IT WAS a sunny Wednesday in Zamboanga, I was supposed to board a boat to Tawi-Tawi when some bodily aches forced me to cancel the trip.

I decided to go back to Manila the next day, three days ahead of schedule, and go straight home to Baguio. I informed my editors that I was leaving on Friday, and they were all for it. Tawi-Tawi, a travel assignment I had, can wait, they said.

In Baguio, I found some comfort that the doctor was able to put a name to my condition. Carpal tunnel syndrome, he told me, the result of spending hours in front of a computer.

Little did I know that while I was losing feeling in some of my fingers, many people in different places in Metro Manila were losing everything they had.

While I was being told to submit to further tests and given several pills, others were desperately in need of the kind of medical attention I was getting.

While I slept in the comfort of my old bed, others slept on rooftops in total darkness, or didn?t sleep at all, wary of fast-rising floodwaters. And while I had the gall to post my status on Facebook as grateful about not being stranded, many were just thankful just to be alive.

It was as if ?Ondoy? came out of nowhere. Nobody expected it to do so much damage. As I learned about the effects of the storm, I was as awestruck as the next person.

I was overwhelmed by images of houses totally submerged in muddy water, cars floating like toys in a bathtub and, most horrific of all, people clinging on for dear life to anything within their reach.

This tragedy was all the more magnified because it was so close to home. I have been renting an apartment in Makati for two years now. To see a video of the pedestrian underpasses at Ayala Avenue, where I pass by regularly, being completely filled with floodwaters was unnerving.

A lesson I learned from human psychology comes to mind: Quite understandably, proximity directly affects empathy. We feel for people we are close to, physically and metaphorically, so that we care for neighbors and family members alike.

I was filled with many different emotions: worried about friends and family who had not sent word that they were fine; relieved by news that people I knew were safe and sound; frustrated that rescue efforts were moving at a snail?s pace; awed and inspired by unexpected acts of heroism.

But above everything else, there was gratitude. After seeing tragic images of Metro Manila, especially Marikina, Pasig and Rizal, over and over again on TV, I was just thankful that I wasn?t there where disaster struck.

My apartment may not have been completely submerged if I was there, but who knows. I could have been anywhere in the metropolis when the deluge came rushing in. Though I?m not given to assigning divine design in coincidences, I felt this was one time I should make an exception.

Many, of course, were not as lucky as I was. The only calamity I could somewhat compare to Ondoy would probably be the July 1990 earthquake that leveled Baguio, among many places in Luzon.

I say ?somewhat? because I was only 4 years old then, and among the few memories I have of the quake was being carried piggyback by my lola out of the house as pieces of furniture came crashing to the floor around us.

We camped out on the street for I don?t remember how long. I was too young to be knowingly scared, but looking back on the stories I have been told about it, it must have been truly terrifying.

The devastation left by Ondoy continues to be a nightmare for a lot of people, I imagine. And now that I know so much about the tragedy as to be genuinely troubled by events around me, I am thankful that I only have to imagine, and not experience, a lot of it for myself.

When a day like that fateful Saturday happens, it?s easy to play the blame game. I know because it is one of my ugly habits to complain about things.

But in a tragedy as complex as this one, the sheer number of factors to blame turns finger-pointing into a wasteful exercise in the face of much more pressing concerns.

Yes, the calamitous floods may have been caused by garbage and clogged drainage, the mismanagement of emergency funds, and human activities that lead to climate change.

But with so many people needing to be rescued, fed and clothed, bayanihan sounds like a much wiser use of energy, for now at least.

Rebuilding lives -- that?s what rescue, relief and recovery operations ultimately aim to do. But how many times do we have to rescue people? How many more tragedies have to happen before we decide to address its roots? If there?s a corresponding flaw to bayanihan in the Filipino?s psyche, it?s our tendency to easily forget.

Typhoons come and go, but we never seem to learn, and so we never run out of calamities. Ground Zero may not be Metro Manila all the time, but the lesson is the same: We should learn from our mistakes. It should be clear to everyone now that we never want another Ondoy to hit close to home.

Jahzeel Abihail G. Cruz, 23, is a writer at Expat Communications Inc., a company that produces a newspaper and a magazine catering to foreigners in the Philippines.