Drowning End-Of-The-World Thoughts With Tsunamic Love

In Japanese, the name Ai means- love.

(Says meaning-of-names.com)

If the tsunami in Japan sent waves of panic and end-of-the-world thoughts (and jokes) around the globe, I could only think of that statement.

In Japanese, the name Ai means- love.

Our social conscience  would tug at our heart strings, feel for Japan, and offer a prayer or a minute of silence. Some people would go as far as to invoke your guilt and tell you to repent so that you be reserved a space in heaven come judgement day. I have nothing against this. But I’m not crazy about it either.

I’m crazy about that statement,

In Japanese, the name Ai means- love.

What this tsunami affirms, in my worldview, is the dialectics of nature and social relations crumbling, getting better, being normal, crumbling again (worse this time), getting better, normal again. I would like to think that the Earth has a life of its own, undergoing menopausal struggles or maybe a migraine because of how badly we treat it, but whatever happens, this kind of thing going on has been going on for years, tsunamis and nuclear plant explosions, some people die, some people live, we pick a lesson or two, and we continue to love. Not to panic.

I can’t say it’s more challenging to live nowadays than say 50 years ago because I wouldn’t want to live during the world war years when Japan sent a panic of terror in some countries like the Philippines. It’s challenging today, every day, as it was yesterday. Years after Japan’s brand of monstrosity was written in the pages of world history, Japan recuperated by building itself an economic and cultural empire that almost made us forget why Japan ever bothered to excel in the first place. In its efforts to compromise with the dark history they themselves want to obliterate, Japan gave us the animé, mangga, gaming consoles, and other pop culture items that seem to take us to a different layer of reality where their realities and the rest of the world’s realities may meet.

I know Japan shall rise again. In stories, we need conflicts to get the story going from boring to engaging to gripping. Lately, we have reports that Japan is not performing that well in the economic realm. Perhaps the “huge surges of water that washed fleets of cars, boats and entire houses across coastal Sendai” is the splash of water your mother(land) would use on you to wake you up from over-sleeping.

And Japan seem to take this as a fair call, as evident in this report (My Paper, 14 march’11):

…more impressive is the stoic calm which the Japanese exhibited in the face of a massive earthquake, a 10m-high tsunami, and a still-unfolding nuclear emergency…

there was a surreality in the contrast between the orderliness of evacuees reportedly waiting at traffic lights before crossing roads, and the devastating extent of the physical destruction that the triple disasters had wreaked.

…there was no panicking, even after passengers had been trapped on the train for about seven hours.

…it…speaks volumes of the Japanese’s legendary civility and deep reserves of social discipline.

For the love of their nation and their worth in this universe, they seem to be bent on reconstructing their identity and history for the last couple of decades. Their love of life, and understanding of how Life can treat you, amaze me. And I wonder why people out there are panicking more than the Japanese do.

As for me, in times like this, it’s my call to love, and love more, because…

In Japanese, the name Ai means- love.