Sick sense

Netnet Camomot /

IN the 1999 movie, “The Sixth Sense,” Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) finally reveals his secret: “I see dead people.”

He tells this to child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) who then asks him, “In your dreams?” Sear shakes his head for his answer, No.

Crowe: “While you’re awake?”

Sear nods.

Crowe: “Dead people like, in graves? In coffins?”

Sear: “Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”

Crowe: “How often do you see them?”

Sear: “All the time.”

That last line, “All the time,” should have warned Crowe that he’s one of the dead people Sear sees. But even we, the movie’s audience that time, believed Crowe was alive and kicking. Our aha moment arrived only at the end of the film.

Anyone who has lost a loved one must have had this experience, too, of seeing dead people. Or at least their dark silhouettes, as he notices this strange cold that penetrates to the bones despite the blanket and layers of clothing he wears to keep warm. Can be likened to the Cold War? Hmmm.

World War II was the worst for people, dead and alive. Mention the Holocaust, and images of the estimated six million European Jews killed by the Nazis and Nazi minions come to mind.

Nazi Germany’s Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and his toothbrush moustache were at the helm of this thirst for genocide. It took only one guy to brainwash people with his ideology, and it killed six million Jews. Not 600 thousand, not 60 thousand, not 6,000. It was six million.

World War II ended in 1945. That should have taught human beings to be careful with hatred, greed, and envy.

Seventy-two years later, and here we are, with Facebook Live and TV coverage of the Marawi siege, extrajudicial killings, “One Time Big Time” overnight killing spree against Pinoys allegedly involved in drugs that took the lives of 32 people in Bulacan and 12 in Caloocan City which included 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos.

And then, there are terrorists using vehicles to plow down crowds in Barcelona, Spain; Charlottesville, Virginia, USA; London, U.K.; Stockholm, Sweden; Berlin, Germany; and Nice, France.

Natural disasters have been joining the fray, too, with the recent mudslides in Sierra Leone claiming at least 467 lives.

Berlin has had its share of life’s ups and downs with the Nazis and the Berlin Wall. You would expect its residents to have learned their lessons by now. Well, the more things change, the more they remain the same, as the saying—or warning?—goes.

The Berlin Wall was completely demolished by 1992, and we thought that would inspire North and South Korea to unite. But the North continues to “idolize” its great leader who loves to brandish his country’s nuclear power, with Guam as its most recent potential victim, while the South would rather focus on K-pop, K-dramas, and, hmmm, Psy? Or should that be Gong Yoo, the latest object of affection of Pinas’s Koreanovela fans.

Once the perfect answer eludes a beauty pageant candidate, she can always say, World peace, and that’s enough to make us smile.

There’s this Q&A at a beauty contest. I wrote about this before, but here it is again.

Emcee (E): What’s the national bird?

Beauty contest candidate (BCC): Clue, please?

E: It starts with the letter M.

BCC: Manok?

E: Wrong!

BCC: Another clue, please.

E: Its color is brown.

BCC: Lechon manok?

E: Wrong!

BCC: Another clue, please.

E: It’s small.

BCC: Maliit na lechon manok?

The correct answer was maya, the red one. Therefore, not brown. And it held its status up to the first half of 1995. By July 1995, then President Fidel Ramos declared the Philippine eagle as the national bird.

By the way, the eagles’ sanctuary in Davao is temporarily closed due to the bird flu threat. So, the only animals a tourist can visit in Davao for now are the crocodiles? Hmmm. But people in Manila don’t have to travel far for that. All they have to do is attend a Commission on Appointments session.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it/It’s the end of the world as we know it/It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” That’s R.E.M. in 1987 singing about “World serves its own needs, don’t mis-serve your own needs” and “Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop/Look at that low plane! Fine, then.” Yes, 1987. 30 years ago.

Trump? The song was a result of R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe’s dream, thus, the halo-halo of words and thoughts. And Stipe’s trump starts with a small t, not a big T.

On Sept. 2, 1987, Larry King interviewed Donald Trump who said, “I have no intention of running for president.” Trump was more eloquent then. Something must have happened within the 30 years from 1987 to 2017.

That interview was inspired by whole-page newspaper ads that Trump paid for in reaction to American foreign policy which he claimed was making the US lose $200 billion a year.

Well, the past is already gone, and we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

One day at a time. That’s how life is supposed to be lived. Because we’re sure only of this moment.

No one has ever come back from the dead to tell us if heaven, hell, and purgatory do exist. But while we’re still alive, we have to remember that our actions and words can either heal or hurt. Don’t be like the dead that Sear describes as, “They only see what they want to see.”

But if Ninoy Aquino were alive today, I wonder how he would react to the “One Time Big Time.” And to the Marawi siege, extrajudicial killings, Tokhang, the Ozamiz drug raids.