The world is f*cked, but I still love it and my soft heart hurts.

My feet were heavy as I began walking, heart soft and parting at the seams. A few meters away was the boy who, two years ago, at 10 years of age, knocked on our door, to ask if I need a hand with anything. He’d do it for P100, P50, whatever he can bring home to his family. I had him pull cogon grass and weeds in the mini-forest, even if I can do it – and often do – myself. He likes to work for his money, adamant not to take alms.

He was paper-thin and much shorter, though a year older, than my daughter. Three school levels lower too. Sometimes when my wallet is empty and there are no weeds left to pull, I’d fix him and his friends sandwiches or meals. Give them cold water – a treat after walking several kilometers at noon in search of menial jobs. When my fridge is empty, I give uncooked rice or canned sardines.

Today he’s tilling someone’s land for grazing cows. He rarely visits these days. Rarely goes to school either. It’s a systemic sin we all have a hand in.

I waved before wiping my tears, thinking of this fate of born-poor Filipinos. Then I thought of the valiant, young US soldier who died from self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy yesterday in protest of his government’s genocide of the Palestinians. The Gazans who are starved, assaulted, and murdered by the Israeli government simply for existing. The stray kitten that died at home this morning after weeks of battling an infection. The two other kittens I found abandoned the other day on the forest floor with deep, maggot-infested gashes. They lasted only a day. I buried them yesterday in the same spot where I found them.

I felt depleted in every possible way. My heart didn’t have the will to walk. It is too broken from this horrendous world and its destructive humans. But I also thought of a scabied pup in one of the streets and the three hungry kittens l saw living under a bridge here days ago. I brought bowls for them and place kibbles and clean water during walks. If I don’t do it, who will?

I found the kittens eating noodles, the water bowl full and replenished. Somehow, someone found them, too, since yesterday’s feeding.

I continued toward my favorite trail. The minute I saw the red gate and the tree-fringed path on the other side, my heart just peeled away. I sat on the trail, alone and vulnerable, bawling for a long time while sunlight filtered through leaves and a brown shrike looked on curiously at arm’s length.

“The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate,” wrote Maggie Smith. She is right. It is a horrifying, painful place to live in. But it also is – still is – a beautiful world. Always worthy. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much. Walking away from and back to it, I understood how much I loved it. That after resting, we must keep walking, for there are many other forgotten wounded souls walking among us. Alongside us.

Because this is what being human is about: getting your heart broken together and looking after each other. To rage and to resist oppressive systems and to revel at the magic still. Shoulder to shoulder. Because sometimes, when we do, it turns out it is not as unsalvageable as we think it is. For every terrible human, there is one who is terribly good. And maybe all we need is to witness one hand extending itself to another to see that we too, hold the power, to fill a bowl we haven’t filled before.

From my journal this morning. Written in that forested trail.