Crying = Bravery
Last night I was fortunate to catch the late news, and since I was reading a book things barely registered in my mind as news anchors droned on about the usual issues and this week’s hottest topic—PNoy’s latest SONA and the inadequacies pointed by his critics.
However immersed at the book in front of me, the viral photo of the crying cop during the dispersal on Monday caught my attention. I was used to seeing protesters cry and wail all while shouting their protests, but seeing these done by someone who stood on the other side of the spectrum is not something I expected. The photo is not the type people would snicker or laugh at, but one that they’d empathize with; and for the right reasons.
“I am a policeman; I am just doing my job.” Such simple words yet these carried a different intensity. I will not name him, for this is not a post to put him on the pedestal, and because yes, let’s face it; we all know him already. His was the grandest move exhibited on the dispersal, but like everyjuan he showed a different kind of tactic to put a desired end to the upheaval dividing a nation into two contrasting group of entities.
Before the protests started, he flashed a peace sign to the protesters—the supposed enemies of their side. An appeal like this might be taken differently by those on the other side of the barricade, because truth be told when I first saw it, I dismissed it as a coy blandishment. But this was proved otherwise by the succeeding photos.
It was a sign of bravery; this is going on a battle armed with a weapon but with the over searing desires not to use it in any way against his own people. He may have ruled out the reason for crying as a sign of clashing emotional and physical exhaustion, but we are free to speculate, to shed drama to it—like what I am about to do.
Most of the time whenever I see clashes between protesters of different kinds and policemen, I see two competing faceless groups of people doing their assigned duties; the former to shove their protests down the government’s throats and other to stop them. This particular photo of the crying cop changed my perspective—they are all still humans; with emotions, capable of inflicting pain and feeling it themselves.
Sad as it may be people are, in nature, divided. Upheavals like this only keep this fact alive in our consciousness. Probably, he was tired of it; of having to contest with the same people he should be protecting, of having to do things against his will to keep his profession from tarnishing.
By nature, we are brothers. We live in the same spoiled nation, with the thin line connecting our ideals with one another. And I do hope that one fact could prevail over the other.
Because seriously, I would take a crying cop or a battalion of them every day than a bunch of good-for-nothing ones who does nothing but brandish their profession with a perverted sense of bravado.
