Some motives are obvious; some are cloaked with the disguise of public concern. But just the same, whenever there is a calamity, the situation could be transformed, courtesy of individuals with obnoxious character, into a breeding ground for the worst of humanity to shine in our midst. And shame for those who crave for attention in their hasty efforts to be heard by the public so that our people would be convinced that indeed they care for the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the injured. When the 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Bohol on Oct. 15 leaving 209 people dead and 650 more injured while tens of thousands have been rendered homeless, we’ve seen many unsung heroes who immediately responded to the distress call of our brothers and sisters in various hard-hit Bohol towns.

At the Bohol Cultural Center, which has been converted into a relief and rescue operations center of the Provincial Government of Bohol, we have witnessed many nameless, tireless young boys and girls who volunteered to repack relief goods and made themselves available round the clock for whatever task being assigned to them. Some of these volunteers, too tired to go home at dawn, have been spotted sleeping on sacks of relief goods. When morning comes, they return to their respective houses, take a bath, eat bread, change dress, return to the center, and resume their true humanitarian mission. And many of them are still elementary and high school students, sons and daughters of the poorest of the poor in our community. They don’t own digital cameras or high-tech cellphones that they can use to chronicle their minute-by-minute activity. They down have Facebook accounts where they can announce to the whole world the language of their hearts and the pictures of their minds.

On the other hand, hundreds of members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have deviated from their normal operations and joined the government’s 24/7 relief and rescue operations. And they don’t call radio stations just to publicize their humanitarian mission. Hundreds of other volunteers are scouring the mountains in search of dead bodies, traversing remote villages dispatching food and water, conducting medical missions, comforting the sick, mourning with grieving families who have lost loved ones in the aftermath of the killer quake may never be mentioned over the radio, may never be seen on national TV – their names may never appear on print. These unrewarded volunteers (but great is their rewards in heaven) who truly care for the suffering Boholanos would never call the governor of Bohol or ring the “who’s who” of the province and of the city so that they would gain recognition for their undocumented relief efforts.

In other words, a truly caring and loving person, as in the life of an unheralded earthquake volunteer, has no molecules of conceitedness and arrogance in his/her bones and flesh. Their work is purely motivated by compassion and love for humanity. And never will they seek public attention, crave for it, long for it, and in fact they would avoid recognition at all cost, fearing it would tarnish the purity of their heart. And here comes another form of calamity: those who are doing nothing in times of unspeakable human pain and grief, but are only fond of putting themselves high above in the pedestal of public opinion (meaning the Kulang Sa Pansin), waiting for their egos to be cuddled by the so-called “madlang people” so that (or shall we say “he” or “she”?) they can advertise their intellectual superiority and obvious pretentions should be relegated to the spam inbox of persona non grata.