this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on June 14, 2001.
I stormed out of the room, sweat forming beads on my forehead. I tried not to throw another tantrum. To some people, it must have looked funny that I was all worked up just because of a drawing. But for a 5-year-old, which I was then, it was very frustrating. So, after my very first unsuccessful attempt at painting, I resigned myself to the fact that I simply wasn’t born an artist.
For the next nine years, I just ignored whatever it was in me that told me otherwise. But when I finally tried again, it felt like I had opened a rusty faucet that suddenly gushed water.
I hurriedly left, cold sweat forming beads up on my forehead. I tried to avoid contact with any of my friends or acquaintances. I did not need their pity. I hurried to escape the humid, ill-lit surroundings of the campus and seek refuge in a McDonald’s outlet nearby.
I remembered them vividly, those dark days of my life. Those were the times when I had completely resigned myself to failure and created a fantasy world in my head that was college. In college, I thought everything would be fine, or at least better than the way things were. So I forced myself to attend classes for the sole purpose of reaching college.
It wasn’t long before my parents took notice of my disinterest in my studies and my undesirable attitude toward school.
I laid it all down on the table. I was burnt out. I was tired of dealing with all the emotional and physical stress. I had gotten tired of working for something I felt I could never attain. The logical solution to my dilemma seemed clear: instead of dealing with the issues and the pressures around me, I just ignored them. Besides, I told them, I would graduate anyway.
With the wisdom of the years behind them, my parents told me that it was more than an academic matter. It was a matter of how I dealt with problems in general.
Of course, they were right. I realized that the way by which I tried to shut off my problems was not healthy at all. I realized that even in college, I would still encounter problems that I would have to overcome. And if I were to follow this faulty philosophy, I would be going nowhere.
This past summer, while I enjoyed the grace period, I thought very deeply. I arrived at the conclusion that if I were to make good in college, I should grow sharper horns to fight the enemy instead of thicker eyelids to deny its presence.
Horrible mantra
A hopeful Filipino enters the consul’s office and prepares to talk in his carabao English. With cold sweat forming beads on his forehead, he avoids the stare of the American. The cool, air-conditioned room seems almost like an outpost of paradise in the middle of the squalor and heat of Manila.
We can taste it in our water. We can smell it in the air. We can hear it in the news. We can see it in the streets. These are dark days for our country. These are times when most of us have resigned ourselves to the seemingly endless deterioration of our motherland and have created a fantasy world called the United States of America.
“Pangit sa Pinas, maganda sa States.” This horrible mantra of our people resonates in our cultural deformities and aesthetic confusion. Even the educated and the sophisticated are not spared. Even those who have proven that the Filipino and the Philippines are worth dying for, those who have defied the likes of Ferdinand Marcos and detested the likes of Joseph Estrada, and those who have made Edsa succumb to this disease. Even the man who told me to deal with my problems instead of escaping them, repeat these lines like a broken record:
“Kaya kayo, mag-States na lang. Wala nang pag-asa ang Pilipinas. Buti pa sa States.”
“Bakit sa States ang ayos ng trapik? Dito…ewan ko ba!”
“Tingnan mo ‘yan, saan ka ba nakakita ng ganyan? Onli in da Pilipins.”
“Kaya mag-migrate na lang kayo.”
At my age when all I seek is fun, I have noticed this unsettling attitude. I would not even attempt to sit down with my dad or with any other person who shares his sentiments to discuss this. I know that the answer is all around us: the selfish politicians, the crazy traffic and almost everything else that’s sira in this country.
Call to arms
I do not claim wisdom beyond my years, but I would like to emphasize the obvious. While my own personal problems are dwarfed many times over by the gigantic problems facing our country, they are in essence the same and they differ only in terms of magnitude. Compared to me who is capable of dealing with my problems, a country of more than 70 million people has the Herculean task of dealing with so many problems.
The problems before the nation are no different from my first frustrating attempt at drawing. Just as it took me some time to finally learn how to draw, shade and color, it will take us-all of us-a very long time to grow as a nation and achieve the progress we have been constantly wishing for-in our government and in the economy and in our culture.
I can only pray that those who read this do not dismiss this call to arms as another clich‚ or another silly dream and continue to sit idly by, grumbling and complaining, while the country’s butt gets kicked; or worse, leave the country to rot while they breathe in the fresh scent of some Western country. The only thing more rotten than the Filipino who keeps whining that maggots are feasting on his native land and yet does nothing about it is the Filipino who denies his identity and ignores his obligations to his nation.
I can only hope that the Filipino grows better hands and feet to do the job instead of a better tongue to berate himself and his countrymen with.
Even amid a social tumult like the so-called Edsa III, we must not lose hope in the Filipino, for he has withstood greater challenges and can withstand a thousand more. The point is, it can be done and we can do it.
No matter how many thousands of dollars you earn and no matter how good life gets, nothing will silence the wailing of the motherland which you refuse to repay. But I, for one, will not resist its call.
