The right to judge

We all saw and heard her story, that 19-year-old who was said to have overdosed on the party drug called ecstasy. Gone too soon, they said as she was still a student taking up Accountancy. She went out with her friends to a party the night before the Sinulog Grand Parade. She collapsed in the middle of the concert and was attended to but didn't survive. It's quite unclear if she took the drug on her own or was forced to do so by those around her. Whatever the reason is, the truth will surface.

Online comments seem to swarm social media pages, saying she was too much and all negative connotations of what she was doing that night. But Mahatma Gandhi wrote it beautifully that "imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men." What gives us the right to judge other people when we do not even know what they have been going through?

The going is tough and I feel for her family which is facing a lot of bashing. Why don't we just watch from the sidelines and let the authorities do their jobs? She was a victim of a very ill problem of society which is the proliferation of drugs. It's even harder to track down where this came from and why they were even using it in the first place. There's no use pointing fingers why she was at the venue or why the drugs were taken. We cannot blame the millennial generation for how wild they can be at times, when in fact the adults could have done something to prevent it. I'm a millennial myself, and I can be a little problematic when it comes to my emotions but I can manage well. We are all different persons at times but instead of the blame game, let us help each other.

How? If only parents were physically and mentally present for their children then there wouldn’t be any children dependent on social media for interaction. It is quite complex to raise a teenager in these days, but with constant updating and conversations then I'm sure they wouldn't look for human interaction elsewhere.

So let us not judge this 19-year-old. She may have partied some but she was also an innocent girl and was robbed of a bright future. I heard she had dreams of putting up her own restaurant. I have my own dreams too, and so do other children. Nobody has the right to take that away from us. Keep your thoughts to yourself if it doesn't help at all. Better to keep quiet than to blabber nonsense.

Tomorrow her remains will be laid to rest. The world will say goodbye to this girl. Will the Sinulog ever be the same again? Will the city government reconsider having parties during the week of the fiesta? Will teenagers learn their lesson? There is one more year to go before the next Sinulog, I hope it all goes well.