[TD 10 Year Anniversary Commission Piece Series] Why Cruelty Is Automatic to Us by Alyssa Danielle Navarro

For Talang Dalisay’s 10th year this 2026, we are beyond thrilled to be working with commissioned writers to re-continue and contribute to our online blog space, soon turned into a physical zine. With our editor in chief Maria Nilad, and founder Macy Castañeda Lee, we feature talented Filipino writers and storytellers year round through prose, poetry, and more.

Why Cruelty is Automatic to Us

by Alyssa Danielle Navarro | edited by Maria Nilad | produced by Macy Castañeda Lee

Survival over compassion: Why Filipinos act indifferent to tears

For more than a year, I was locked up in the cramped spaces of a rehabilitation center with 130 more patients. Indifferent to my tears, the counselors told me to stay on top of my emotions whenever I had a breakdown, as though feelings were a thing to be conquered.

I was released from rehab in October 2024. Though my life has been transformed quite a few times since, there is one truth I firmly believe in: we must practice compassion towards ourselves and others.

When faced with someone who is crying, how do you react? If someone sends you a message telling you they are not okay, do you turn them away and call them a burden?

I have often found myself at the mercy of people I love. When I tell them I’m not okay, they do not know how to respond. Don’t cry. Calm down. You have to get yourself together or I’m going through something too. I can’t handle this.

I don’t think they mean to be apathetic. None of us were taught how to care for another person without losing ourselves in the process, hence the prevalence of compassion fatigue. Accessing kindness within ourselves or putting ourselves in the shoes of another person can get tiresome when we have our own struggles.

The Filipino history of colonial violence reveals that our capacity to empathize with other people is linked to economic survival. In relentlessly pursuing upward mobility, we Filipinos tend to harden our hearts, grit our teeth, and aim first for survival before being kind or empathetic because if we become too soft, the world will eat us alive.

Instead of providing comforting words, our response to vulnerability is attempting to fix the issue. Making the problem go away is our way of easing these burdens.

However, research published in Frontiers in Psychology has shown that kindness is essential in boosting resilience. Engaging in acts of kindness, responding with compassion to other people’s feelings, and developing trusting relationships all contribute to the improvement of one’s quality of life.

When we act with indifference, we are only trying to survive, but this learned behavior only widens the social, political, and psychological rifts created by our colonial history. When we view others as part of our community or collective, it reduces alienation, pessimism, and even self-hatred.

What is lost then when we are indifferent to each other’s pain is the chance for connection. What we all need is a kind voice that will assure us that what we are going through will pass, that we shall endure, that it’s okay to feel things deeply, and that it’s okay to cry. What everyone needs is the reassurance that to feel pain doesn’t make us any less worthy of love—or any less deserving to exist.

When we practice compassion towards ourselves and others, we take small and significant steps in making the world a safer place. We are creating a world where we can manage our emotions in ways that nourish both the individual and the collective.

Since completing rehab, the enormity of loss and hardship still follows me. However, as I figure out how to navigate life amid economic survival, there is a kind voice in my head that rescues me from despair.

I see every weeping version of myself – from the little girl in her Girl Scout uniform to the red-haired activist with a keffiyeh – and the kind voice in my head welcomes them.

My emotions need not be conquered. I only need to let them be.

REFERENCE

Johnson MT, Fratantoni JM, Tate K, Moran AS. Parenting With a Kind Mind: Exploring Kindness as a Potentiator for Enhanced Brain Health. Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 24;13:805748. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.805748. PMID: 35401369; PMCID: PMC8989141.