Here’s a little story that was shared with me earlier this year. The allegory appears apt for reminding us that no matter how high our spirits soar or how crushing our troubles seem, we can somehow always find relief in looking beyond ourselves.
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A lawyer friend of mine met an 85-year-old man, Mang Gorio, on an air-conditioned bus going to Tacloban City in Leyte. Although they were assigned specific seats, he soon realized that his seat had been taken by a scraggly old man in dirty, ragged clothing. The bus had apparently been fully booked days in advance and as he tried to find a seat, he noticed the old man waving. “Sir, what’s your seat number?” he said in clear English. My friend gave his number. “Then, you sit right here; this is your place,” the old man instructed. My friend began to curse his rotten luck at the prospect of an 11-hour trip seated beside the old geezer.
“Hindi po ba kaya kayo giginawin sa suot niyo, naka shorts at t-shirt lang kayo?” my friend asked the old man patronizingly as he took his seat. “Ookeey lang, may jacket po ako,” the old man replied, pointing to two plastic bags he had crammed in front of him. Right away, my friend’s sensitive nose caught a peculiar smell. “Meron yata kayong nabiling tinapa na pangpasalubong,” he remarked rather innocently.
Mang Gorio, it turned out, is a farmer living in Sorsogon City with a 55-year-old daughter and her children. The daughter was separated from her husband, who had run off to live with a young girl with whom he has a child. The daughter runs a tinapa stall in the Sorsogon City Market and that explains the lingering and permeating smoked-fish odor.
For most of his life, Mang Gorio worked as a lowly grass-cutter in Fort Bonifacio. One can just imagine this humble little man running all sorts of errands and doing odd jobs for the generals and other officers and their every bidding. In return, Mang Gorio managed to get two of his sons into the military service and even got some kind of an informal housing site within the camp, where it seems one of his jobless sons still lives up to now. Mang Gorio lives off and depends on a monthly stipend he gets as the beneficiary of one of his sons, who was killed in action in Mindanao: P1,000 from the AFP Savings and Loan Association and P1,000 from the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO).
During the past six months, however, Mang Gorio had not been receiving any remittances of his PVAO benefits. After much persuasion, Mang Gorio managed to borrow some transportation money from his daughter to check on his PVAO account in Manila. A little over a week later, with the assistance of a fixer, he finally managed to get his P6,000. He paid the fixer P1,000. That left him with P5,000. “Mas marami pa pala kayong dalang pera kaysa sa akin.” Mang Gorio showed his thin, worn-out wallet. It had about five different IDs and a 50-peso bill. “Ibinigay ko sa anak kong jobless yung P4,500. Yung natira sa akin kulang pang pamasahe. Naghintay muna padalhan ako ng P500 ng anak ko sa Sorsogon. Ito na lang ang natira, P50.” The lawyer was sufficiently impressed and moved.
He managed to persuade Mang Gorio to join him for snacks and meals at every bus stop. While he did so rather reluctantly at first, Mang Gorio began gulping down his food as if he had not eaten in days. All in all, they made no less than five bus stops.
Did somebody up there just send me this old man to babysit and care for?
My friend believed this was no time for deep analytical rationalizing. Fate, or whatever you want to call it, had arranged for him to go on that trip on that day, take that particular bus, and be assigned that particular seat. There, this old man would be waiting for him.
In all, Mang Gorio proved to be such an enjoyable character that my friend decided later during the trip to ask the conductor to change his ticket and book him for Sorsogon instead, an extra two-hour ride. “Saan kayo titira sa Sorsogon?” Mang Gorio asked. “Bahala na, baka kay Bishop Bastes, kaibigan ko yun,” he replied. “Gabi na pag dating natin sa Sorsogon. Baka gusto niyo, sa bahay na lang kayo. Pasensya lang dahil maliit lang ang bahay namin.”
My friend didn’t refuse. They arrived in Sorsogon past 11 p.m. and took a tricycle to Mang Gorio’s place; actually, his daughter’s. The tricycle ride was an adventure in itself. One couldn’t possibly retrace and find his way back there even with Google Earth. Everyone was asleep. The whole place was reeking with the smell of smoked fish. Since he did not wish to bother anyone, Mang Gorio let his guest sleep in his little room. It was full of all kinds of creeping and crawling creatures. They must have liked the smell. It was all he could do to try to stay awake the whole night for fear that nothing would be left of him the following day. Early in the morning, my friend heard Mang Gorio talking to his daughter. She obviously was embarrassed by the whole arrangement. In the end though, typical Filipino hospitality shone through.
What did I think I was trying to do staying overnight with total strangers in the middle of nowhere, Philippines? Here I was, a tired old lawyer trying seriously to organize committees that would assist parishes and dioceses in applying for millions of dollars in grants from charitable/philanthropic institutions abroad. The projects are aimed at improving the lives of people, particularly in the rural areas.
Why did it bother me that an old man without any visible means thinks nothing of giving away almost all of his money to his jobless son, while I find it difficult to dig deep into my own pockets to help tide over a friend, neighbor or relative? Is God trying to tell me something so he arranged for me to meet this old man under such unlikely circumstances?
Haven’t I been complaining lately that I find it difficult to feel the presence of God anywhere in my life? Is it possible that maybe I have been looking for God in all the wrong places, mostly in all the high places, among the rich, the powerful, the beautiful and nice-smelling people?
Is it possible that this old man could be “Jesus in disguise?” Could he be one of those Jesus referred to in the Bible as “the least of my brothers”? No, it can’t be. I cannot be bothered about these things right now. I have an important conference to attend to, an important committee that needs organizing. I’m too busy to attend to all this micro stuff. I’m strictly a policy man.
Then I heard a voice somewhere along the muddy, potholed roads of Samar whisper to me over and over again: “I was hungry and thirsty, and you formed a committee, I was homeless and naked, and you formed a committee, I was tired and troubled, and you formed a committee.”