GONE GIRL

On the evening of the twenty-first of December, a little before 11:00 PM, a seventeen year old Grade 12 student left a cafe where she was working on her laptop to go to a convenience store to have her money broken into smaller denominations.

Her mother arrived a little past eleven to find her daughter gone. She went home only to discover that the young lady has not reached their residence either thus prodding her to return to the cafe.  There she found the girl's belongings, including her cell phone and her laptop. But her daughter was nowhere in sight.

By the following morning the internet was abuzz with the disappearance of this teenager from the south.  What was particularly alarming was that there was no CCTV coverage of her whereabouts right after she disappeared, except for the fact that she bought water from a convenience store nearby perhaps to break her thousand peso bill.  

Her sister in a state of dismay posted her picture in social media.  Facebook went ablaze with netizens sharing the photo of the lost girl and the information provided about her looks, her clothes, her latest known whereabouts. A photograph was posted, a screen capture from the closed circuit TV showing the missing kid in what she was wearing that night.

By Friday morning, everybody knew how she looked, what she was wearing at the time of her disappearance.  And yet not a word was heard about her.

Her parents asked for the help of the police while her siblings sought the aid of the netizens in looking for the young lady.

And the netizens responded with a sense of alarm.  

Why? Because you did not need to know the family of the missing girl personally to empathize with what they were going through.  Considering all the missing kids ... and the kind of cruel fate that awaited them in that short span of time of their disappearance, the jaded imagination can play all sorts of cruel tricks.  

Sometimes what we imagine is far worse than what really transpires.  But we are sometimes shocked when what happens in reality is far more gruesome, cruel and inhuman than whatever it we ever imagined.

That is why I was terrified.  

The girl was seventeen. She was alone.  And she was missing for twelve hours.  God knows what can happen in thirty minutes but more so in twelve hours. Even more frightening was the fact that all this occurred near my residence.  In other words, if there was imminent danger ... then this transpired not far away from what I consider as my sanctuary.

The events that followed reflected the speed of information --- but more so the response of people to a call for help.

In a matter of hours Facebook and Twitter were sharing the emergency call to help find the seventeen year old girl.  Everybody knew the face of the girl, the details to look for and where she was last seen.  Social media had such power to make information accessible that all it took was a selfie from a college girl out with her friends in Starbucks at a provincial mall south of the Metro to let the world know where Little Girl Lost could be found.

The succession of events that transpired right after almost had a fairy tale ending.

We all sighed with relief when the girl was found, unharmed.  

The photograph issued yesterday on her sister's Facebook showed the weeping young lady embracing her mother. We wept too ... relieved.  All these terrible images in our mind as to what could have happened to her were erased.  It was our ... uh, reasonable paranoia ... that generated such wild imagining.

But here was the rub.

The family refused to provide any further explanation about what happened.  

What was important was that the girl was found on Christmas Eve ... a miracle of timing indeed.  Although we did not personally know the family, we were happy for them.  They were going to have an even more beautiful Christmas.

The decision of the girl's kin not to provide any more details about her return was their right. After the taxing thirty-six hours or so of not knowing what happened to the child, they deserved their alone time to review and reassess what happened, to regroup and reintegrate. 

However, the very reasons why social media is powerful can also be the same source of misunderstanding if not abuse under the category of entitlement. People were perplexed by the thought that the family was quick in seeking the help of netizens but then suddenly clammed up when required an explanation ... or, as the politically correct would say, closure.

The sudden retrieval of the girl became subject to suspicion and cynicism.

This was when all these questioning comments arose in the internet as if the whole event was overblown, scripted and even over dramatized.

Some branded the incident as yet another trending manifestation of insincere humanitarian concerns --- another case of social media attracting those who were nakikiuso or riding with the trend of faking concern because everybody else is aligaga over the sudden disappearance of the girl. If there is nagmamaganda, then there must be nagmamabait.

There are even others who muttered, "What's the big deal? Who is she? Kids get lost everyday. What makes her special? She isn't even a celebrity!" Who is she to deserve all this attention?

And others interpreted this according to their own perception --- which I found either surreal or downright ridiculous.

There are those who claim that much of this brouhaha took place just because the family of the missing girl is rich. 

The event was diminished to the social dichotomy of the haves versus the have nots. Suddenly this became unquestionable proof that if you are rich, people will help and sympathize with you, but if you are poor ... then you are only good for tokhang.

Would people express as much concern even to draw celebrities to retweet and share the shoutouts for help if the girl came from a depressed area or did not study in an exclusive school?

Others claim that they feel cheated.  

Well, yes. They were worried, restless, concerned ... thinking the girl was kidnapped for ransom, etcetera ... only to find out the possibility that she just had a tiff with her father and ran off somewhere deliberately incommunicado. They felt that a false alarm was sent to the public, creating so much attention only to find out it is just good old pagmamaldita that caused such a commotion in social media.

The fact that she comes from an upper middle class background worked against her. 

Unfortunately, those who do not understand the mindset and problems of kids of any social class do not see that there is more to this than a bratty little girl wanting to prove something to her parents.  This is symptomatic of a much larger problem of the young today.

How easier it is to be so simplistic in looking at young people and their irrational behavior, retreating to our conservative conclusions about their so-called folly, stubbornness and irrationality.

How more convenient it is to brand events as another "entitled spoiled little rich girl" causing havoc to the netizen world without understanding the deeper causes as to why kids are like these nowadays.

The reaction showed that the problem did not only lie with the kids. There are also problems with us adults.

I would have thought the same about this incident if it were not for the opportunity to go back to school and stand in front of the classroom to face not millennials ... but the iGeneration kids, the centennials.  Oh, the things we go see and experience not within the class hours but the dynamics of kids whose set of problems are completely different from my time or my generation. And there are issues that these kids are facing that we, the elders, must address and understand because we live in far different times.

We cannot dismiss their problems as pagpapakasutil because we need to understand their world today by the norms that they live in and not in terms of how we were taught or how we grew up.

The retrieval of the lost girl was perhaps greatly aided by social media --- but it is social media as well that creates a sense of isolation, replacing actual human relationships with virtual involvements --- diminishing the world of young people between their very compartmentalized selves and the monitors of their smart phones or tablets.  

Remember this is a world where friend has become a verb where you can unfriend and block people who you may have never really met but made to believe you share a relationship of whatever kind.  This is a world where kids suffer from depression, personality disorders and mental health issues which our generation would simply dismiss as sinusumpong.

A colleague of mine said it is the influx of too much information that has warped the minds of young people.  

Their access to the internet, their ability to collect and retrieve data without the maturity to digest, understand and imbibe the significance of these facts happening in the world around them have left them confused ... and yes, feeling more isolated than any other generation before them.  And to think that we believe that these kids, all with their computer savvy, are the most intelligent and informed generation of human beings ever made to walk the face of the earth.

There is apparently a price to pay for all that. And we cannot diminish it into simple equations by calling them entitled and brats. The problem is as much us for we created this world for them and never took time to see the implications of the speed of developing technology to the frailty of growing up.

Some netizens are demanding explanations from the family as to what really happened to the girl.  Did she deliberately leave her belongings and planned her disappearance? Did the parents know that she was a stowaway and not a kidnap victim of sorts? What is the real score? Give us the story.

Fact: yes, they asked for our help but the family is under no obligation to explain. 

We panicked, we felt bad, we worried because we are fathers, mothers, brothers, sister, uncles, aunts, grandparents, teachers, friends.  We felt the panic, the pain, the fear when a seventeen year old girl disappeared into the darkness of nowhere leaving behind no clue of where she was going or what has happened to her.

We want to know the story but we can only assume because it is still the family's choice to share the information as to what led this girl into that kind of predicament and what transpired before all this happened.  

Yes, we were disturbed, frightened and stressed out with the possibilities --- but that is our choice too. And that was a good choice because we proved that we can still feel for others and we are willing to help in our own little way to give a happy Christmas to a family.

So what if she is not a celebrity?  So what if she comes from the middle class and not the countless nameless members of the madlang people? A daughter is a daughter regardless of her station in life.  And we feel not according to the choice of social class but because of our degree of humanity ... or lack thereof.

Leave that be. The girl is back in her parents' arms: the family found their peace and happiness this Christmas. Let us be happy for them.  They are real people.  They are not characters in your favorite telenovela that require another episode to maintain our curiosity. This is real life. And it feels good to know there are people who can feel for others and are willing to help without a pre-requisite of getting something in return.

You do what you think is right because it is right and not because you expect a payback.  

As I have replied in my social media account, let us just be happy for the family and stop asking questions which, at this point, is no longer our business. 

If you feel you have been taken for a ride, console yourself with the thought you are human enough to empathize with the pain of others. And be thankful. Be thankful that in this brutal, cynical, Machiavellian, pragmatic world we live in ... you can still feel for others.

Be happy and pray that what happened to this family a few days before Christmas does not happen to you ... or any of your children.