REFLECTIONS
Reflections
WE DARE NOT DREAM
Teresita Bacani-Oropilla, MD
T
hose born in the early 1900s who
are bravely holding the fort, still
remember the “good old days.”
They are in their eighties and nine-
ties now, have survived a lifetime
of peace and wars, and raised families in times
of depression and plenty. They have contrib-
uted to the world what they were capable of,
and witnessed an amazing explosion of knowledge - biological,
social and technical, which has saved lives and charted the course
of future generations.
Witness a mother in a mall: with the use of a cell phone, she
summons her roving children with a reminder. As with the Pied
Piper, in minutes the kids’ heads come bobbing up to follow her to
the car and home. A physician looks up the components of POEMS
syndrome, the better to research and treat his patient. A midwife
in the Philippines follows the progress of her patient in labor while
attending to other chores meantime. An anxious grandmother is
reassured as she sees her grandson on a medical mission, cavorting
with llamas in a marketplace in Lima, Peru. Check on your baby
in daycare? Check the monitor. Your plane delayed? Call the folks
at home. Want to be riled up all day by the vicious accusations
and conjectures of the media on politics, or the threats of nuclear
annihilation coming out of North Korea? Pick your channel and
raise your blood pressure. These are the days which the present
generation call “good.”
But is there a flip side to all this instant knowledge and gratifi-
cation?
From the little toddler engrossed in Minnie Mouse singing and
dancing on her iPad, to the teenagers surreptitiously texting at the
dinner table, to the people in waiting rooms overheard barking
at their underlings, to the phone-tapping man oblivious to the
manhole, these new technologies have diminished the need for
interaction with the human beings a foot away.
Will this make us take comfort mainly from the electronic Siri’s
and Alexa’s of the future? Won’t we need each other then? We can-
not do without joyful looks, gentle touches, sympathetic smiles,
or comforting words. We dare not even dream of such a day!
Dr. Oropilla is a retired psychiatrist.
AUGUST 2017
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