EDITORIAL – Despair is not without reason

The suicide of 12-year-old Mariannet Amper of Davao City due to crunching poverty was one of the most touching human stories to have emerged in contemporary times. The wish is now for the despair to end with her.

At least one bishop has come forward to make an impassioned appeal to people, many of whom are similarly situated as Mariannet before she chose to end her misery, not to make despair a reason to do what she did.

What makes the story of Mariannet even more sad is the fact that it has become the basis for discussions on whether she did right or wrong, or worse, whether her suffering justified her taking her own life.

Such discussions are unfair because we can never be Mariannet. We can suffer more or less misery than she suffered, and yet may react differently owing to the uniqueness of each of our own individual capabilities.

Her death was tragic because it was induced by misery in someone so young. There should be no question about that. But there is no changing what has happened, there is no bringing her back to life, by way of who argues better on how things should have or should not have been.

In other words, the best thing to do is give Mariannet the peace she sought and paid so dearly with her own life. Now that she has been laid to rest, let us drop all discussions about her fate, which in the end will not make any difference.

We should pray for her of course. That much we owe her. Beyond that, it is time to let go and move on. Of course, it would be tempting to court possibilities of change that just might swing this country around in favor of the poor and the miserable like Mariannet.

But experience tells us that is wishful thinking. This country will never swing around, or at least not in the foreseeable future that would have been Mariannet's lifetime had she lived. Nothing in the horizon gives reason to hope change will occur.