Accents
A mess of emotions and ecology
My 21-year old nephew, a third year Nursing student, is now a father of a three-month old. He cannot feed himself, much less his child. His wife is a full-fledged nurse preparing for the CGFNS qualifying exam. When she does make it, a job abroad is a certainty. Add one more story in the statistics of families torn apart by economic pressure. Their parents can only sigh. If only their children had postponed marriage...
But who can douse emotions? Who can stop true love when soulmate meets soulmate? From the vantage of my own life's history, my answer is a strong NO. Only saints can build a dam against the overflow of emotions. My nephew is every young man and my niece-in-law is every young woman to whom love's consummation is devoutly to be wished -- to express it in poetic Shakespearean language. Think Romeo and Juliet, and the rest of the love-struck.
The parents of the young couple must now bear the burden of the basics: feeding, clothing, and sheltering the newly born. Every addition to the family circle must be nurtured with all the love and care we can possibly give. Life is precious once we have it. Thus, suffer we must the strain and drain on the household budget. Survive and scrimp to the limit. Refuse to be overwhelmed even as the burden gets heavier and heavier. If only their children didn't bear a child... which was preventable.
The mess of emotions and scarce resources could have been prevented early on -- with the use of contraceptives. Nephew and his wife and many other young couples like them could have been subjected to an aggressive information campaign on birth control. At this point, relevant to ask my friend Director Vicente "Bugoy" Molejona of the Population Commission as to how effective is the Popcom campaign on the use of artificial birth control. Is there a perceptible decline in the supposedly normal percentage of population growth?
There are three more of us in the world every second. And counting. The United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) said the Philippine population of 85 million may double in the next 25 to 29 years unless the government aggressively supports the use of artificial birth control. How to feed, clothe, house 85 million more? Unthinkable? Then curb population growth.
Already, a burgeoning population has created havoc on the environment. The legendary underwater explorer Jacques Costeau is explicit on this: "Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage." In the search for food, portions of our seas have been overfished. To answer the need for housing, subdivisions have replaced productive rice lands. From exporting-, we have become a rice-importing country. In the overcrowded cities of Third World countries, we see a hungry populace. Not all the efforts of Mother Theresa could mitigate the utter want in wretched Calcutta. Miserable congestion exists in the slums and squatter areas. In the shacks beside the railroad tracks of Manila, people are prone to violence as they compete for space and water. Depressing? I say, curb population growth.
Indeed, the more we are, the sadder. So, guys and gals, go forth but go easy on the multiplying. Let me reiterate here No. 5 of The Earth's Ten Commandments which I enumerated in last week's column: "You shall limit your offspring for multitudes of people are a burden unto the earth." Ecological balance teeters with every additional mouth to feed. Thus, every conceivable way to achieve a sustainable environment must be pursued. And guys and gals can start by cutting family size and grow in responsible parenthood, else ecology will become a strange word in the dictionary instead of being a by-word in the 21st century.
The bottom line: It behooves everyone to clean up the mess of emotions and ecology before we can say Long live humanity!
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)