What is life? Is life just a matter of being born into this world, never mind how much suffering one has to go through after birth? Is life nothing more than being able to wake up each day and see the sun? Is life nothing more than being able to breathe, to feel the air?
What is not life? When a five-year-old girl has to beg for her food everyday on the dangerous streets of Manila, what she’s having is not life! That is cruelty. That is hell. When innocent children are being born only to serve as their parents’ cheap laborers, it is definitely not life that they’re having. When children as young as four years old are breaking stones everyday to feed themselves instead of playing with toys, what they’re having is definitely not life. When those beautiful little girls are still out on the dark streets of Manila at night just to peddle sampaguita garlands, making themselves extremely vulnerable to rapists and pedophiles, they do not have anything close to a life. When children are out of school and chasing garbage trucks to steal a few pieces of junk that can still be sold, they are deprived of life. When young boys are picking up guns to become terrorists and criminals just so they can feed their younger siblings, fulfilling responsibilities that they never chose to have, what they’re having is the exact opposite of life. When the brightest young men and women of this country are sacrificing their education, their careers and their happiness just take over their parents’ responsibility to feed and educate their siblings; they’re having the farthest thing from life.
In the Philippines, in this predominantly catholic country, countless souls are experiencing the exact opposite of life. And because we never seem to run out of Pro-Life advocates who vehemently oppose birth control, because there are people who preach that contraception is a sin and that bringing a child into this world will always please heaven, there will be millions more to experience the exact opposite of life. There shall be millions more to experience hell.
But you know what life is? Life is something had by well-off Pro-Life senators who work comfortably in the air-conditioned halls and offices of the Philippine Senate. Life is something had by the middle-class CFC (Couples for Christ) members who could afford to go to church in decent clothes each Sunday, the same people who take a stand against contraception. Life is something had by the bishops who go around the city in private cars and are able to eat three times a day without having to commit a sin, the same holy men who give homilies demonizing the proponents of birth control. Life is something had by the Pro-Life congressmen who win votes by blocking every bill that encourages birth control. Life was the one thing celebrated by the irresponsible parents when they conceived the children they could never take good care of.
Unbelievably, these people, the ones who had experienced and celebrated life, may even get something beyond life. Because of their deeds, they might earn tickets to heaven. The Pro-Life priests, churchgoers and politicians will be rewarded for their efforts to discourage contraception. They might even earn more rewards for encouraging parents to procreate. As for the parents, they’ll be rewarded for their aversion to contraceptives. They’ll be rewarded for each tiring day that they tried to take care of their children. They’ll be rewarded for their futile attempts to sufficiently feed all their children, even though from the start, they should have known that they never had the means to feed all of them. They’ll be rewarded for the countless times they selflessly prayed to God begging Him to let their children miraculously finish college, even though from the start, they should have had the foresight to anticipate their children’s educational needs, that they shouldn’t have conceived them in the first place if they cannot give them the education they deserve. They’ll be rewarded for all the emotional suffering they endured as they watched their children pitifully chase garbage trucks and steal every exposed piece of metal on the streets of Manila, even though prior to the conception of their children, they should have had made sure they had the capability to offer their children a real life.
I shudder to think how things would be in and hell someday. In heaven shall be the Pro-Life priests, nuns, churchgoers and politicians, relishing the cool, soothing air of the paradise. And in that same place, the parents, freed of their earthly burdens, will feel as light as air, their light allowing them to fly beautifully like angels. While down there in hell, burning in the deep, seething ocean of fire are the poor children who had been born to a cruel, apathetic world because those happy Pro-Life advocates encouraged their irresponsible parents to procreate. In hell shall be the children who had to become pickpockets just to feed themselves. In there shall be the little boys who had to work as lookouts for hold-uppers and hired killers because there was nothing else they could do to earn a living and feed their younger siblings. In hell shall be the young boys who became terrorists and bandits just to take over their parents’ duty of being the breadwinners. In hell shall be the poor kids who got imprisoned at an early age and whose minds were poisoned by the violent culture of the older prisoners.
Perhaps, out of rage, the children of hell shall question the wisdom of God. “God, why are those privileged angels up there while we are down here suffering?” they’ll say. “Why do you reward them when in their lives, all they cared about was saving their own souls? Why are they so happy now when they never suffered on earth as much as we did? Why do you reward them for bringing more poor children like us into the world? Does it make you happy to see all those angels’ poor children marching to hell? Why do you make them so happy now when in life, all they cared about was the love they could get from their own children, when they never even thought if we, their children, would ever find enough time in our grueling lives to love and feel loved?”
Now, the pro-life advocates out there might say that the children are marching to hell not because parents are irresponsibly conceiving them but because there is so much evil in this world. Because there is poverty in this country. Those are the sickest arguments one could ever hear.
Let’s say a preacher tells his young followers to dive into a river teeming with crocodiles. If the followers do as the preacher says, some of them may elude the crocodiles. But what fool would expect all of them to survive? If you are one of those followers who sees how your friends are being ripped apart by those ravenous reptiles, whom will you be more furious at? The crocodiles that devoured your friends? Or the preacher who told all of you to dive into that river? And if you can see how your friends are being brutally killed by the reptiles, will you not do anything to stop the preacher from telling more followers to swim in that river of death?
Yes, it is possible for even the most impoverished, underprivileged children to remain good. And there is nothing wrong in hoping that they would all resist the earthly temptations that come their way. But to expect that every child who grows up without getting all the financial and emotional support he needs will become a saint, that every such child would never be tempted to kill and steal for his food, that each one will never dream of being rich through illegal means, that each one would be able to contain all the seething angst inside of him, that is like telling innocent children to dive into a crocodile-infested river and praying that all of them would survive! Like it or not, as long as there are children who can not have a real life, as long as there are children who have to work to feed themselves, as long as there are children who have a reason to question the kindness of God and the fairness of society, as long as there are bright children who can not go to school, as long as there are children who can’t be taken care of by their parents, there will be sinners among these children. There will be more souls for the devil to reap.
Can the souls of those children still be saved? Of course. Why not? If you tell some children to swim in a crocodile-infested river, you can still try to rescue them after they obey you, right? But how many can you save?
Some people might say that the real problem of the country is not overpopulation but the unequal distribution of resources, and so birth control is not really a solution to the ills of this nation. But this argument is wrong in two ways. First, while I agree that the unequal distribution of the country’s resources is a problem, that problem should not be passed on irresponsibly to helpless children. Until the resources of the country are properly distributed among the people, no one has the right to tell every Filipino parent not to practice birth control. Second, the ultimate goal of birth control is not population control but the preservation of the most important human right—the right to have a real life. Whether the population of the world is 6 billion or 600,000, no parent has the right to conceive a child if he can’t offer the latter a real life. No parent should be so selfish as to feel a child’s love at the cost of letting the child suffer in this world.
“Anak ko, mahal ko. Condom, ayoko,” says the writing on the wall of the Ascension of Our Lord parish in Lagro, Quezon City. In English, that means, “I love my child. I don’t want condoms.” How could there be so much crap in the church of God? And how could so many Catholics be buying that crap?
Seeing that writing on the wall reminded me of Niccolo Machiavelli, author of the controversial book The Prince, in which he wrote, “The end justifies the means.” For Machiavelli, even if a prince brutally executes an innocent man in public, if that unjust execution instills fear in the heart of his constituents and maintains order in his realm, the prince is still essentially doing the right because he is achieving his desired end, even if an innocent man is killed in the process."
When a catholic saves his soul by refusing to use contraceptives and pleases God through the act of procreation, never mind if another child will grow up struggling to feed himself and may end up selling his soul to the devil out of poverty, that Catholic is no more just nor less immoral than Macchiavelli. Because he is attaining an end (salvation) through a means that sacrifices the welfare of an innocent child. A church that teaches Catholics to act that way is a church that encourages its flock to attain an end through a means that brings suffering to helpless children. A church that tells its flock to save their souls by avoiding contraception is a Machiavellian church.
A few centuries ago, the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo for simply telling the truth – that the earth is not the center of the universe. That fiasco was one of the lowest points in the history of the church. And it never should have happened if there were enough enlightened Catholics who stood up and challenged the wisdom of the church. Before that, the Church also launched crusades to conquer the holy land, all of which led to the deaths of countless innocent people. If only there were Catholics brave enough to oppose their bloodthirsty church leaders, all those innocent lives could have been spared. I am a Catholic. And I will not allow posterity to liken me to the cowards who never lifted a finger when Galileo was imprisoned and when the crusades were launched. If I know that the church is wrong about contraception, why should I hesitate to oppose my own church's view?
Remember, the lowest points in the history of the Catholic Church were reached when all the good, enlightened Catholics remained silent.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Every Warrior Wants To Go Home (The Underside of Chauvinism Part II)
Even as a child, I have already felt that fire of manhood, that longing to be in the battlefield, to slay the enemy no matter how many wounds I’d have to endure. And being in the battlefield didn’t always mean that I had to grasp a sword. The “battlefield” was any arena where I could excel. When I found out that I could write, I began spending every day of my life trying to improve my writing skills. So that I could excel. So that I could win. And more importantly, so that I could defeat someone. The same thing happened when I realized that somehow I can excel in the physical sciences. Like every other man, I have dreamed of being better than the rest. And like the many little boys who never would have bought a book by an unknown author named Joann Kathleen Rowling but might have thought otherwise if she used the androgynous pseudonym J. K. Rowling, I grew up nurturing an irrational desire to be superior to women.
After 26 years of my life, I finally found out why I’ve always wanted to win my own little wars and why I waged them in the first place. All this time, I’ve been marching repeatedly to the battlefields of life because I hungered for the beautiful feeling of coming home. And I wanted someone to be there when I come home wounded. It was never my instinct, as it has never been an instinct of any man, to dream of being superior to women. But I did want to be superior to women anyway. Because there is nothing more natural than a man’s instinctive desire to take care of a woman. I wanted to be superior because I was afraid that no woman would ever let me take care of her if I were inferior to them.
Ours is an era of monumental social changes. And monumental shortcomings of a society rushing to reform itself. In this era, it is wrong to believe that men should be superior to women. Gender Equality is a virtue that must be upheld by any respectable person. Yet in this grossly romantic world, it is still perfectly okay for a woman to say, “I want to find a lover who’s much stronger and more successful than I am, someone who can be proud to say someday that he only had all those achievements because he was inspired by me.” A woman who says that is a romantic, deemed by society as wise and sophisticated. But if a man says the same thing in public, he is a shameless gold-digger, period!
When a poor boy who grows up to become a millionaire rescues his beloved woman from the abominable pit of poverty, he is called a romantic. But when a poor boy escapes poverty after marrying a wealthy, beautiful woman, no matter how sincere his intentions are, no matter how pure his love is, he will never be called a romantic. He will only earn that description when he moves heaven and earth to match her success.
Everywhere, you hear men being taught to give way to the more competent women. And in those same places, men are being taught that women will only fall for the man who can outdo them. It is right for a man to accept defeat to a woman. But it is also still right for a man to accept that defeat with a deep bitterness. The princess should be free to go as far as she wants and as far as her talents can take her. But if a man wants to be her prince, he still has to be one step ahead of her.
I understand why the early warriors had been so fearless. When your happiness as a man—your hope of being loved by a woman—rests on your capability to prove your virility through war, why should you hesitate to pick up your weapons and go to war? If you’re a man today and your happiness greatly depends on how you can turn yourself into an adorable prince—someone who has the right to rescue a princess—why would you not do anything to become a prince? And if being a prince meant that you have to be superior to the romantic princess, why would you not do anything to be superior to women? Love drives heroes to fight their noble wars. It is the one thing that drrives poor boys to become great men. And it is the hunger for that love that forces the most kind-hearted men to become chauvinist pigs.
In the offices and institutions, the battle for gender equality is being won. More and more women are gaining access to career opportunities that had long been unjustly beyond their reach. But in the homes, on the streets, in the neighborhoods, the pall of defeat looms. Marriages are in turmoil because men can’t stand the pressure of being less successful than their wives. Somehow, they think that their failure to match their wives’ success is tantamount to impotence. The women, on the other hand, feel disappointed by their husbands’ failure to become the admirable princes of their dreams. And even if both the insecure husband and the powerful wife are happy in their home, when they walk on the street, they will still be mocked. He for being a gold-digger and she for being naïve.
Gender Equality is not just about the women having the right to become warriors. It’s also about the men having the right to stay home and take care of the children when the woman goes to war. It is about the man’s embrace being as sweet as that of any woman when the fearless female warrior comes home bleeding. It is not just about the women proving that they are stronger. It is also about the men humbly accepting that they are weaker and the rest of society not ridiculing them for that. It’s not just about letting the women reach the top. It is also about the men at the bottom being free to love the women at the top. It’s not just a matter of letting the wives become superior to their husbands. It is a matter of assuring each husband that no matter how inferior he is to his wife, he could still take care of her, she could still rest her head on his shoulder, he could still caress her gently as if she was the most fragile thing in this world. Gender Equality is not just about success. It’s about acceptance. It is not just a matter of letting the men and the women compete fairly. More than anything, it is a matter of letting the men and the women love freely.
I have always been fascinated by the great men who had accomplished amazing achievements because they were inspired by the women they loved. John Keats being inspired by Fanny Brawne, Petrarch by Laura, Jose Rizal by Leonor Rivera, Percy Byshe Shelly by his wife Mary and Pierre Curie by Marie (The last two men, incidentally, were outdone by their wives.). And I wonder, how many women had been inspired by men to accomplish great things but were never able to do as they had dreamed because they lived in chauvinistic times? How much better could this world have become if only those ambitious women were free to spread their wings? How much more meaningful would the lives of those men have been if they knew they were the inspiration of those great women? Maybe someday, men, like women, will feel pride in just being the inspiration of their successful spouses. For the good of humanity, that day will have to come soon.
Today, the warriors are still marching to the battlefields of life. Some of them are men, some women. Some will be triumphant. Some will go home wounded. But whatever happens in the battlefield, they’ll all want to do what matters most afterwards. Be they men or women, triumphant or wounded, they will all want to come home.
May all the world’s warriors go home in peace.
After 26 years of my life, I finally found out why I’ve always wanted to win my own little wars and why I waged them in the first place. All this time, I’ve been marching repeatedly to the battlefields of life because I hungered for the beautiful feeling of coming home. And I wanted someone to be there when I come home wounded. It was never my instinct, as it has never been an instinct of any man, to dream of being superior to women. But I did want to be superior to women anyway. Because there is nothing more natural than a man’s instinctive desire to take care of a woman. I wanted to be superior because I was afraid that no woman would ever let me take care of her if I were inferior to them.
Ours is an era of monumental social changes. And monumental shortcomings of a society rushing to reform itself. In this era, it is wrong to believe that men should be superior to women. Gender Equality is a virtue that must be upheld by any respectable person. Yet in this grossly romantic world, it is still perfectly okay for a woman to say, “I want to find a lover who’s much stronger and more successful than I am, someone who can be proud to say someday that he only had all those achievements because he was inspired by me.” A woman who says that is a romantic, deemed by society as wise and sophisticated. But if a man says the same thing in public, he is a shameless gold-digger, period!
When a poor boy who grows up to become a millionaire rescues his beloved woman from the abominable pit of poverty, he is called a romantic. But when a poor boy escapes poverty after marrying a wealthy, beautiful woman, no matter how sincere his intentions are, no matter how pure his love is, he will never be called a romantic. He will only earn that description when he moves heaven and earth to match her success.
Everywhere, you hear men being taught to give way to the more competent women. And in those same places, men are being taught that women will only fall for the man who can outdo them. It is right for a man to accept defeat to a woman. But it is also still right for a man to accept that defeat with a deep bitterness. The princess should be free to go as far as she wants and as far as her talents can take her. But if a man wants to be her prince, he still has to be one step ahead of her.
I understand why the early warriors had been so fearless. When your happiness as a man—your hope of being loved by a woman—rests on your capability to prove your virility through war, why should you hesitate to pick up your weapons and go to war? If you’re a man today and your happiness greatly depends on how you can turn yourself into an adorable prince—someone who has the right to rescue a princess—why would you not do anything to become a prince? And if being a prince meant that you have to be superior to the romantic princess, why would you not do anything to be superior to women? Love drives heroes to fight their noble wars. It is the one thing that drrives poor boys to become great men. And it is the hunger for that love that forces the most kind-hearted men to become chauvinist pigs.
In the offices and institutions, the battle for gender equality is being won. More and more women are gaining access to career opportunities that had long been unjustly beyond their reach. But in the homes, on the streets, in the neighborhoods, the pall of defeat looms. Marriages are in turmoil because men can’t stand the pressure of being less successful than their wives. Somehow, they think that their failure to match their wives’ success is tantamount to impotence. The women, on the other hand, feel disappointed by their husbands’ failure to become the admirable princes of their dreams. And even if both the insecure husband and the powerful wife are happy in their home, when they walk on the street, they will still be mocked. He for being a gold-digger and she for being naïve.
Gender Equality is not just about the women having the right to become warriors. It’s also about the men having the right to stay home and take care of the children when the woman goes to war. It is about the man’s embrace being as sweet as that of any woman when the fearless female warrior comes home bleeding. It is not just about the women proving that they are stronger. It is also about the men humbly accepting that they are weaker and the rest of society not ridiculing them for that. It’s not just about letting the women reach the top. It is also about the men at the bottom being free to love the women at the top. It’s not just a matter of letting the wives become superior to their husbands. It is a matter of assuring each husband that no matter how inferior he is to his wife, he could still take care of her, she could still rest her head on his shoulder, he could still caress her gently as if she was the most fragile thing in this world. Gender Equality is not just about success. It’s about acceptance. It is not just a matter of letting the men and the women compete fairly. More than anything, it is a matter of letting the men and the women love freely.
I have always been fascinated by the great men who had accomplished amazing achievements because they were inspired by the women they loved. John Keats being inspired by Fanny Brawne, Petrarch by Laura, Jose Rizal by Leonor Rivera, Percy Byshe Shelly by his wife Mary and Pierre Curie by Marie (The last two men, incidentally, were outdone by their wives.). And I wonder, how many women had been inspired by men to accomplish great things but were never able to do as they had dreamed because they lived in chauvinistic times? How much better could this world have become if only those ambitious women were free to spread their wings? How much more meaningful would the lives of those men have been if they knew they were the inspiration of those great women? Maybe someday, men, like women, will feel pride in just being the inspiration of their successful spouses. For the good of humanity, that day will have to come soon.
Today, the warriors are still marching to the battlefields of life. Some of them are men, some women. Some will be triumphant. Some will go home wounded. But whatever happens in the battlefield, they’ll all want to do what matters most afterwards. Be they men or women, triumphant or wounded, they will all want to come home.
May all the world’s warriors go home in peace.
Dreaming Between Calls
“You know, no one has really talked to me in months,” the old man said over the phone as the call was about to end, the words spoken with a hoarseness indicative of the thickness of the lump in his throat. What he really meant was, “No one has really listened to me in months.”
It was just a regular working day for a call enter agent like me. And this, a call from a fifty-something American man who begged to be allowed to skip the payment for his credit card for that month, was supposed to be just one of the 70-plus calls I would routinely handle and, owing to the fact that I didn’t have a limitless memory, would have to be casually swept out of my mind and into the realm of oblivion by the end of my shift. But the memory of that call simply refused to go away. Even until today, more than two years after I received it and nearly a year after I left the call center industry.
As in any outsourced call center that services credit card companies, the call began with routine verification. I asked for the name, credit card number and some personal info. Getting his date of birth made me aware of his age. And through the accurate personal info he gave me, I was able to access his account profile, allowing me to see his profession as well as the spending limit on his card. I could no longer remember his profession. But I do remember being impressed. It was something like a doctor or an accountant. The spending limit was high, further convincing me that the man had an enviable financial status. But when he began explaining the reason for his call, all impressions of success and stability faded.
He said he used to have a good-paying job and didn’t have to rely on anyone for his needs, much less, ask for undeserved favors. But things changed drastically a few months ago. He was crippled in a car accident that nearly had him killed. And since then, he was never able to work, thus depriving him of a source of income. Given his situation, he begged for permission to miss that month’s payment for his credit card.
He couldn’t work, I thought. That’s why he couldn’t pay. But couldn’t he have received insurance as a result of the accident? It was a question that I came up with as a result of curiosity. But sensitivity kept me from asking it aloud. What about his children? A middle-aged man at the pinnacle of success must have raised children who grew up to become well-off professionals.
“I don’t have any children,” he said even before I could ask. I didn’t bother asking about a wife, lest she turned out to have been killed in the same accident.
I did what I could do for him, something which, as a matter of professional ethics, I can’t disclose in this article. And right then and there, the call should have ended. I should have said “Thank you for calling” and “Good bye”. But the man kept talking, ranting about things that didn’t have anything to do with credit cards. He kept pointing out how pitiful his predicament was. He said he didn’t know how he could survive without a source of income. God, he didn’t even know how he could buy his medication. I wanted to say, “All right, you’ve made your point. I already did something for you. Why do you have to keep talking like that?” But I simply didn’t have the heart to say all that. It only took me 2 minutes to address the man’s concern but the actual call lasted for 40 minutes. Professionally, that was a catastrophic failure on my part. The required average handling time of each agent was only five minutes. And I was over that figure by 700 %. It was a moment that warranted a rare selfless form of unprofessionalism. And that’s exactly what I gave him. Even though I knew that would get me into trouble with my boss as soon as the agents’ performance numbers are released by the end of the day. The man didn’t just call bout his credit card. He badly needed someone who could listen.
Finally, when his emotions subsided, when the psychological volcano in him had completed its eruption, he found the courage to say “Thank you”, words that somehow frightened him because they would inevitably be followed by “Good bye”.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I wanted to say a few more soothing words that I should have said much earlier. But the man began to weep like a child. And then he hung up.
Ironically, it was at that moment, right after I heard him sob, that I had this somewhat insensitive thought. He was crippled but still had the capability to dial our number and speak over the phone. If he could do all of that, he‘d get a job sooner or later. All hope’s not yet lost for him. He would just have to rid himself of the emotional baggage that paralyzed him far more than his actual paralysis did.
Thinking of the last caller made me turn towards the agent seated to my left, a 49-year-old guy whom the young people at the office endearingly called Daddy Rolin. He was the living proof that the man who just spoke to me over the phone could still get his life back on track. Years before entering the call center industry, Daddy Rolin was a man one wouldn’t hesitate to call successful. As I recall, his academic background was in finance but he established a stable career in the construction sector in the Middle East. However, tragedy struck after he returned to work here in our country, the Philippines. A viral infection attacked the bones and muscles of his legs, practically crippling him. But he fought back. Through therapy, he was able to walk again, albeit only with the aid of a cane and at a very inconveniently slow pace. In a way, he had conquered his illness. But when you see him walking in the office, struggling to lift his leg to make each difficult step, his body trembling each time a lifted foot landed on the ground, his hand quavering as he did his best to grasp the cane’s handle and keep his balance, it is simply impossible to describe him as victorious.
A victor, he might not have been. But an inspiration, yes. Despite his handicap, he still found a job as a call center agent, answering calls of customers from the United States, a country halfway across the globe from ours. It’s no secret that each time he walked past the entrance door, all employees nearby would take notice of his arrival and watch the subsequent struggle he would courageously face as he walked from the door to his work station.
When mortals see a god walking among men, the mortals would be stunned. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by the sheer glow of a powerful god? And as soon as that god leaves, all mortals will go on with their lives, lives that will remain unchanged despite the descent of that god from Olympus. But when a mortal seemingly cursed by the gods dares to climb Olympus, the mortals will not only watch. They will be moved, inspired to go where only the powerful gods go. That’s exactly what Daddy Rolin did to us. By merely going through each difficult morning, he drove us to climb our own Olympuses.
If someone was free, that is, if someone was nearby and didn’t have a call to attend to, that person would willingly walk slowly alongside Daddy Rolin so that the latter could have one hand on the cane and another on the kind person’s shoulder. Given his situation, riding a wheelchair would have been much more convenient for Daddy Rolin. Except that it would put to waste all the miraculous triumphs of the therapy since his legs’ muscles would inevitably deteriorate if they’re never flexed.
Had there been no call centers in this country, the man wouldn’t have a good-paying job. At his age and at his condition, it was difficult, if not impossible, to find a new financially rewarding career. In this country, in this age, the call center industry had become the new Great Equalizer.
Great Equalizer. That’s how, in an interview for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Filipino tycoon John Gokongwei described the Second World War. After the war, both the rich and the poor had to struggle for financial survival. And in such a situation (this is my opinion and not Mr. Gokongwei’s), the usually sturdy wall that blocked the poor’s path towards wealth crumbled. The same is true of the call center boom in this country. It offered a sea of opportunities to countless Filipinos who never would have established real, respectable careers had the boom not come.
In our workplace, there were promising young men who had a lot of potential that could have just gone down the drain in the absence of the call centers, young men who studied at the University of the Philippines – Diliman, the country’s premiere university, but eventually had to drop out for financial reasons. Had they graduated, they would have become brilliant engineers. And when you come to think of it, had they decided to stay in their respective provinces (the University of the Philippines – Diliman campus was in Metro Manila) and study in smaller, less prestigious state colleges, they should have become engineers by now. But ours was a generation taught to aim only for the best and nothing less. That’s why, like the more than 60,000 senior high school students who take the entrance exam to the University of the Philippines each year, they dreamed of graduating from that estimable university and nothing less. They didn’t become engineers. But they were brilliant nonetheless. And for that reason, they deserved the success that the call center industry generously gave them.
I still clearly remember how, in college, my engineering professor mocked call center agents in front of the class. “Yes, they are well-paid,” he said. “But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?”. He paused to let the words’ impact be felt deeply in the silence. “If you’re happy to simply earn money, if that is the only purpose you can have in your life, then go ahead, work in a call center!” But now, I was compelled to ask. What are we supposed to do for our society? Dream?
While waiting for the next call, I looked at the other agents at the office. It wasn’t a very busy day. The volume of calls was low and as a result, many agents didn’t have calls to attend to. Some of them spent their unexpected free time gossiping with each other. The others seemed to be resting, staring at the computer, perhaps their way of keeping their eyes open (sleeping was a no-no) while their minds flew to dreamland. Yes, that must be what they were doing. Dreaming.
A call center in the Philippines is a place filled with dreams, most of them broken. Here, you would find not only the dropouts but also the engineers, the programmers, the accountants, the teachers, the nurses and even the former soldiers earning a living through a profession they never even dreamed of when they were young—when they dreamed of becoming something else, something more prestigious. In this office, there was a school teacher who had to shift to a new career because her salary as a teacher simply wasn’t enough to pay for her children’s tuition. In this call center, there were promising Computer Engineers who were stuck here because they could not find employment in the I.T. industry. This place was the refuge of engineers who could subsist on the lower salaries they could have had as entry level engineers but had to take calls for a living because they had to support the college education of their younger siblings. Finding sanctuary here are the young nursing graduates who could not find a hospital that would offer salaries high enough to cover the debts their parents had to incur for the sake of their education. Here, you would find former bank supervisors who had to leave the banking sector because they could not find a bank that could give them salaries high enough for them to afford the ever increasing apartment rates in Manila.
All these brilliant people, these underemployed professionals, they certainly must have once dreamt of doing the best for their society. Just imagine the young computer engineers when they were young and full of hope. They must have dreamed of building a billion-dollar I.T. industry for the country. But instead of manufacturing computers, they found themselves wearing headsets and pacifying irate callers. The teachers, they must have dreamed of nurturing the talents of the gifted. The accountants must have spent years imagining themselves in an accounting firm, putting into order the finances of the country’s biggest players. The programmers must have spent their youth nurturing their creativity. But now, the only time they could make use of their creativity is when they had to say a big “No” to a pleading customer’s request. These people had spent a good portion of their lives preparing to serve society in the ways they had dreamily envisioned. What were they supposed to do now that reality was bluntly telling them that their society had no room for the fulfillment of their dreams? What were they supposed to do? Dream, starve and die?
Sometimes, in between calls, they— we would still find ourselves thinking of the dreams we could no longer fulfill. But each time that phone rang, each time a call ended only to be followed by another one, we were being smacked thunderously in the face by the bitter reality. And the more calls we took—the more thunderous smacks we endured—, the more we were compelled to forget our dreams. So what if those dreams could no longer be fulfilled? The important thing was that while we were there, taking calls and earning the money we needed, the dreams of our siblings and children remained intact.
Now I know why I never forgot about that crippled American man’s call. It’s because his predicament was not too different from ours. He spent much of his life believing that life would be good if he only worked hard. That until old age, he would be a significant contributor to the society’s welfare and would never be a liability to his government. Then suddenly, something shocking happened and through some cruel twist of fate, he found himself unable to get a decent job, unable to serve society and himself in the gallant way he had always envisioned. We spent our lives preparing to be heroes for our country in our own gallant ways. We even worked hard for the fulfillment of our dreams. But when our turn to be part of the workforce came, something shocking happened: we realized that deserving the job would never be enough to get the job. And even if the job was already ours for the taking, the heavy hand of fate dragged us back to our responsibilities and away from our dreams. For some time, we inevitably wallowed in self-pity. But luckily for us, each of us swallowed his pride, rid himself of all emotional baggage early on and scrambled for the next best thing.
“But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?” the words of my professor echoed in my head.
And my caller said, “You know, no one has really talked to me in months.” Although what he really meant was, “No one has really listened to me in months.”
Listen to us.
It was just a regular working day for a call enter agent like me. And this, a call from a fifty-something American man who begged to be allowed to skip the payment for his credit card for that month, was supposed to be just one of the 70-plus calls I would routinely handle and, owing to the fact that I didn’t have a limitless memory, would have to be casually swept out of my mind and into the realm of oblivion by the end of my shift. But the memory of that call simply refused to go away. Even until today, more than two years after I received it and nearly a year after I left the call center industry.
As in any outsourced call center that services credit card companies, the call began with routine verification. I asked for the name, credit card number and some personal info. Getting his date of birth made me aware of his age. And through the accurate personal info he gave me, I was able to access his account profile, allowing me to see his profession as well as the spending limit on his card. I could no longer remember his profession. But I do remember being impressed. It was something like a doctor or an accountant. The spending limit was high, further convincing me that the man had an enviable financial status. But when he began explaining the reason for his call, all impressions of success and stability faded.
He said he used to have a good-paying job and didn’t have to rely on anyone for his needs, much less, ask for undeserved favors. But things changed drastically a few months ago. He was crippled in a car accident that nearly had him killed. And since then, he was never able to work, thus depriving him of a source of income. Given his situation, he begged for permission to miss that month’s payment for his credit card.
He couldn’t work, I thought. That’s why he couldn’t pay. But couldn’t he have received insurance as a result of the accident? It was a question that I came up with as a result of curiosity. But sensitivity kept me from asking it aloud. What about his children? A middle-aged man at the pinnacle of success must have raised children who grew up to become well-off professionals.
“I don’t have any children,” he said even before I could ask. I didn’t bother asking about a wife, lest she turned out to have been killed in the same accident.
I did what I could do for him, something which, as a matter of professional ethics, I can’t disclose in this article. And right then and there, the call should have ended. I should have said “Thank you for calling” and “Good bye”. But the man kept talking, ranting about things that didn’t have anything to do with credit cards. He kept pointing out how pitiful his predicament was. He said he didn’t know how he could survive without a source of income. God, he didn’t even know how he could buy his medication. I wanted to say, “All right, you’ve made your point. I already did something for you. Why do you have to keep talking like that?” But I simply didn’t have the heart to say all that. It only took me 2 minutes to address the man’s concern but the actual call lasted for 40 minutes. Professionally, that was a catastrophic failure on my part. The required average handling time of each agent was only five minutes. And I was over that figure by 700 %. It was a moment that warranted a rare selfless form of unprofessionalism. And that’s exactly what I gave him. Even though I knew that would get me into trouble with my boss as soon as the agents’ performance numbers are released by the end of the day. The man didn’t just call bout his credit card. He badly needed someone who could listen.
Finally, when his emotions subsided, when the psychological volcano in him had completed its eruption, he found the courage to say “Thank you”, words that somehow frightened him because they would inevitably be followed by “Good bye”.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I wanted to say a few more soothing words that I should have said much earlier. But the man began to weep like a child. And then he hung up.
Ironically, it was at that moment, right after I heard him sob, that I had this somewhat insensitive thought. He was crippled but still had the capability to dial our number and speak over the phone. If he could do all of that, he‘d get a job sooner or later. All hope’s not yet lost for him. He would just have to rid himself of the emotional baggage that paralyzed him far more than his actual paralysis did.
Thinking of the last caller made me turn towards the agent seated to my left, a 49-year-old guy whom the young people at the office endearingly called Daddy Rolin. He was the living proof that the man who just spoke to me over the phone could still get his life back on track. Years before entering the call center industry, Daddy Rolin was a man one wouldn’t hesitate to call successful. As I recall, his academic background was in finance but he established a stable career in the construction sector in the Middle East. However, tragedy struck after he returned to work here in our country, the Philippines. A viral infection attacked the bones and muscles of his legs, practically crippling him. But he fought back. Through therapy, he was able to walk again, albeit only with the aid of a cane and at a very inconveniently slow pace. In a way, he had conquered his illness. But when you see him walking in the office, struggling to lift his leg to make each difficult step, his body trembling each time a lifted foot landed on the ground, his hand quavering as he did his best to grasp the cane’s handle and keep his balance, it is simply impossible to describe him as victorious.
A victor, he might not have been. But an inspiration, yes. Despite his handicap, he still found a job as a call center agent, answering calls of customers from the United States, a country halfway across the globe from ours. It’s no secret that each time he walked past the entrance door, all employees nearby would take notice of his arrival and watch the subsequent struggle he would courageously face as he walked from the door to his work station.
When mortals see a god walking among men, the mortals would be stunned. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by the sheer glow of a powerful god? And as soon as that god leaves, all mortals will go on with their lives, lives that will remain unchanged despite the descent of that god from Olympus. But when a mortal seemingly cursed by the gods dares to climb Olympus, the mortals will not only watch. They will be moved, inspired to go where only the powerful gods go. That’s exactly what Daddy Rolin did to us. By merely going through each difficult morning, he drove us to climb our own Olympuses.
If someone was free, that is, if someone was nearby and didn’t have a call to attend to, that person would willingly walk slowly alongside Daddy Rolin so that the latter could have one hand on the cane and another on the kind person’s shoulder. Given his situation, riding a wheelchair would have been much more convenient for Daddy Rolin. Except that it would put to waste all the miraculous triumphs of the therapy since his legs’ muscles would inevitably deteriorate if they’re never flexed.
Had there been no call centers in this country, the man wouldn’t have a good-paying job. At his age and at his condition, it was difficult, if not impossible, to find a new financially rewarding career. In this country, in this age, the call center industry had become the new Great Equalizer.
Great Equalizer. That’s how, in an interview for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Filipino tycoon John Gokongwei described the Second World War. After the war, both the rich and the poor had to struggle for financial survival. And in such a situation (this is my opinion and not Mr. Gokongwei’s), the usually sturdy wall that blocked the poor’s path towards wealth crumbled. The same is true of the call center boom in this country. It offered a sea of opportunities to countless Filipinos who never would have established real, respectable careers had the boom not come.
In our workplace, there were promising young men who had a lot of potential that could have just gone down the drain in the absence of the call centers, young men who studied at the University of the Philippines – Diliman, the country’s premiere university, but eventually had to drop out for financial reasons. Had they graduated, they would have become brilliant engineers. And when you come to think of it, had they decided to stay in their respective provinces (the University of the Philippines – Diliman campus was in Metro Manila) and study in smaller, less prestigious state colleges, they should have become engineers by now. But ours was a generation taught to aim only for the best and nothing less. That’s why, like the more than 60,000 senior high school students who take the entrance exam to the University of the Philippines each year, they dreamed of graduating from that estimable university and nothing less. They didn’t become engineers. But they were brilliant nonetheless. And for that reason, they deserved the success that the call center industry generously gave them.
I still clearly remember how, in college, my engineering professor mocked call center agents in front of the class. “Yes, they are well-paid,” he said. “But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?”. He paused to let the words’ impact be felt deeply in the silence. “If you’re happy to simply earn money, if that is the only purpose you can have in your life, then go ahead, work in a call center!” But now, I was compelled to ask. What are we supposed to do for our society? Dream?
While waiting for the next call, I looked at the other agents at the office. It wasn’t a very busy day. The volume of calls was low and as a result, many agents didn’t have calls to attend to. Some of them spent their unexpected free time gossiping with each other. The others seemed to be resting, staring at the computer, perhaps their way of keeping their eyes open (sleeping was a no-no) while their minds flew to dreamland. Yes, that must be what they were doing. Dreaming.
A call center in the Philippines is a place filled with dreams, most of them broken. Here, you would find not only the dropouts but also the engineers, the programmers, the accountants, the teachers, the nurses and even the former soldiers earning a living through a profession they never even dreamed of when they were young—when they dreamed of becoming something else, something more prestigious. In this office, there was a school teacher who had to shift to a new career because her salary as a teacher simply wasn’t enough to pay for her children’s tuition. In this call center, there were promising Computer Engineers who were stuck here because they could not find employment in the I.T. industry. This place was the refuge of engineers who could subsist on the lower salaries they could have had as entry level engineers but had to take calls for a living because they had to support the college education of their younger siblings. Finding sanctuary here are the young nursing graduates who could not find a hospital that would offer salaries high enough to cover the debts their parents had to incur for the sake of their education. Here, you would find former bank supervisors who had to leave the banking sector because they could not find a bank that could give them salaries high enough for them to afford the ever increasing apartment rates in Manila.
All these brilliant people, these underemployed professionals, they certainly must have once dreamt of doing the best for their society. Just imagine the young computer engineers when they were young and full of hope. They must have dreamed of building a billion-dollar I.T. industry for the country. But instead of manufacturing computers, they found themselves wearing headsets and pacifying irate callers. The teachers, they must have dreamed of nurturing the talents of the gifted. The accountants must have spent years imagining themselves in an accounting firm, putting into order the finances of the country’s biggest players. The programmers must have spent their youth nurturing their creativity. But now, the only time they could make use of their creativity is when they had to say a big “No” to a pleading customer’s request. These people had spent a good portion of their lives preparing to serve society in the ways they had dreamily envisioned. What were they supposed to do now that reality was bluntly telling them that their society had no room for the fulfillment of their dreams? What were they supposed to do? Dream, starve and die?
Sometimes, in between calls, they— we would still find ourselves thinking of the dreams we could no longer fulfill. But each time that phone rang, each time a call ended only to be followed by another one, we were being smacked thunderously in the face by the bitter reality. And the more calls we took—the more thunderous smacks we endured—, the more we were compelled to forget our dreams. So what if those dreams could no longer be fulfilled? The important thing was that while we were there, taking calls and earning the money we needed, the dreams of our siblings and children remained intact.
Now I know why I never forgot about that crippled American man’s call. It’s because his predicament was not too different from ours. He spent much of his life believing that life would be good if he only worked hard. That until old age, he would be a significant contributor to the society’s welfare and would never be a liability to his government. Then suddenly, something shocking happened and through some cruel twist of fate, he found himself unable to get a decent job, unable to serve society and himself in the gallant way he had always envisioned. We spent our lives preparing to be heroes for our country in our own gallant ways. We even worked hard for the fulfillment of our dreams. But when our turn to be part of the workforce came, something shocking happened: we realized that deserving the job would never be enough to get the job. And even if the job was already ours for the taking, the heavy hand of fate dragged us back to our responsibilities and away from our dreams. For some time, we inevitably wallowed in self-pity. But luckily for us, each of us swallowed his pride, rid himself of all emotional baggage early on and scrambled for the next best thing.
“But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?” the words of my professor echoed in my head.
And my caller said, “You know, no one has really talked to me in months.” Although what he really meant was, “No one has really listened to me in months.”
Listen to us.
Dead Men Dreaming
In 1896, the Philippine Revolution began. Brave Filipino men offered their lives for the liberation of the country from Spain. As these brave men lay dying in the battlefield, as they bathed in their own blood, watching their comrades fall one by one, nostalgically staring at the sky that was then partially concealed by the thick gun smoke, their bodies rattling from the tremors caused by the cannonballs crashing into the bloodied ground, their lungs sucking in the last few breaths they could take, what could they have been thinking? What were they dreaming of? Could they have been dreaming of seeing the Philippine flag—which didn’t even exist yet then—being waved triumphantly from the window of a mansion in Cavite? Were they dreaming of the medals that would be posthumously given to them? Were they even dreaming of seeing more Spaniards die? Or were they hoping that after the war, their families would live in freedom?
Today, in a time of Filipino Diaspora, when millions of Filipinos are scattered all over the world, finding employment in various countries, there are again deafening calls for patriotism. The country, many nationalist intellectuals say, is in need of heroes. Heroes who won’t have to shoot the enemy or die brutally in battle. The country’s best and brightest are being asked to stay here so that this poor nation, and this nation alone, shall benefit from their talents. The doctors, engineers, nurses and teachers are being asked to be content with their meager salaries here and ignore the lucrative offers that await them abroad.
But how does one really become a hero? How does one become a patriot? Sometimes I wish heroism would always be as clear and as equivocal as the acts of shooting the invaders and dying in the battlefield. But no, things aren’t that simple. Yet countless intellectuals are shamelessly presenting their simplistic notions of patriotism. To them, a skilled Filipino worker can be a hero if he stays in this country and never entertains the idea of being employed abroad. Because if he works abroad, he is contributing to the economy of another nation and his own country fails to benefit from its investments (education, infrastructure, social services) in him.
Well, it’s easy to be simplistically patriotic if you don’t have to lose your soul in the process. But if you are a nurse working as a volunteer (with no pay) in a godforsaken hospital somewhere in the impoverished Philippine countryside and you are tasked to pull the plug on unconscious patients whose families could no longer afford to maintain the life support system required for the patients’ survival, would you not wish that you were just working abroad, earning big bucks so that someday you could return to your country and help your poor patients financially? Wouldn’t you wish that you were never there to do your task in front of the patients’ relatives, being remembered as the nurse who murdered their loved one even though you were just doing your job? If you are an ordinary soldier and you are being ordered by your corrupt superiors to torture a female college student suspected of being a communist sympathizer, wouldn’t you wish that you were just a carpenter abroad who didn’t have to harm the innocent? If you are a brilliant college graduate from an obscure state university and the only job you can get in your small town is as a member of the staff of a corrupt politician, wouldn’t you wish that you were just abroad, saving enough money so that someday your children could graduate from a reputable university and wouldn’t have to compromise their ideals just to earn a living?
What benefit will this country get if in our attempt to hoard the most talented people, we end up forcing them to sell their souls?
Now, let’s say you are a teacher in a public high school. You’ve seen countless bright students graduate and eventually lead successful lives. But your own children, the ones who might even be brighter than any student you’ve had before, could not even finish college because your meager income would never allow you to save enough for their tuitions. What would you do? You can try augmenting your income by selling snacks to your students and co-teachers. And for your effort, you would be rewarded with ridicule. How many times have we heard jokes about teachers being the vendors in Philippine schools? Countless times. And you will certainly hear a lot more of them. So will your children. That’s why out of pragmatism, you decide to work abroad for 3-5 years. And for that, the fanatically nationalistic intellectuals would brand you as unpatriotic. How much more insensitive can this country be to its heroes? You leave this country for a few years and then suddenly, all the many years you’ve spent heroically teaching young Filipinos for some loose change flies into oblivion. Isn’t heroism defined as the love for country? Those students that you will not be able to teach while you are abroad, you know they are certainly a part of this country. But so are your own children. Who has the right to say that the college education of your children is far less important than the high school education of the other young Filipinos? Wouldn’t be it better for you to ignore the misguided nationalists’ harsh remarks and just go ahead with your plan to work abroad so that someday, when you’ve saved enough for your children’s college education, you can return and teach in that public high school again without having to worry about your finances?
Say you are a young Filipino engineer. Your parents just spent all of their savings on your college education. It’s already been a year since you have earned your professional license and the most that your employer can give you is a 12,000-peso monthly salary, which would be enough for you to subsist but terribly insufficient to cover the expenses for the college education of your four younger siblings who also dream of becoming engineers. Wouldn’t you want to spend a few years working abroad for a higher pay so that your family would have four more engineers? Who would have the right to say that your siblings’ future is far less important than the welfare of the Filipino company that employs you? Who would have the right to say that your bright siblings’ contribution to the country’s industrial sector would be far less significant than that of the employer you’d abandon?
What benefit do we Filipinos get if, in our attempt to keep our most brilliant people here and hidden from the rest of the world, we end up depriving their children and younger siblings of the education they deserve? What’s the point in deepening the country’s current pool if it comes at the cost of badly depleting that of the future? And what will happen to those wasted bright people who deserve to but would never be engineers, scientists, teachers and doctors? They would lose their chance to build successful careers but certainly not their brilliance-- the same kind of brilliance that makes it possible for crime lords, terrorists and rebels to succeed.
You know there’s gotta be something wrong with a country if almost all of its talented young people are dreaming of working abroad. This country must have a disease that urgently needs to be cured. But stopping the exodus is not the cure. The exodus, in the first place, is not the disease. You stop the exodus and the disease will still be there, whatever it is.
If they want to leave, let them, the best thing we can do is to ask them to return someday, though it would be foolish to expect them to return if they’d be treated as unpatriotic traitors when they get home.
Now, some geniuses out there might point out that most of the overseas Filipino workers’ income just goes to over-consumption and practically none of it goes to real, significant investments. Well. If you gather the ten best professors of literature in this country, give them US$10,000,000 and ask them to set up a business using the money given them, could you guarantee that their business plan would be successful? Can you guarantee that none of the US$10,000,000 would go to waste? What about the country’s ten best physicists? Would they be more successful than the professors of literature? How about the ten best mathematicians? The ten best chemists? The ten best sociologists? How then do we expect each of the returning overseas Filipino workers –engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, carpenters, domestic helpers, etc.—to miraculously become financial geniuses and come up with sound business plans or investment schemes when they return here? They need financial guidance. Education. They must be made aware of what they can do with their money other than using it to pamper their relatives. A strong link must be made between the country’s brilliant but capital-hungry entrepreneurs and the relatively cash-rich overseas Filipino workers. And here lies the great opportunity- one that hasn’t been taken for a long time. This opportunity is being wasted, as proven by the over-consumption of the overseas Filipino workers’ families. But the worst thing anyone can do when an opportunity is being wasted is to destroy that opportunity so that no one can say that it’s being wasted! That would be the height of stupidity. That reeks of the same stupidity displayed by the idiots who suggest that the exodus must be stopped because much of the overseas Filipino workers’ money is just going to over-consumption anyway!
Heroism is not only a matter of killing the enemy. More than anything, it's about saving your own people. And the last thing we should think of in rescuing this nation of ours from poverty is killing the economies of other nations by hoarding our talented professionals. When we indiscriminately keep our brilliant workers from grabbing better career opportunities abroad so that they'd be forced to stay as underemployed and underpaid workers here, we become no different from ruthless dictators who forcefully turn all their surviving young constituents into suicide bombers! What point is there in hurting the enemy, if it comes at the cost of destroying your own people? In our search for enlightenment on true heroism, we must remember what the heroes of our revolution were thinking when they lay half-dead in the battlefield. Were they more concerned about destroying the enemy or making sure that their loved ones would live happily?
Today, in a time of Filipino Diaspora, when millions of Filipinos are scattered all over the world, finding employment in various countries, there are again deafening calls for patriotism. The country, many nationalist intellectuals say, is in need of heroes. Heroes who won’t have to shoot the enemy or die brutally in battle. The country’s best and brightest are being asked to stay here so that this poor nation, and this nation alone, shall benefit from their talents. The doctors, engineers, nurses and teachers are being asked to be content with their meager salaries here and ignore the lucrative offers that await them abroad.
But how does one really become a hero? How does one become a patriot? Sometimes I wish heroism would always be as clear and as equivocal as the acts of shooting the invaders and dying in the battlefield. But no, things aren’t that simple. Yet countless intellectuals are shamelessly presenting their simplistic notions of patriotism. To them, a skilled Filipino worker can be a hero if he stays in this country and never entertains the idea of being employed abroad. Because if he works abroad, he is contributing to the economy of another nation and his own country fails to benefit from its investments (education, infrastructure, social services) in him.
Well, it’s easy to be simplistically patriotic if you don’t have to lose your soul in the process. But if you are a nurse working as a volunteer (with no pay) in a godforsaken hospital somewhere in the impoverished Philippine countryside and you are tasked to pull the plug on unconscious patients whose families could no longer afford to maintain the life support system required for the patients’ survival, would you not wish that you were just working abroad, earning big bucks so that someday you could return to your country and help your poor patients financially? Wouldn’t you wish that you were never there to do your task in front of the patients’ relatives, being remembered as the nurse who murdered their loved one even though you were just doing your job? If you are an ordinary soldier and you are being ordered by your corrupt superiors to torture a female college student suspected of being a communist sympathizer, wouldn’t you wish that you were just a carpenter abroad who didn’t have to harm the innocent? If you are a brilliant college graduate from an obscure state university and the only job you can get in your small town is as a member of the staff of a corrupt politician, wouldn’t you wish that you were just abroad, saving enough money so that someday your children could graduate from a reputable university and wouldn’t have to compromise their ideals just to earn a living?
What benefit will this country get if in our attempt to hoard the most talented people, we end up forcing them to sell their souls?
Now, let’s say you are a teacher in a public high school. You’ve seen countless bright students graduate and eventually lead successful lives. But your own children, the ones who might even be brighter than any student you’ve had before, could not even finish college because your meager income would never allow you to save enough for their tuitions. What would you do? You can try augmenting your income by selling snacks to your students and co-teachers. And for your effort, you would be rewarded with ridicule. How many times have we heard jokes about teachers being the vendors in Philippine schools? Countless times. And you will certainly hear a lot more of them. So will your children. That’s why out of pragmatism, you decide to work abroad for 3-5 years. And for that, the fanatically nationalistic intellectuals would brand you as unpatriotic. How much more insensitive can this country be to its heroes? You leave this country for a few years and then suddenly, all the many years you’ve spent heroically teaching young Filipinos for some loose change flies into oblivion. Isn’t heroism defined as the love for country? Those students that you will not be able to teach while you are abroad, you know they are certainly a part of this country. But so are your own children. Who has the right to say that the college education of your children is far less important than the high school education of the other young Filipinos? Wouldn’t be it better for you to ignore the misguided nationalists’ harsh remarks and just go ahead with your plan to work abroad so that someday, when you’ve saved enough for your children’s college education, you can return and teach in that public high school again without having to worry about your finances?
Say you are a young Filipino engineer. Your parents just spent all of their savings on your college education. It’s already been a year since you have earned your professional license and the most that your employer can give you is a 12,000-peso monthly salary, which would be enough for you to subsist but terribly insufficient to cover the expenses for the college education of your four younger siblings who also dream of becoming engineers. Wouldn’t you want to spend a few years working abroad for a higher pay so that your family would have four more engineers? Who would have the right to say that your siblings’ future is far less important than the welfare of the Filipino company that employs you? Who would have the right to say that your bright siblings’ contribution to the country’s industrial sector would be far less significant than that of the employer you’d abandon?
What benefit do we Filipinos get if, in our attempt to keep our most brilliant people here and hidden from the rest of the world, we end up depriving their children and younger siblings of the education they deserve? What’s the point in deepening the country’s current pool if it comes at the cost of badly depleting that of the future? And what will happen to those wasted bright people who deserve to but would never be engineers, scientists, teachers and doctors? They would lose their chance to build successful careers but certainly not their brilliance-- the same kind of brilliance that makes it possible for crime lords, terrorists and rebels to succeed.
You know there’s gotta be something wrong with a country if almost all of its talented young people are dreaming of working abroad. This country must have a disease that urgently needs to be cured. But stopping the exodus is not the cure. The exodus, in the first place, is not the disease. You stop the exodus and the disease will still be there, whatever it is.
If they want to leave, let them, the best thing we can do is to ask them to return someday, though it would be foolish to expect them to return if they’d be treated as unpatriotic traitors when they get home.
Now, some geniuses out there might point out that most of the overseas Filipino workers’ income just goes to over-consumption and practically none of it goes to real, significant investments. Well. If you gather the ten best professors of literature in this country, give them US$10,000,000 and ask them to set up a business using the money given them, could you guarantee that their business plan would be successful? Can you guarantee that none of the US$10,000,000 would go to waste? What about the country’s ten best physicists? Would they be more successful than the professors of literature? How about the ten best mathematicians? The ten best chemists? The ten best sociologists? How then do we expect each of the returning overseas Filipino workers –engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, carpenters, domestic helpers, etc.—to miraculously become financial geniuses and come up with sound business plans or investment schemes when they return here? They need financial guidance. Education. They must be made aware of what they can do with their money other than using it to pamper their relatives. A strong link must be made between the country’s brilliant but capital-hungry entrepreneurs and the relatively cash-rich overseas Filipino workers. And here lies the great opportunity- one that hasn’t been taken for a long time. This opportunity is being wasted, as proven by the over-consumption of the overseas Filipino workers’ families. But the worst thing anyone can do when an opportunity is being wasted is to destroy that opportunity so that no one can say that it’s being wasted! That would be the height of stupidity. That reeks of the same stupidity displayed by the idiots who suggest that the exodus must be stopped because much of the overseas Filipino workers’ money is just going to over-consumption anyway!
Heroism is not only a matter of killing the enemy. More than anything, it's about saving your own people. And the last thing we should think of in rescuing this nation of ours from poverty is killing the economies of other nations by hoarding our talented professionals. When we indiscriminately keep our brilliant workers from grabbing better career opportunities abroad so that they'd be forced to stay as underemployed and underpaid workers here, we become no different from ruthless dictators who forcefully turn all their surviving young constituents into suicide bombers! What point is there in hurting the enemy, if it comes at the cost of destroying your own people? In our search for enlightenment on true heroism, we must remember what the heroes of our revolution were thinking when they lay half-dead in the battlefield. Were they more concerned about destroying the enemy or making sure that their loved ones would live happily?
Candlelight
Why is magic always spectacularly beautiful? Because most of the time, it is an illusion. And in the few times that it is real, it simply doesn’t last.
In life, the magic of love is something that’s never seen through the eyes. For it can only be imagined through the lovers’ passionate minds. Which makes me understand why the most romantic moments happen by candlelight. When you sit there at the table and all that you can see of your lover is a silhouette, your mind is free to imagine. It is free to create its own magic. When all that’s in front of you is a talking silhouette, there are no flaws for you to see. There is no dark past to worry about. No beauty to bedazzle or intimidate you. No great expectations to live up to. No people to watch you and judge you for the kind of love you choose to have. Nothing there to shatter all your most romantic fantasies. All that’s there for you to see is a shadow saying the most soothing words. Words you would barely hear. Words whose meanings you wouldn’t care to know because they are soothing for the simple reason that they are spewed out by your beloved one’s burning heart. The dim candlelight lets you see all you need to see. And the surrounding darkness conceals everything you need not know. The darkness, that mysterious darkness, endows you with the freedom to believe that only the most beautiful things remain hidden in the dark.
The worst tragedy of life is that the magical candlelight, the one that lets every mortal person blissfully experience magic, is never found standing safely on a table inside a closed room. It is always out in the open, burning but perpetually at the mercy of the capricious wind. You can choose when and where to light that candle. But you can never choose when and where the wind shall blow. And when you and your lover are seated by the candlelight, blissfully marveling at the ethereal beauty created by the romantically dim light, what can you do to make sure the wind wouldn’t blow the flame? What do you do to make sure that the sky wouldn’t shower the candle with rain? What do you do to make sure the magic lasts? Nothing. You can never beg the wind to grant you mercy. You can never ask the clouds not to burst when they should. And so you have no choice but to make the most out of the little time given you. And when the rain finally falls, or the wind finally blows your way, you can only pray that when the candle is lit again, the lover would still be there with you. Because chances are, if she finds herself in the dark, she’d be searching for another light.
What do you do after the candlelight vanishes? When the magic suddenly disappears and you find yourself longing for it? You find a way to light the candle, of course. But what if that flame had been extinguished too many times? If the wind and the sky refused to grant you mercy too many times? Hell, I don’t know what you should do. But what I did was to begrudge God for being too kind to everyone else and too harsh on me. “Why are the others’ candles perpetually burning while mine always gets extinguished by the wind and the rain?” I thought. Yet no matter how many times I cursed God and fate, the candle never lighted itself.
Now that I find myself in the dark again, I also find myself cursing God. Cursing the capricious wind and the cruel sky. Soon, however, I’m sure the anger would drain my strength. And I would find myself being fuelled by hope. Because there wouldn’t be anything else to drive me. Again, I would pray for the wind not to blow my way. Again I would beg the sky not to let the rain fall. And perhaps again I would be appalled. But what better thing can I do? That’s simply the way things work in this sick world. A man dreams. He works hard for that dream. And then fate shatters that dream. But the man would have no choice but to create a new dream, lest he spend the rest of his life tormented by his frustration. The only way to deal with the pain of seeing a dream vanish is to dream anew. A man falls in love, sacrifices a lot for that divine love and then suddenly finds himself bearing the pain of heartbreak. But that man will have no choice but to love again, lest he spend the rest of his life being pitifully lonely. The only way to heal the pain caused by love is to love anew.
I am in the dark. I am furious. I am tired. But I am still about to light that candle again. And I am praying that when the light returns to show me the magic again, I would still be looking at the same silhouette I had been staring at before.
The wind, the sky, my God, I beg you….
In life, the magic of love is something that’s never seen through the eyes. For it can only be imagined through the lovers’ passionate minds. Which makes me understand why the most romantic moments happen by candlelight. When you sit there at the table and all that you can see of your lover is a silhouette, your mind is free to imagine. It is free to create its own magic. When all that’s in front of you is a talking silhouette, there are no flaws for you to see. There is no dark past to worry about. No beauty to bedazzle or intimidate you. No great expectations to live up to. No people to watch you and judge you for the kind of love you choose to have. Nothing there to shatter all your most romantic fantasies. All that’s there for you to see is a shadow saying the most soothing words. Words you would barely hear. Words whose meanings you wouldn’t care to know because they are soothing for the simple reason that they are spewed out by your beloved one’s burning heart. The dim candlelight lets you see all you need to see. And the surrounding darkness conceals everything you need not know. The darkness, that mysterious darkness, endows you with the freedom to believe that only the most beautiful things remain hidden in the dark.
The worst tragedy of life is that the magical candlelight, the one that lets every mortal person blissfully experience magic, is never found standing safely on a table inside a closed room. It is always out in the open, burning but perpetually at the mercy of the capricious wind. You can choose when and where to light that candle. But you can never choose when and where the wind shall blow. And when you and your lover are seated by the candlelight, blissfully marveling at the ethereal beauty created by the romantically dim light, what can you do to make sure the wind wouldn’t blow the flame? What do you do to make sure that the sky wouldn’t shower the candle with rain? What do you do to make sure the magic lasts? Nothing. You can never beg the wind to grant you mercy. You can never ask the clouds not to burst when they should. And so you have no choice but to make the most out of the little time given you. And when the rain finally falls, or the wind finally blows your way, you can only pray that when the candle is lit again, the lover would still be there with you. Because chances are, if she finds herself in the dark, she’d be searching for another light.
What do you do after the candlelight vanishes? When the magic suddenly disappears and you find yourself longing for it? You find a way to light the candle, of course. But what if that flame had been extinguished too many times? If the wind and the sky refused to grant you mercy too many times? Hell, I don’t know what you should do. But what I did was to begrudge God for being too kind to everyone else and too harsh on me. “Why are the others’ candles perpetually burning while mine always gets extinguished by the wind and the rain?” I thought. Yet no matter how many times I cursed God and fate, the candle never lighted itself.
Now that I find myself in the dark again, I also find myself cursing God. Cursing the capricious wind and the cruel sky. Soon, however, I’m sure the anger would drain my strength. And I would find myself being fuelled by hope. Because there wouldn’t be anything else to drive me. Again, I would pray for the wind not to blow my way. Again I would beg the sky not to let the rain fall. And perhaps again I would be appalled. But what better thing can I do? That’s simply the way things work in this sick world. A man dreams. He works hard for that dream. And then fate shatters that dream. But the man would have no choice but to create a new dream, lest he spend the rest of his life tormented by his frustration. The only way to deal with the pain of seeing a dream vanish is to dream anew. A man falls in love, sacrifices a lot for that divine love and then suddenly finds himself bearing the pain of heartbreak. But that man will have no choice but to love again, lest he spend the rest of his life being pitifully lonely. The only way to heal the pain caused by love is to love anew.
I am in the dark. I am furious. I am tired. But I am still about to light that candle again. And I am praying that when the light returns to show me the magic again, I would still be looking at the same silhouette I had been staring at before.
The wind, the sky, my God, I beg you….
Friday, January 16, 2009
Divine Evolution
My hands were tired, my back’s aching to feel the softness of my warm bed and my mind’s begging me to sleep so that it could finally drift into the carefree realm of dreams. Yet I chose to stay awake, to defy my own instinctive desire to rest because I believed that I had to keep writing. A ravenous hunger within me was driving me to create a masterpiece which could be remembered long after my death. Unfortunately, after hours of forcing my brain to come up with brilliant ideas, that masterpiece still hadn’t been started yet. And I’d probably end up staying up all night to accomplish nothing. So what’s the point in all this hard work? Why did I have to persist, to keep trying, to keep wasting my time? Wouldn’t it be better for me to just spend each night peacefully sleeping instead of vainly attempting to write?
As I stared at the blank page of my notebook, a small, black ant caught my attention. It was crawling all over the blank page, probably searching for something it could bring back to the anthill. Couldn’t that dumb creature understand? It could spend the entire night crawling all over my desk but it would still find no food. Still it would go on. Still it would keep wasting its time.
Perhaps I was no different from the stubborn ant. Perhaps my life was no more meaningful than that of an insect vainly searching for food on a clean piece of paper. But even after knowing all that, would I stop writing? Would I stop believing that someday I would create that one masterpiece? No. And that’s my tragedy. Mother Nature willed that I be born with a determination that would never be matched by my talent! But why did nature have to reserve so much worthlessness for so many creatures?
Angered by my own thoughts, I grabbed the pen and thought of breaking it. But as I grasped the pen, I saw my own veined hands, and something about it suddenly compelled me to look at the ant again and examine its tiny body. Once upon a time, I thought, these grasping hands of mine did not even exist. And all organisms were no more sophisticated than the dumb ant on my desk. There wasn’t even a thinking mind that could wonder how such functional hands came to be.
There was even a time when all moving creatures lived in the ocean. And obviously, because there are land-based creatures like me today, there must have been a time when those marine creatures began migrating to the land. I could just imagine those marine creatures’ ordeal. How much suffering did they have to bear just to crawl on the sand using their fins? How many of them suffered slow, painful deaths as their gills dried up? How many of them starved as they failed to hunt for food because of their immobility? Yet they went on to leave the sea. Yet they kept wasting their lives. And now, because of those seemingly pointless struggles, because of those seemingly wasted lives, there are terrestrial creatures like me who can grasp objects and marvel at the functionality of their own grasping hands.
If I were an immortal god during that time and I could watch the marine organisms’ suicidal exodus from the ocean to the land, would I ever think that slithering creatures were actually paving the way for the evolution of god-like humans—intelligent organisms who’d someday reach the moon and build towers that nearly touch the sky?
What about my early mammal ancestors – the ones whose extremities were devoid of grasping hands? If none of them ever attempted to grasp a branch of a tree or tried grabbing the fruits on those branches, would these grasping hands of mine be developed? Would I ever be able to hold a pen and write anything if not for the seemingly futile efforts of my ancestors?
When the first responsible human father was out there in the jungle, figuring a way to get past the monstrous beasts that stand between him and the cave where his family hid, did it ever occur to him that it was much easier to just let the beasts give him a quick, painless death? Did it also cross his mind that even if he eluded the beast for one day, they’d still get him and his family sooner or later? Did he not find it pointless to keep thinking of ways to save his family from those invincible predators? Couldn’t it have been more convenient to just dream of just dying and then ascending with his family to a heaven ruled by an all-powerful, loving God? Maybe. But he still chose to go on, to keep wasting his time. I wonder if he ever realized that by striving to come up with ways to protect his family and survive the wrath of the stronger beasts, by straining his relatively simple brain, he was actually contributing to the evolution of the human brain, that he was actually making it possible for his descendants to understand the theory of relativity, the laws of gravitation and even quantum mechanics. Whenever he found himself hiding in the bushes, nervously staring at the predators that waited for him to come out and be devoured, he must have asked himself what all the struggle was for. No matter what he did, he’d never be stronger than those monsters. He must have also asked why nature had reserved so much weakness and worthlessness for him. But in the end, he defied nature and crossed the biological boundaries set for him at birth. He overcame his instinctive fear and his in-born weakness. And when he was about to die, he must have satisfyingly said, “Mother Nature, I have done much more than you ever expected me to do.” That’s why he defeated the beasts and survived. That’s why he evolved. That’s why we all live.
If there could be so much meaning in the seemingly pointless struggles of less evolved beings, I can just imagine how much more significance hides in the seemingly pointless struggles of highly-evolved humans like me. How many more masterpieces will be accomplished tomorrow because of my persistence to write today? How many more monuments would be built, how many more galaxies will be discovered because of my stubborn attempts to overcome my biological weaknesses?
God is good because he lets evolution happen. Because he gives both the rich and the poor, both the mighty and the weak, the power to shape the future of mankind. A homeless beggar may never achieve anything astounding or groundbreaking in the society we live in. But in the eyes of God, in the scheme of evolution, that beggar is as powerful as any king. As he wills himself to survive each tiring day, as he endures the painful coldness of the pavement on which he rests each night, as he struggles to salvage his sanity, he is contributing to the evolution of stronger, wiser men.
Today, I still continue to write and dream of creating that literary masterpiece, although I’m already starting to fear that one day, I might just die without writing a masterpiece. But even if that happens, maybe someday, one of my descendants will write the most beautiful literary masterpiece of all time. And when he’s already basking in his glory, he’d wonder how it had been possible for him to be born gifted.
And that’s when he’ll think of me.
As I stared at the blank page of my notebook, a small, black ant caught my attention. It was crawling all over the blank page, probably searching for something it could bring back to the anthill. Couldn’t that dumb creature understand? It could spend the entire night crawling all over my desk but it would still find no food. Still it would go on. Still it would keep wasting its time.
Perhaps I was no different from the stubborn ant. Perhaps my life was no more meaningful than that of an insect vainly searching for food on a clean piece of paper. But even after knowing all that, would I stop writing? Would I stop believing that someday I would create that one masterpiece? No. And that’s my tragedy. Mother Nature willed that I be born with a determination that would never be matched by my talent! But why did nature have to reserve so much worthlessness for so many creatures?
Angered by my own thoughts, I grabbed the pen and thought of breaking it. But as I grasped the pen, I saw my own veined hands, and something about it suddenly compelled me to look at the ant again and examine its tiny body. Once upon a time, I thought, these grasping hands of mine did not even exist. And all organisms were no more sophisticated than the dumb ant on my desk. There wasn’t even a thinking mind that could wonder how such functional hands came to be.
There was even a time when all moving creatures lived in the ocean. And obviously, because there are land-based creatures like me today, there must have been a time when those marine creatures began migrating to the land. I could just imagine those marine creatures’ ordeal. How much suffering did they have to bear just to crawl on the sand using their fins? How many of them suffered slow, painful deaths as their gills dried up? How many of them starved as they failed to hunt for food because of their immobility? Yet they went on to leave the sea. Yet they kept wasting their lives. And now, because of those seemingly pointless struggles, because of those seemingly wasted lives, there are terrestrial creatures like me who can grasp objects and marvel at the functionality of their own grasping hands.
If I were an immortal god during that time and I could watch the marine organisms’ suicidal exodus from the ocean to the land, would I ever think that slithering creatures were actually paving the way for the evolution of god-like humans—intelligent organisms who’d someday reach the moon and build towers that nearly touch the sky?
What about my early mammal ancestors – the ones whose extremities were devoid of grasping hands? If none of them ever attempted to grasp a branch of a tree or tried grabbing the fruits on those branches, would these grasping hands of mine be developed? Would I ever be able to hold a pen and write anything if not for the seemingly futile efforts of my ancestors?
When the first responsible human father was out there in the jungle, figuring a way to get past the monstrous beasts that stand between him and the cave where his family hid, did it ever occur to him that it was much easier to just let the beasts give him a quick, painless death? Did it also cross his mind that even if he eluded the beast for one day, they’d still get him and his family sooner or later? Did he not find it pointless to keep thinking of ways to save his family from those invincible predators? Couldn’t it have been more convenient to just dream of just dying and then ascending with his family to a heaven ruled by an all-powerful, loving God? Maybe. But he still chose to go on, to keep wasting his time. I wonder if he ever realized that by striving to come up with ways to protect his family and survive the wrath of the stronger beasts, by straining his relatively simple brain, he was actually contributing to the evolution of the human brain, that he was actually making it possible for his descendants to understand the theory of relativity, the laws of gravitation and even quantum mechanics. Whenever he found himself hiding in the bushes, nervously staring at the predators that waited for him to come out and be devoured, he must have asked himself what all the struggle was for. No matter what he did, he’d never be stronger than those monsters. He must have also asked why nature had reserved so much weakness and worthlessness for him. But in the end, he defied nature and crossed the biological boundaries set for him at birth. He overcame his instinctive fear and his in-born weakness. And when he was about to die, he must have satisfyingly said, “Mother Nature, I have done much more than you ever expected me to do.” That’s why he defeated the beasts and survived. That’s why he evolved. That’s why we all live.
If there could be so much meaning in the seemingly pointless struggles of less evolved beings, I can just imagine how much more significance hides in the seemingly pointless struggles of highly-evolved humans like me. How many more masterpieces will be accomplished tomorrow because of my persistence to write today? How many more monuments would be built, how many more galaxies will be discovered because of my stubborn attempts to overcome my biological weaknesses?
God is good because he lets evolution happen. Because he gives both the rich and the poor, both the mighty and the weak, the power to shape the future of mankind. A homeless beggar may never achieve anything astounding or groundbreaking in the society we live in. But in the eyes of God, in the scheme of evolution, that beggar is as powerful as any king. As he wills himself to survive each tiring day, as he endures the painful coldness of the pavement on which he rests each night, as he struggles to salvage his sanity, he is contributing to the evolution of stronger, wiser men.
Today, I still continue to write and dream of creating that literary masterpiece, although I’m already starting to fear that one day, I might just die without writing a masterpiece. But even if that happens, maybe someday, one of my descendants will write the most beautiful literary masterpiece of all time. And when he’s already basking in his glory, he’d wonder how it had been possible for him to be born gifted.
And that’s when he’ll think of me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)