Recent update

Subscribe to RSS feed

What We Were And What We’ve Become

August 21st, 2006 by epoyz

it’s like the heavens knew what day it was.

all day long there was no heavy downpour, no lashing outburst of any kind from mother nature. just steady, unceasing flow of soft, gentle drops of rain accompanied the persistent gloom that managed to creep into every inch of every room. at least that’s how it seemed for me.

one of my very first conscious memories as a child was when there was a good couple of days that strangers took turns in holding me, passing me around and watching over me as i constantly tried to reach my mom. it was a very troubling sight for a child to see: your mother, who at that point was your rock, the only person in the world who can still your heart and wipe your every tear, weeping inconsolably in front of all these strangers.

i understood later that she wept for her slain younger brother, his life snuffed out by a jealous rival’s blade while visiting his girlfriend’s house. he was barely in his twenties then.

the second time that i saw my mother weep like that was when i was seven years old, but this time it was very hard for me to understand why. she and almost everybody else was glued to their TV sets, mourning this man who was slain as he was coming off a plane.

i understood later that that man was ninoy aquino, and his death symbolized a country’s hope being snuffed out. the next few weeks would become a sort of coming of age for me, as i learned who ninoy was. not unlike a michael jordan highlight reel, i was exposed to countless tributes, tales of the man’s greatness and stories that told of what he meant to the country then. i watched wide-eyed video clips of this bespectacled man as he thundered in delivering line after line against marcos ( i didn’t know what martial law meant then..), lighting up the room with his good-natured ribbing of the present government, dazzling me with unparalleled wit and candor and intelligence. settling with my parents as the whole country was reminded of what we lost, i followed the coverage of his funeral which drew leagues of people.

for the next two years the philippine media would not let us forget. i grew up learning to understand how truly great ninoy was, how he was imprisoned and taken away from his family and how he endured everything, the torture, the hunger strikes, the solitary confinement, his exile to another country, his sacrifices for his conviction that the filipino is worth dying for. i had to know of ninoy aquino before i understood what jose rizal being shot at bagumbayan was all about. after all that everything sort of just fell into place for me.

as a young child i followed everything that led to february 25,1986. you could say i was brought up right, that ninoy aquino helped raise me as a child because my mom was always talking about him and the sacrifices he made. she was in EDSA when People Power prevailed. happy times.

i was in EDSA in 2001. i wanted to have what my mom had, i wanted a piece of history for myself, something that i can pass to my children someday. well, we all know how "People Power 2" turned out for our country. congratulations sa ating lahat.

oh-kay. so what do we have now, 23 years after the death of, to me, pound-for-pound the greatest of filipino heroes? well, pretty much the same shit as when he was still alive. although i believe the country is very much worse than when he was fighting for it, as this and countless other articles i’ve been reading the past few weeks would prove. this sort of shit is unthinkable and i still can’t believe we’re letting this happen.

we’re not short of stories that would stir us to stand up to this. what i can’t understand is why we’re still splayed on the ground helpless.

"somebody please do something.. anything..".

i have heard, read and seen that line countless times being used to convey a most desperate cry for help. i’ve read it in heroic fantasy novels, seen it in comic books and superhero movies. for me it is a final cry before the descent of silence, the acceptance that all hope is lost.

i always followed patricia evangelista’s column ever since i learned that she was the kid who delivered that great speech about being filipino, the one that won her and the country much pride and honor a few years back. i find her writing very much refreshing, as if i was reading of seeing things through the eyes of a 20-year old, when the world was full of promise and the universe was there to conquer and discover. she was my break from reading conrado de quiros, randy david and manuel l. quezon III.

alas.

her writing turned from this, this and this…aaand this..

..to this, this and this in a span of three weeks.

i still love her writing, but it saddens me to see her being forced to grow up too soon. me, i enjoyed being thrust into the real world until i was 27. i grew a social conscience when i turned 28, and like i said before, it was a very painful and very disturbing experience. she’s only 20, 21 years old and she’s forced to experience and recount this shit. but people like her give me hope.

it’s people like us who were there and saw what we won back in 1986 after decades of the same shit that’s going on today, electing to "move on" with our lives, letting all these atrocities become acceptable, who make me lose hope in the filipino.

somebody please do something..anything.

because now we’ve sunk to an all-time low. at least people tried to take to the streets last february 25. now all we can do is let the heavens cry for us. all i did today was wear my yellow shirt to work and mope and look for any sign of movement from the news.

nothing.

today we have truly become unworthy of ninoy aquino’s sacrifice. today the antitheses of what ninoy aquino stood for officially outnumbered the two million who flocked to his funeral. indeed, today we denied him of his legacy.

today, 23 years after his death, i finally wept for ninoy aquino.

Shot_dead_on_arrivaljpg

Posted in Uncategorized | | |


2 Responses to ' What We Were And What We’ve Become '

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to ' What We Were And What We’ve Become '.

  1.   Norren said,

    on August 22nd, 2006 at 12:39 am

    ‘tol -

    i had no idea. i admire your thoughts and writing. did we really grow up under the same roof?

    love,
    ate

  2.   Wilfredo Jr said,

    on August 22nd, 2006 at 5:38 pm

    Like MLQ3, I was moved by what you wrote. Keep writing, and hoping for the best. :)
    I would have loved to trackback here, but Blogger can’t (or maybe I don’t know how), so here’s a link: http://nagueno.blogspot.com/2006/08/dream-cities-and-currency-of-hope.html

Leave a reply


Categories

Archives

Meta