That was a gallant, stately gesture that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo accorded on the late Cory Aquino’s family immediately upon her arrival before dawn the other day from a long trip abroad.

The fact that she hurried back home from an official trip to be able to condole with the members of Cory’s family demonstrates a deep sense of respect for the former president and commiseration to her grieving family.

In the same token, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, representing the family, deserves public compliment for considerately welcoming the President and acknowledging her expression of condolences.

Such reciprocal modes of behavior are at once auspicious for the balance and harmony in the country, to say the least.

But it must be said it is sad that all these very human actions and responses should be occasioned by someone’s misfortune. Is misfortune such as death the only cure to people’s enmity and towards reconciliation?

Earlier, the picture of the Marcos children, Imee and Bongbong together with his wife, appeared in the front pages extending their condolences to Cory’s children and they were received with amiability and apparent pleasantness in return.

That all these are happening is an object of public admiration – or cause of wonder?

Rising above one’s prejudices and personal or familial antipathy is a virtue – a gift – not only to one party but to both the ones giving and receiving forgiveness and vindication.

As has been said, forgiveness is a route to personal freedom, “a way of rejecting self-imposed, self-reinforcing label of victims and escaping an ultimately soul-destroying maze of anger and resentment.”

In fact, it is being bruited about that practicing forgiveness may even lower one’s blood pressure, while relieving other ailments, such as physical and mental, that are traceable to the stress of chronic anger.

Now that a start has been made, the question is whether reconciliation may not be far ahead.

Like forgiveness, reconciliation is a matter of choice.

(zhern_218@yahoo.com)