Self-forgiveness, self-healing and the doctor’s dilemma

By: Rafael Castillo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

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Last week, we discussed in this column the powerful healing effect of forgiving other people who may have wronged  us in whatever way. I received quite a number of feedback through my e-mail and via text messages.

Dr. Abet Atilano from the University of Santo Tomas Hospital, says: “I agree a hundred percent with your observation! I’m beginning to feel better now as I’m slowly learning to forgive…,” and he gives a list of people who have wronged humanity or the Filipino people—the likes of Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and even some local corrupt politicians such as a former president charged with multiple cases of plunder.

A reader from Pangasinan, who requests not to be identified, shares that she used to be a physical and mental wreck because she couldn’t forgive her philandering husband; and worse, she couldn’t find the guts to confront him. She finally came to her senses and “held the bull by its horns,” as she describes it. They underwent counseling, and by the way she sounded, it looks like everything is fine in their marriage life and with her health. “My insomnia, ulcer symptoms, and even itchiness in the body vanished even if I don’t take anything for them anymore,” she says.

Learn how to forgive ourselves

Edwin Reyes of Quezon City shares something very important, which is actually the other side of the act of forgiving. “We should learn how to forgive ourselves, too, just as we forgive others when they do us some wrong,” he says. I can’t agree with him more, for indeed, feelings of guilt and over expression of remorse for whatever wrong one may have done in the past can also create havoc—not only in one’s nerves, but physical health, too.

Dr. Tim Ong, a doctor who coaches people to deal with all sorts of emotional conflicts, writes in his blogsite that he has a poster in the waiting room of his clinic that says “Self-forgiveness is essential for healing.” He always asks patients to read it so they would “realize that some physical illnesses are just manifestations of unresolved emotions and conflicts.”

He explains that in many instances, these unresolved emotions have to do with anger and self-blame, which are actually two sides of the same coin. “The difference is that with anger, we direct the negative emotion outward at an external object or person while we direct it inwardly at ourselves in self-blame,” Dr. Tim says.

Both emotions are trigger factors that may actually lead to various symptoms, and if unresolved, to more complicated medical problems. Some researchers even believe that these negative emotions are closely linked with cancer.

Doctors should also exercise self-forgiveness, Dr. Tim advises. It’s true that doctors carry on their shoulders a heavy responsibility such that their role is described as playing the role of  “little gods.” They make vital decisions for their patients and some of these decisions can spell the difference between life and death. And not too infrequently, despite best efforts, the patients deteriorate, and may even die. After all, the science of medicine has no answers yet for all medical problems.

Sleepless nights

Many doctors, especially the ones who are still new in medical practice, would spend sleepless nights asking themselves where they could have gone wrong. Would the patient have lived had they decided on another treatment or another path of intervention? The questions just won’t cease in one’s mind, and no answer seems to be good enough. I have heard of a few doctors who have decided to quit medical practice and just embark on another career because of this dilemma.

“No doctor with a conscience can continue to provide quality healthcare to his patients if he allows such guilt to haunt him indefinitely” Dr. Tim reminds. “Self-blame in such a case is not only harmful to the doctor himself but to the patients he has to treat every day.”

That is the reason a doctor usually undergoes several more years of residency and fellowship training after nine years of medical education to hone his or her decision-making ability further. And the longer one has been in medical practice, the better one becomes in tempering the science of medicine, so one does not only decide by the books, but by the wisdom of his experience. And part of this wisdom is knowing that doctors are not the real healers, but are just instruments of the One above.

Realizing this, the doctor should not take the glory when a patient with critical illness lives; nor should he grieve, question and blame himself, when such patient dies.

The Filipino boy who doesn’t want to speak Filipino is what, exactly?

By: Dennis Clemente

Philippine Daily Inquirer

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New York—As this city closed (who would have thought?) and braced itself for the fierce hurricane called Irene, a close encounter of a different kind took us by surprise.

It came from the Philippines and it was called James Soriano, who caused an online storm with his ManilaBulletin essay “Language, Learning, Identity, Privilege,” in which he makes the claim that “Filipino is not the language of the learned.”

He adds, “We are ‘forced’ to relate to the tinderas (store clerks), manongs (usually the driver) and katulongs (the help) of this world.”

Soriano claims his mother made home conducive to learning English since he was a “toddler” to the point that she even hired English tutors. So we know who’s to blame now?

Well, not so fast. After all, our educational system and form of business communication is still English. Which brings us to the question: Why do we imbibe the language of the empires when they come and go, anyway?

Soriano proceeds to say he “learned Filipino because it was practical. (It) was the language outside of the classroom; it was how you spoke to the tindera when you went the tindahan (convenience store). He says he needed to speak the language “to survive the outside world.”

It’s unfortunate how the boy chooses to live in a bubble, but he is just a symptom of a larger problem.

The glaring social stratification in the Philippines is connected to one’s chosen language, too. The use of English among the rich sets them apart from the rest who speak Tagalog. The Tagalogs may feel superior toward other Filipinos who speak a different dialect.

At a disadvantage

So when Soriano says Filipino is not the language of the learned, is he suggesting Filipino speakers are at a disadvantage compared to him? Did he mean his relatives, too, since they speak Filipino like everyone else? Who feels insulted in all these?

The “interruptions” of foreign colonizers on our shores have, of course, hindered the full flowering of our language but it doesn’t mean Filipino language development should stop.

If the use of one language can be ultimately unifying and there are more Filipinos speaking Filipino, some sort of compromise could be reached.

Already, Filipinos combine both Filipino (and a dialect) with English and the combination of the two is already acknowledged. While some purists may frown on “Finglish,” this writer thinks language has to catch up with the times.

Having one language certainly can help break down social divisions. America has only one language that allows both rich and poor to communicate with each other on an equal footing.

If we use Filipino only, imagine poor Filipinos having access to knowledge. Isn’t that going to make them more functional members of a nation, able to compete against our most educated?

For Filipino-Americans reading this piece, the struggle over the Filipino language is an issue that does not concern them directly, but it may just give them further insights as to why Filipinos who move to America never teach Filipino to their children. It’s not for any deliberate hatred for the language but for knowing that it is a language they can simply give up without consequences.

Dispassionate teaching

This is because most Philippine schools treat Filipino language dispassionately—and an impressionable student may think about its limitations when it is how we have mishandled the language that is the issue.

As Soriano says, Filipino is treated as the “other subject (in school), tedious and difficult,” which is why Filipino “did not come naturally” to him.

Teaching Filipino certainly has to evolve. One can mine our popular entertainment’s use of the language from an etymological, unbiased stance.

From the sublime (Eraserheads music) to the world of TV soap operas, there is a wealth (or heap of trash for some) of pop culture to dissect. The process can actually be fun if analyzed in any number of ways—as a cultural medium, the effective facilitation of relationships and even as emotive expression.

It would be great to teach students of this common declaration, “mahal ko ang bayan ko” (I love my country), as a purely emotive expression, devoid of meaning until converted to action.

While we’re at it, it’d be great to get rid of derisive reactions such as “ang lalim naman ng Tagalog mo” (your Filipino is so profound); “saan bang probinsiya galing ’yan? (From what province did he come from? or “Ay, hindi marunong mag-English!” (He or she doesn’t know how to speak English!)

The latter was a comment directed at Venus Raj in the 2010 Miss Universe Pageant. But if you recall, the more disturbing thing for Americans back then was not her grammar but her non-answer to the question, “What is the one big mistake in your life and what did you do to make it right?”

World is much bigger

These common put-downs may also account for the disinterest toward learning the Filipino language, as Soriano could be accountable for when he didn’t bother to look for translations for bayanihan, tagay, kilig and diskarte.

But the world is much bigger. In a multicultural America where they must convey messages to non-English speakers, those words Soriano cannot translate will need to be translated or “transcreated” (a term used in the ad agency world). Depending on context, variations to these Filipino words are “community spirit,” “cheers,” “titillated” and “technique,” respectively.

Those words can translate to $600 million—the advertising budget spent by American companies in Asian American advertising. Unfortunately, the Filipino American market gets only a meager sum, because we are less language-dependent than other Asians and is therefore almost absconded as a viable market.

The Internet has, of course, blurred the line between journalism and blogging—or writing in general. What passes for journalism these days is one’s solipsistic opinion devoid of any solid research or verifiable truths.

This can be in the form of a blog, which has diminished the value of journalism to a certain extent, because a blogger who gives writing a bad name at least, can easily get published online without culpability whereas a journalist is liable to an organizational structure with strict editorial policies. Count the fact that some journalists blog, too, and the result is utter confusion.

Summing up, Soriano says, “I have my education to thank for making English my mother language,” discounting Filipino altogether.

For a very young person to put himself in a mental box seems too final and unduly conclusive. Doesn’t that rob you of the enjoyment of seeing the multidimensionality of the world? Besides, we know where boxes go—in corners.