displayed on social media with the exchange of bitter and fighting words.  Just going through these back-and-forth barbs make me gasp for grace.  

Dear Lord, “. . . let your unfailing love comfort me, just as you promised me, your servant. (Psalm 119:76 NLT)