Someone said to me, “Ar chad a kora kmal di look stressed e depressed.” He made me think of a famous quote I read that made me laugh, “I may look calm, but in my mind I’ve killed you three times.”
Newton worked in many areas of mathematics and physics. He developed the theories of gravitation in 1666, when he was 23 years old…Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. The stress and depression in the faces of people need an external forces from those who are in the position who has the authority to make that change. An old man expert in KlechiBelau once said that “siukang can be changed for the better by the ‘reMeteet.” I can only write about it as I don’t fall in that category. [restrict]
When we create our own stress by doing things we really don’t want to do or can’t because it is beyond our means for the sake of being a community, we are stagnating. When we spend money on funerals we could use for our children, we become depressed. Depression, in short, is anger toward one self. I asked a young woman why so depressed. She looked at me angrily and said, “That word is not even in my vocabulary.” She looked calm but I think she killed me several times in her mind. Several years later, she said to me that we really are in denial just to survive. Aha!
Stress is actually needed in our lives or we’ll rot. But when we take it to extreme, it becomes unhealthy. The stress of being a Palauan woman and what it entails is killing us softly and silently. It’s not easy to keep scooping out of an empty cup. The competition in our siukang is ludicrous even, through obvious absurdity. What happened to us? Does anybody care? Is there one there willing to stand in the gap for younger single mothers, the marginalized, the unemployed raising their children alone? Have we lost our social conscience? Did we lose the element of Grace?
Newton’s third law of physics: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The statement meant that in every interaction there is a pair of equal and opposite reaction. I believe that whatever you want to do to me, it has already been done to you. When your so called friends vilify and slander you in their circle, their story ends right there. When that happens, look within you to the light that LOVE created in you and ask, “What can I do?” Go find it and go do it. And be alive. The world needs more human beings alive.
Social Conscience is a sense of responsibility or concern for the problems and injustices of the society. It cannot be done through programming for it’ll lose its love. It has to come from the heart. We need to ask the question: What can I do to make life a little better in our community? [/restrict]