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?
Friday, January 23, 2009
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.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Bless Me God For I Have Loved
Dear God,
A lover is just a selfish animal out to satisfy its own instinctive needs, I once thought. A man blissfully relishing a woman’s embrace is no different from a heartless lion feasting on a gazelle’s entrails. Both creatures derive pleasure from their respective acts. Both acts were committed as a result of biological impulses that are beyond the creatures’ control. A lemming who throws itself over a cliff just because its instinct tells it to do so is a fool. A man who deprives himself of sleep and pleasure just to make a girl happy because his infatuated heart compels him to do so is a fool. An eagle that flies across an unfamiliar ocean to look for prey without knowing how far its flight would take it is doomed to run out of breath and plunge to the sea one day. A man who pledges to dedicate all his life to a woman without knowing how much that woman would ask him to give or how little he would get in return, without asking how long he would have to keep spreading his vast wings in a long flight called passion, is a mindless daredevil bound to lose his wings and plunge into the deep ocean of loneliness one day.
As I lay in bed one lonely night, staring through the windows’ translucent curtains, watching the full moon gradually descend from the zenith to the horizon, while the crickets hummed in a melancholic chorus—as if attempting to soothe a restless, long-suffering creature--, while the nocturnal birds agonizingly chirped and flapped their wings in the dark, while the disturbed felines affectionately exchanged long, mild purrs, while the romantic wind strummed the countless leaves to create a powerful, musical rustle, I finally found myself confronting the truth. I was the animal. I was irrational. I was the daredevil and the fool. I was crossing an unknown ocean in the dark, running out of breath but still flapping my wounded wings. For despite the suffering and the pain, the follies and irrationalities, the love in me was still strong enough to sustain this crazy flight. Because I was in love. Because I was willing to go through more pain for that love.
Why do things have to be that way, God? Didn’t you teach us to love because you wanted us, your beloved children, to be happy in this world? Yet for love, for the one thing that is the ultimate source of all happiness, we have to suffer so much.
How does happiness begin? Through contentment, of course. How does contentment begin? Through love. And how, my God, does love begin? It always starts with a belief.
If you hand a colorful handkerchief to a wounded, dying soldier without saying anything to him, do you think he’d even care to reach for that piece of cloth? Would he spend the last few seconds of his life forcing himself to move his limb despite the pain he’s have to bear in doing so? Absolutely not. But tell him that the handkerchief you’re giving him is the ultimate tribute of his countrymen to his heroism, make him believe that that handkerchief is the most important thing that can be had by a fallen warrior, and I assure you, that soldier would be more than happy to accept your gift. And he would die a blissful death. Love happens in a similar way. It happened to me that way.
Before a man can fall in love, he must start convincing himself that one woman is better than any other. He needs to believe that she is the best gift that God can give any man, that she is more important than anything in this world. He must build a wall that separates her from all the other women, a wall that separates the perfect girl from the others, the paragon from the ordinary diamonds. Because without these beliefs, there wouldn’t be any love. Without them, there wouldn’t be any special pleasure in being embraced by her; there would be no bliss in being kissed by her, no extraordinary happiness in knowing that she cares. Without these beliefs her embrace, her kiss and her care would mean no more than those of a stranger. And there lies the man’s tragedy.
No man is perfect. No man is omniscient like you, my God. That’s why it impossible for me to always know correctly whether a woman is your gift to me…or your gift to someone else. All I can do is to make a guess--to gamble. Yes, unbelievably, the search for love starts with one dangerous gamble. And when that guess proves to be wrong, when the gamble fails to pay off, I would have to pay dearly. Because I would have to destroy all the beliefs I have held on to about her. I would have to destroy the wall that separates her from the rest of the women, the wall that I myself built.
A lot of people say that no man should cry over one woman because there are millions more out there who can replace her. Right. But for a passionate lover, those millions of women are almost impossible to see. Why? Because by the time a man’s heart bleeds for a woman, he has already built that impervious wall which separates her beloved girl from the rest of humanity, the same wall that kept him from believing that there’s someone better out there, the wall that guarantees his perpetual fidelity to her.
“Should I destroy that wall?” I asked myself. Of course I should! And I certainly could. But how easy would it be for anyone to destroy something he had worked so hard for to build? Would it be easy for you, my God, to destroy this universe that you created for us? Would it be easy for Leonardo Da Vinci to burn his Mona Lisa? Would it be easy for Shah Jahan to demolish the Taj Mahal? Damn! That wall was my masterpiece. That was a monument to the greatest bliss that I could possibly have in this life. And you expect to just destroy it? But unfortunately, I just had to.
I know it’s possible to have a romantic relationship with a woman without having those beliefs and without having to build that wall. But that relationship would be devoid of love. And because of that, it would be devoid of happiness as well. What message are you trying to give me, God? Are you trying to tell me that your children ought not to search for the kind of happiness that I had searched for? That we are better off choosing no to love just to avoid getting hurt? Or are you telling me to moderate my love so I could also moderate my pain at the cost of moderating my happiness?
If you want all of us to love less and suffer less, why the hell do you make love so tempting? And why do you keep telling us to love one another? To all my questions, your answer is nothing but silence. I assume it’s because you want me to find the answers from deep within myself. Well, I don’t know if this is the right one but this is the only answer that my heart can give—you want me to realize that love is the source of the ultimate happiness but the ultimate happiness can only be had if one is willing to take the risk of having to bear the ultimate pain. Loving a woman makes it possible for a man to feel bliss in her embrace. But it also guarantees that the man shall shed tears when she leaves him. Loving a child makes it possible for a parent to be happy even when doing the most backbreaking tasks. But it also guarantees that the parent shall grieve painfully when the child dies. It is simply impossible to be totally happy without love. And it is impossible to love without having the courage to bear the worst pain.
Is that really how you always wanted things to be? Is that how love is supposed to work? Because if that’s how you intended things to be, I just can’t help but think of you as a psychopath! Yes, my God, a psychopath. When you tell us to love and be brave enough to suffer for the loss of that love, you are a psychopath who aims a gun at a child, tells the child to build a sandcastle and, if the sand castle crumbles or if it turns out to be not beautiful enough for him, shoots the child in the head. That’s exactly what you do. You tell us to build our sandcastles of love, and if we fail to build the perfect sandcastle, when we fail to find the right love, you shoot us in the head with your bullets of pain. But if we succeed in building the sandcastle that can impress you, we become extremely happy. We celebrate and shed tears of joy. Because we know that you won’t shoot us. The love you gave us creates the ultimate happiness. But that happiness is just a happiness in knowing that we shall not bleed. And if we know that we can’t bleed for someone, if we know that we can’t shed tears for someone, we know that we are not in love. Bliss simply can’t exist without the threat of sorrow.
And I can’t truly love without you poking the cold gun of loneliness against my head.
Having heard everything I said, you must be wondering why I’m still talking to you, why I still believe in you. You wanna know why? Because it feels good to know that someone up there can be hurt by my blasphemous words! Because it feels good to believe that at least there’s one person out there who bleeds for me. And if you bleed for me, it means….It means that I don’t have to bleed so much after all.
Damn it! I’m fooling myself. But isn’t happiness just an art of fooling oneself? Two soldiers go to war. One believes the war will be won. The other believes otherwise. They both die before the war ends. Who do you think will have lived a happier wartime life by the time their lives end? A man and a woman get married and stay together for fifty years. The man loves the woman and believes that she loves him, too. The woman doesn’t love the man, period. By the time they die, who do you think will have had a happier life between the man and the woman?
I want to be rational. But what’s the point in being rational anyway? Why do people choose to be rational in the first place? When a person decides which career to pursue, why should he carefully weigh his options? When a woman decides whether or not she should accept a marriage proposal, why does she have to think about it thoroughly? Why does she have to listen to reason? When the prehistoric men were deciding how to hunt down a beast, why did they have to be rational about their plans? No matter how you look at it, the ultimate aim of rationality is survival. But what’s so good about survival? Do animals strive to survive just to feed? Or do they also relish the pleasure of being able to feed? Do people struggle to survive just to spend another day struggling to survive? Or do they do so because they want to love…and be happy because of that love? When there’s no love there to be felt, when survival does not promise happiness and survival is all that rationality can offer, what the hell is so rational about being rational?
Why hadn’t I thought about that last question at an earlier point in my life? Why the hell did I have to be so rational in the first place? What were all those dreams for? What were all those sufferings for? What were all those sacrifices of mine for if I’m gonna pass up on every opportunity to…satisfy my primitive instinct—the one that compels me to want to care for someone and feel that someone cares for me?
One more time I shall try not to be too rational. One more time I shall fool myself. Because I now choose to believe that there is a divine reason for all this pain. I choose to believe, shamelessly, that there is something good that can come out of this emotional hell. That the universe still follows a divine, though not necessarily perfect, order. And you, my God, are the personification of that order. That’s why still believe in you. Even when you are silent. I have no proof that you exist. I have no proof that you don’t. But rather than be an agnostic, I’ll just take a gamble on you. I am making a guess, the same way I do when I begin to fall in love.
So now, my God, I beg you to forgive me for my blasphemies. For no matter how much I want to punish you, I still am willing to accept that you are far more powerful than me. I still am willing to believe that you can teach me to build the perfect sandcastle of love.
Bless me God for I am beginning to lose my faith. Bless me God for I am breaking down. Bless me, for I need badly need the strength to begin the quest for happiness anew. Bless me, God, for I have loved.
Your child,
Ernest
A lover is just a selfish animal out to satisfy its own instinctive needs, I once thought. A man blissfully relishing a woman’s embrace is no different from a heartless lion feasting on a gazelle’s entrails. Both creatures derive pleasure from their respective acts. Both acts were committed as a result of biological impulses that are beyond the creatures’ control. A lemming who throws itself over a cliff just because its instinct tells it to do so is a fool. A man who deprives himself of sleep and pleasure just to make a girl happy because his infatuated heart compels him to do so is a fool. An eagle that flies across an unfamiliar ocean to look for prey without knowing how far its flight would take it is doomed to run out of breath and plunge to the sea one day. A man who pledges to dedicate all his life to a woman without knowing how much that woman would ask him to give or how little he would get in return, without asking how long he would have to keep spreading his vast wings in a long flight called passion, is a mindless daredevil bound to lose his wings and plunge into the deep ocean of loneliness one day.
As I lay in bed one lonely night, staring through the windows’ translucent curtains, watching the full moon gradually descend from the zenith to the horizon, while the crickets hummed in a melancholic chorus—as if attempting to soothe a restless, long-suffering creature--, while the nocturnal birds agonizingly chirped and flapped their wings in the dark, while the disturbed felines affectionately exchanged long, mild purrs, while the romantic wind strummed the countless leaves to create a powerful, musical rustle, I finally found myself confronting the truth. I was the animal. I was irrational. I was the daredevil and the fool. I was crossing an unknown ocean in the dark, running out of breath but still flapping my wounded wings. For despite the suffering and the pain, the follies and irrationalities, the love in me was still strong enough to sustain this crazy flight. Because I was in love. Because I was willing to go through more pain for that love.
Why do things have to be that way, God? Didn’t you teach us to love because you wanted us, your beloved children, to be happy in this world? Yet for love, for the one thing that is the ultimate source of all happiness, we have to suffer so much.
How does happiness begin? Through contentment, of course. How does contentment begin? Through love. And how, my God, does love begin? It always starts with a belief.
If you hand a colorful handkerchief to a wounded, dying soldier without saying anything to him, do you think he’d even care to reach for that piece of cloth? Would he spend the last few seconds of his life forcing himself to move his limb despite the pain he’s have to bear in doing so? Absolutely not. But tell him that the handkerchief you’re giving him is the ultimate tribute of his countrymen to his heroism, make him believe that that handkerchief is the most important thing that can be had by a fallen warrior, and I assure you, that soldier would be more than happy to accept your gift. And he would die a blissful death. Love happens in a similar way. It happened to me that way.
Before a man can fall in love, he must start convincing himself that one woman is better than any other. He needs to believe that she is the best gift that God can give any man, that she is more important than anything in this world. He must build a wall that separates her from all the other women, a wall that separates the perfect girl from the others, the paragon from the ordinary diamonds. Because without these beliefs, there wouldn’t be any love. Without them, there wouldn’t be any special pleasure in being embraced by her; there would be no bliss in being kissed by her, no extraordinary happiness in knowing that she cares. Without these beliefs her embrace, her kiss and her care would mean no more than those of a stranger. And there lies the man’s tragedy.
No man is perfect. No man is omniscient like you, my God. That’s why it impossible for me to always know correctly whether a woman is your gift to me…or your gift to someone else. All I can do is to make a guess--to gamble. Yes, unbelievably, the search for love starts with one dangerous gamble. And when that guess proves to be wrong, when the gamble fails to pay off, I would have to pay dearly. Because I would have to destroy all the beliefs I have held on to about her. I would have to destroy the wall that separates her from the rest of the women, the wall that I myself built.
A lot of people say that no man should cry over one woman because there are millions more out there who can replace her. Right. But for a passionate lover, those millions of women are almost impossible to see. Why? Because by the time a man’s heart bleeds for a woman, he has already built that impervious wall which separates her beloved girl from the rest of humanity, the same wall that kept him from believing that there’s someone better out there, the wall that guarantees his perpetual fidelity to her.
“Should I destroy that wall?” I asked myself. Of course I should! And I certainly could. But how easy would it be for anyone to destroy something he had worked so hard for to build? Would it be easy for you, my God, to destroy this universe that you created for us? Would it be easy for Leonardo Da Vinci to burn his Mona Lisa? Would it be easy for Shah Jahan to demolish the Taj Mahal? Damn! That wall was my masterpiece. That was a monument to the greatest bliss that I could possibly have in this life. And you expect to just destroy it? But unfortunately, I just had to.
I know it’s possible to have a romantic relationship with a woman without having those beliefs and without having to build that wall. But that relationship would be devoid of love. And because of that, it would be devoid of happiness as well. What message are you trying to give me, God? Are you trying to tell me that your children ought not to search for the kind of happiness that I had searched for? That we are better off choosing no to love just to avoid getting hurt? Or are you telling me to moderate my love so I could also moderate my pain at the cost of moderating my happiness?
If you want all of us to love less and suffer less, why the hell do you make love so tempting? And why do you keep telling us to love one another? To all my questions, your answer is nothing but silence. I assume it’s because you want me to find the answers from deep within myself. Well, I don’t know if this is the right one but this is the only answer that my heart can give—you want me to realize that love is the source of the ultimate happiness but the ultimate happiness can only be had if one is willing to take the risk of having to bear the ultimate pain. Loving a woman makes it possible for a man to feel bliss in her embrace. But it also guarantees that the man shall shed tears when she leaves him. Loving a child makes it possible for a parent to be happy even when doing the most backbreaking tasks. But it also guarantees that the parent shall grieve painfully when the child dies. It is simply impossible to be totally happy without love. And it is impossible to love without having the courage to bear the worst pain.
Is that really how you always wanted things to be? Is that how love is supposed to work? Because if that’s how you intended things to be, I just can’t help but think of you as a psychopath! Yes, my God, a psychopath. When you tell us to love and be brave enough to suffer for the loss of that love, you are a psychopath who aims a gun at a child, tells the child to build a sandcastle and, if the sand castle crumbles or if it turns out to be not beautiful enough for him, shoots the child in the head. That’s exactly what you do. You tell us to build our sandcastles of love, and if we fail to build the perfect sandcastle, when we fail to find the right love, you shoot us in the head with your bullets of pain. But if we succeed in building the sandcastle that can impress you, we become extremely happy. We celebrate and shed tears of joy. Because we know that you won’t shoot us. The love you gave us creates the ultimate happiness. But that happiness is just a happiness in knowing that we shall not bleed. And if we know that we can’t bleed for someone, if we know that we can’t shed tears for someone, we know that we are not in love. Bliss simply can’t exist without the threat of sorrow.
And I can’t truly love without you poking the cold gun of loneliness against my head.
Having heard everything I said, you must be wondering why I’m still talking to you, why I still believe in you. You wanna know why? Because it feels good to know that someone up there can be hurt by my blasphemous words! Because it feels good to believe that at least there’s one person out there who bleeds for me. And if you bleed for me, it means….It means that I don’t have to bleed so much after all.
Damn it! I’m fooling myself. But isn’t happiness just an art of fooling oneself? Two soldiers go to war. One believes the war will be won. The other believes otherwise. They both die before the war ends. Who do you think will have lived a happier wartime life by the time their lives end? A man and a woman get married and stay together for fifty years. The man loves the woman and believes that she loves him, too. The woman doesn’t love the man, period. By the time they die, who do you think will have had a happier life between the man and the woman?
I want to be rational. But what’s the point in being rational anyway? Why do people choose to be rational in the first place? When a person decides which career to pursue, why should he carefully weigh his options? When a woman decides whether or not she should accept a marriage proposal, why does she have to think about it thoroughly? Why does she have to listen to reason? When the prehistoric men were deciding how to hunt down a beast, why did they have to be rational about their plans? No matter how you look at it, the ultimate aim of rationality is survival. But what’s so good about survival? Do animals strive to survive just to feed? Or do they also relish the pleasure of being able to feed? Do people struggle to survive just to spend another day struggling to survive? Or do they do so because they want to love…and be happy because of that love? When there’s no love there to be felt, when survival does not promise happiness and survival is all that rationality can offer, what the hell is so rational about being rational?
Why hadn’t I thought about that last question at an earlier point in my life? Why the hell did I have to be so rational in the first place? What were all those dreams for? What were all those sufferings for? What were all those sacrifices of mine for if I’m gonna pass up on every opportunity to…satisfy my primitive instinct—the one that compels me to want to care for someone and feel that someone cares for me?
One more time I shall try not to be too rational. One more time I shall fool myself. Because I now choose to believe that there is a divine reason for all this pain. I choose to believe, shamelessly, that there is something good that can come out of this emotional hell. That the universe still follows a divine, though not necessarily perfect, order. And you, my God, are the personification of that order. That’s why still believe in you. Even when you are silent. I have no proof that you exist. I have no proof that you don’t. But rather than be an agnostic, I’ll just take a gamble on you. I am making a guess, the same way I do when I begin to fall in love.
So now, my God, I beg you to forgive me for my blasphemies. For no matter how much I want to punish you, I still am willing to accept that you are far more powerful than me. I still am willing to believe that you can teach me to build the perfect sandcastle of love.
Bless me God for I am beginning to lose my faith. Bless me God for I am breaking down. Bless me, for I need badly need the strength to begin the quest for happiness anew. Bless me, God, for I have loved.
Your child,
Ernest
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Light in the Abyss
Thank God for giving us life, so that we may feel how to live. Thank God for giving us love, so that in life there'd be so much to feel. Thank God for giving us the memories, so that when much of life has been gone and much of love has faded, there'd still be much to remember and cherish. But above all, thank God for Oblivion, so that we may forget them all. Because when all life has been drained out of us, when all the love has vanished and only the memories have been there for too long, the memories shall turn to longing, and the longing will turn to pain. And if eternity is certain to follow death, and memories are certain not to fade, then there must be nothing to feel throughout eternity other than longing... and pain.
My grandmother flashed a smile, and in return, I smiled back. But smiles do not always bear sheer happiness. And in this instance, our smiles were fraught with a little bitterness, and grudge.
It had been two years since I last stepped foot on the soils of my hometown- Puerto Princesa City, two years since I last saw my grandmother in the thick of her health. Back then, if she saw me, she'd not only smile. She'd walk up to me, kiss me and spend long hours talking to grandson she had badly missed. But now, things have changed, she's been bedridden almost half a year. And ever since she had the stroke last year, she had never walked by herself, nor spoke consciously to anyone. The few times hat she did speak, she did so as if she were dreaming. Sometimes, she'd see my mother's face and then she'd talk as if she were conversing with a little child. My mother would talk back, but her words would not be heard. Perhaps, in her weakened mind, she wasn't living in this time and age. Maybe, she thought she was back to the time when she was still a young mother, blissfully playing with the little daughter that was now my mother. And in my grandmother's trance, in her dreams, all she could feel must be bliss. But in the real world where we, the real loved ones exist and see her, there can only be pain. For each time we see the sheer happiness my grandmother gets from her own delusions, we also see glaringly the same real happiness we can never give her. Because the cruel laws of science has already built an impenetrable wall between her consciousness and ours.
Now, I was compelled to ask, when she smiled at me, was it because of me or someone she saw in her dreamworld? I thought it was because of someone else in her dreams. That's why I dropped the smile and moved away. But I was wrong. The moment I started to move away, the smile on her face turned to a frown. And her hand, the same hand that had virtually been unused for months, made one beautiful gesture. It reached out to me.
Why did she have to remember? Why did the laws of science shatter the walls of her dreamland? What good would it do her if she remembered who I was? She would have been better off being confined in her dreamland and not knowing that I had visited. Because inevitably, I would have to leave. My new work as an asst. manager in a laboratory required me to reside in a town more than 100 kilometers away from her home. And even if I did not have that job, I would still have to leave. Because I could not proceed with my life if I were t stay perpetually by her side. All I could do was to pray that someday, she will forget about me, that somehow, she'd forget the moment I walked away from her at a time when she could not walk after me. And when God wills the two of us to meet in either heaven or earth, we'd remember nothing of that painful day.
Ever since I was always a child I always wondered why God had to put our brains in our bodies and not in our souls. I thought, if the memories are in our brains, and the brains are in our bodies, then our memories are sure to rot with our corpses when we die. And when the souls ascend to heaven, they'd have no memory of anything that happened on earth. Cruel, it seemed. Maybe that's why most people comfortably assumed that souls are omniscient beings that can remember everything and know everything. When we find ourselves in peril, we comfort ourselves with the thought that a fallen loved one is watching us. But are the departed really better off remembering us and knowing everything about us, feeling fear each time we're in peril, feeling sorrow each time we shed tears? No. The more I think about it, the more I believe that a kind God shall never burden his creations with a perpetual memory.
While I'm still here on earth, though, living, remembering, I have no choice but to confront my memories. Now that I am back here in my hometown after completing college in Manila I am reminded of the dreams I used to dream, the biggest ones, the ones that time, fate and maturity compelled to abandon, albeit painfully.
Here, in this province, I had become a godfather to a younger cousin at age 8, because I had to attend the baptismal ceremonies in lieu of my father, the real Godfather . But since I was an overeager little child, I took it upon myself to be the truly responsible ninong (godfather) to my little cousin. Each Christmas, following Filipino tradition, I would be the one to hand her the Christmas Gifts that any loving Godfather ought to give a good goddaughter. I never bought those gifts, though. Because I never had the means to do so. In the first two Christmases after I finished college and started working, I failed to give her any gifts because, I ran out of money. Secretly, however, I dreamed of buying a laptop for her, because she was such a brilliant young writer. One day, I thought, when I already have the means, I'd give that laptop computer to her o he condition that she'd join a literary contest or write a novel. Nothing would have felt sweeter than seeing a brilliant young mind churn out a masterpiece because of my own god-fatherly encouragement. But such an ethereal moment was never meant to come. In June of 2007, she passed away. My return to this province should have been the most special because I had a good job and therefore, the means to buy my own gift for her. But all I could offer was a visit to her tomb. The photograph of her tomb remains stored in my cellphone, but up there in heaven, she should have no memory of me. Because that's how things should be. Let me, the living, live the way life should be lived. And let immortal angels like her spend eternity the way it should be spent-blissfully, and devoid of pain.
Maybe one day, my grandmother, who is also my goddaughter's grandmother, would see her up there in heaven. And when they meet, they'd talk and learn to love each other anew. Neither of them would talk about me. Neither of them would talk about my failures. My grandmother would not remember me walking away from her as she lay crippled and mute in her bed. My goddaughter would never remember the Christmases that passed by without a gift from me. And when my turn to go up there comes, they would not know me. But they'd learn to love me anew, just as I'd learn to love them anew without being bothered by the memories of my past failures.
Here, in this island province, my family lived in unfinished houses. Together we dreamed of building a beautiful house for ourselves. And together, we saw that dreams repeatedly shattered before us. I don't know if that dream could ever be realized in this lifetime. But if we do fail in the present, I hope in the next life, or afterlife, we'd dare to dream together again without being bothered by our past failures.
In this town, I had learned to love and fail in the arena of love. Here, I had naively built my silly dream of finishing college in Manila, getting a good job and coming home to blissfully start my own family. That dream never completely materialized, partly because in my quest to fulfill my little dreams, I had found bigger ones and opted to abandon the former. Now, I'm beginning to fear that I'm running out of dreams, both the little and the big. Coming home to the embrace of a beautiful wife and the sight of a wonderful home now seem far more unreal and impossible than it did 10 years ago. Somehow, though, there is hope that someday, when this lifetime had totally faded into oblivion, I'd be stronger and better at realizing my dreams, and expressing my love.
Death is one dark abyss. When you get there, no matter how far you look up into the sky where you plunged from, there'd be nothing to see. And when you walk to search for a new life, a new love and new dreams, there'd be no light to guide you. Yes, in the abyss, here shall be no light. But how can you fear the dark when you have no memory of light?
My grandmother flashed a smile, and in return, I smiled back. But smiles do not always bear sheer happiness. And in this instance, our smiles were fraught with a little bitterness, and grudge.
It had been two years since I last stepped foot on the soils of my hometown- Puerto Princesa City, two years since I last saw my grandmother in the thick of her health. Back then, if she saw me, she'd not only smile. She'd walk up to me, kiss me and spend long hours talking to grandson she had badly missed. But now, things have changed, she's been bedridden almost half a year. And ever since she had the stroke last year, she had never walked by herself, nor spoke consciously to anyone. The few times hat she did speak, she did so as if she were dreaming. Sometimes, she'd see my mother's face and then she'd talk as if she were conversing with a little child. My mother would talk back, but her words would not be heard. Perhaps, in her weakened mind, she wasn't living in this time and age. Maybe, she thought she was back to the time when she was still a young mother, blissfully playing with the little daughter that was now my mother. And in my grandmother's trance, in her dreams, all she could feel must be bliss. But in the real world where we, the real loved ones exist and see her, there can only be pain. For each time we see the sheer happiness my grandmother gets from her own delusions, we also see glaringly the same real happiness we can never give her. Because the cruel laws of science has already built an impenetrable wall between her consciousness and ours.
Now, I was compelled to ask, when she smiled at me, was it because of me or someone she saw in her dreamworld? I thought it was because of someone else in her dreams. That's why I dropped the smile and moved away. But I was wrong. The moment I started to move away, the smile on her face turned to a frown. And her hand, the same hand that had virtually been unused for months, made one beautiful gesture. It reached out to me.
Why did she have to remember? Why did the laws of science shatter the walls of her dreamland? What good would it do her if she remembered who I was? She would have been better off being confined in her dreamland and not knowing that I had visited. Because inevitably, I would have to leave. My new work as an asst. manager in a laboratory required me to reside in a town more than 100 kilometers away from her home. And even if I did not have that job, I would still have to leave. Because I could not proceed with my life if I were t stay perpetually by her side. All I could do was to pray that someday, she will forget about me, that somehow, she'd forget the moment I walked away from her at a time when she could not walk after me. And when God wills the two of us to meet in either heaven or earth, we'd remember nothing of that painful day.
Ever since I was always a child I always wondered why God had to put our brains in our bodies and not in our souls. I thought, if the memories are in our brains, and the brains are in our bodies, then our memories are sure to rot with our corpses when we die. And when the souls ascend to heaven, they'd have no memory of anything that happened on earth. Cruel, it seemed. Maybe that's why most people comfortably assumed that souls are omniscient beings that can remember everything and know everything. When we find ourselves in peril, we comfort ourselves with the thought that a fallen loved one is watching us. But are the departed really better off remembering us and knowing everything about us, feeling fear each time we're in peril, feeling sorrow each time we shed tears? No. The more I think about it, the more I believe that a kind God shall never burden his creations with a perpetual memory.
While I'm still here on earth, though, living, remembering, I have no choice but to confront my memories. Now that I am back here in my hometown after completing college in Manila I am reminded of the dreams I used to dream, the biggest ones, the ones that time, fate and maturity compelled to abandon, albeit painfully.
Here, in this province, I had become a godfather to a younger cousin at age 8, because I had to attend the baptismal ceremonies in lieu of my father, the real Godfather . But since I was an overeager little child, I took it upon myself to be the truly responsible ninong (godfather) to my little cousin. Each Christmas, following Filipino tradition, I would be the one to hand her the Christmas Gifts that any loving Godfather ought to give a good goddaughter. I never bought those gifts, though. Because I never had the means to do so. In the first two Christmases after I finished college and started working, I failed to give her any gifts because, I ran out of money. Secretly, however, I dreamed of buying a laptop for her, because she was such a brilliant young writer. One day, I thought, when I already have the means, I'd give that laptop computer to her o he condition that she'd join a literary contest or write a novel. Nothing would have felt sweeter than seeing a brilliant young mind churn out a masterpiece because of my own god-fatherly encouragement. But such an ethereal moment was never meant to come. In June of 2007, she passed away. My return to this province should have been the most special because I had a good job and therefore, the means to buy my own gift for her. But all I could offer was a visit to her tomb. The photograph of her tomb remains stored in my cellphone, but up there in heaven, she should have no memory of me. Because that's how things should be. Let me, the living, live the way life should be lived. And let immortal angels like her spend eternity the way it should be spent-blissfully, and devoid of pain.
Maybe one day, my grandmother, who is also my goddaughter's grandmother, would see her up there in heaven. And when they meet, they'd talk and learn to love each other anew. Neither of them would talk about me. Neither of them would talk about my failures. My grandmother would not remember me walking away from her as she lay crippled and mute in her bed. My goddaughter would never remember the Christmases that passed by without a gift from me. And when my turn to go up there comes, they would not know me. But they'd learn to love me anew, just as I'd learn to love them anew without being bothered by the memories of my past failures.
Here, in this island province, my family lived in unfinished houses. Together we dreamed of building a beautiful house for ourselves. And together, we saw that dreams repeatedly shattered before us. I don't know if that dream could ever be realized in this lifetime. But if we do fail in the present, I hope in the next life, or afterlife, we'd dare to dream together again without being bothered by our past failures.
In this town, I had learned to love and fail in the arena of love. Here, I had naively built my silly dream of finishing college in Manila, getting a good job and coming home to blissfully start my own family. That dream never completely materialized, partly because in my quest to fulfill my little dreams, I had found bigger ones and opted to abandon the former. Now, I'm beginning to fear that I'm running out of dreams, both the little and the big. Coming home to the embrace of a beautiful wife and the sight of a wonderful home now seem far more unreal and impossible than it did 10 years ago. Somehow, though, there is hope that someday, when this lifetime had totally faded into oblivion, I'd be stronger and better at realizing my dreams, and expressing my love.
Death is one dark abyss. When you get there, no matter how far you look up into the sky where you plunged from, there'd be nothing to see. And when you walk to search for a new life, a new love and new dreams, there'd be no light to guide you. Yes, in the abyss, here shall be no light. But how can you fear the dark when you have no memory of light?
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Once Upon A Time, We Were All Pagans (A Filipino Christian's Views on the Afterlife)
If I ever get to heaven someday, I’ll ask God to take me to hell. Because there, in that endless pit of perpetually burning fire, I would find the souls of my pagan Filipino ancestors. There, I’d see the loving pagan mothers who prayed to demons and false idols when their husbands went missing and when their children fell ill, the women who loved their husbands and children so much that they repeatedly worshipped the wrong gods and unknowingly broke God’s first commandment again and again, until their sins doomed their souls. There, standing alongside charred tyrants and rapists would be the innocent young boys who sacrificed living creatures to the spirits who threatened to spoil their farms and kill their livestock. These are the young men who cared for their fathers, mothers and siblings so much that they repeatedly tried to appease the malevolent spirits but succeeded only in irking the one true God again and again, until their souls were doomed to burn. And there, alongside assassins and thieves,would be the ancient priestesses who spent their lives teaching the wrong faith to their flock and suffered twice as much as the rest of hell’s dwellers. Because they are burned not only by the flames of hell also by the guilt in knowing that they sent generations of pagan Filipinos away from heaven and straight to hell.
As I stand there among the prisoners of hell, the one true God standing right beside me, some of my fallen, burning ancestors would hesitantly flash bittersweet smiles. Yes, despite the never-ending pain, they’d find a reason to smile, even if the mere act of smiling brings more pain to their charred faces. And that would probably be the most blissful moment they could have for the rest of eternity. Because they’d just be happy to know that somehow, one of their own found the right path, that somehow, one of their own would relish the joys of a heaven they never knew. Because they’d be happy to know that God did not curse the grandchildren of their grandchildren because of their unforgivable sins. And most of all, they’d be happy because one of their more fortunate descendants even bothered to see where all their doomed souls have gone.
“When will the others come?” a burning Filipino soul would cry from afar, referring to the other Filipino Christians who ascended to heaven.
I wish I could say that the “others” would be waiting for their turn. But no, I could not lie, especially not with God standing right beside me. In all the years that I have been alive here on earth, I have never heard any adult Filipino ask about the fate of our pagan ancestors’ souls. And the only child I knew who asked about them was myself, though I did it quietly. In the few instances that my pagan ancestors are remembered, they are only referred to as barbaric, half – naked men who wore G-strings. My pagan past –our pagan past—has been conveniently concealed by a thick, deceivingly beautiful curtain of religiosity. In our desire to please God and reach heaven, we have gladly turned our backs to the ancient heroes who made it possible for any of us to even live to know the right God. For most Filipino Christians, the pagan Filipinos who lived in our islands before Magellan’s arrival in the 16th century are viewed as ghosts –-the more you think of them, the more they haunt you. We refuse to think about our ancestors’ fate because we never want to even consider the possibility of being wrong about our faith. We never want to think of not going to heaven.
“I hope God would let you see all of them one day,” I’d finally say. Instantly, the burning Filipino faces would be filled with total happiness. Charred and crooked because of the perpetual fire, they’d be the most beautiful faces I would ever see. Because they’d be beautiful in the deepest sense of the word. They’d be the most beautiful because true beauty can never be seen. It can only be experienced. Still, I wouldn’t dare to even glance at God. If he would be looking at me with furious eyes, I’d rather not know.
As the quiet wave of happiness spreads across that small portion of hell, an exotic music would suddenly fill the air. The souls nearest to me would glance over their shoulders to see where the distinctly Filipino music comes from. And then, the crowd of burning Filipino souls would make way for the approach of a band of Filipino “beauties” playing stringed instruments I never knew existed. These are the same beautiful women who played soothing, marvelous music as Ferdinand Magellan (the Portuguese-born voyager who “discovered” the
487 years ago, while Antonio Pigafetta was enjoying these women’s music and marveling at their faces’ beauty, could he have imagined such beautiful beings burning in hell? Did he at any point in his life wonder what fate awaited these beautiful pagans’ souls? I don’t know if Pigafetta ever went to heaven but if he did, he probably would have searched for these Filipino beauties in heaven. And if God told him they weren’t there because they never knew Him, what would Pigafetta do? If I were him, I’d lose my faith.
But is God really that cruel? Could God’s wisdom be no different from that of a tyrannical king who beheads the people who fails to greet him because they never knew he was the king?
Maybe I wouldn’t have to ask God to take me to hell. Maybe he’s kind enough to bring the pagans to a heaven they never knew. Maybe they’re all up there, staying in a heaven they never even dreamed of. And when I die, I would see them all. If I get there.
Maybe, on my first day in heaven, I’d be greeted by the “eastern beauties” who once played wonderful music before Magellan and Pigafetta. And after soothing me with their music, they’d take me to the babaylan, the priestess who thought everyone around her to worship the wrong gods and practice the wrong faith.
“I’m glad you are here,” the babaylan would say as she embraces me. Then, she’d step back and lay her hands on my face, as if examining a precious gem she has just found. And I’d see a tear flowing out of her eye.
“Why do you weep?” I’d ask her.
“Son,” she’d reply, “I’m just happy to know that you’ve made it. Ever since I died, I have been standing here near the gates of heaven, waiting for each man and woman of our tribe to enter. I had taught them the wrong faith and led them away from heaven. And I’d never be at peace until I see them all walk through those gates.”
“But all of them had already died a long time ago. If they’re blessed to enter heaven, they should have come a long time ago. Why do you have to keep waiting?”
The gates of heaven would clank. They are being opened as another fortunate soul enters heaven.
“You know,” the babaylan would continue, staring at the newcomer, “almost everyone who walked through those gates was happy to be here. But I’m not. Look at me, I’m already in heaven but I can’t find peace, let alone happiness. But whenever I see someone like you, a descendant of my follower, walking through those enormous gates, a very little piece of happiness sinks into my heart. And for a moment, I could say I’m happy. Somehow, I’m hoping that these little pieces of happiness would accumulate to give me enough peace. But for now, they’re not enough. That’s why I’ll watch you go while I wait for the others, including the ones who should have come a long time ago.”
I would want to stop her from punishing herself. But I’d soon figure that no argument could keep her from waiting. I’m sure many of those who came before me persuaded her to start relishing the joys of heaven and stop being a prisoner of her mortal past. And if they all failed, so would I. All this time, she’d been enduring the deafening screams of her guilt-tortured heart. And no amount of reason could ever drown out those screams.
As I journey further into heaven, I’d see a group of saints gathered at a rectangular table, which looked exactly like the one seen on Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. I wouldn’t be speaking with any of them, though. Instead, I’d approach the solitary brown man who quietly watches them from a distance.
“Why are you alone, sir?”, I’d ask the man as I near him.
“I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself that same question all this time.”
His words would leave me dumbfounded.
“Look at them,” he’d point at the gathered saints by pouting his lips towards them, a common practice among Filipinos. “If they’re not talking to each other, they’re listening to the prayers of the people from below. They must have heard a lot of prayers from brown persons like us.”
“You envy them?”
“I don’t need to hear prayers to me”, he’d say, shaking his head. “I just need to hear prayers for me.” Yes, that would be envy.
“One day, before my death,” the man would begin his story, “our chieftain announced that he’d be converting to the faith of the white men. And in our village, I was the only one brave enough to question that decision of his. Not even the priestesses dared disagree with the chief. But my fears were already conquered by my faith. I said that if we started following the faith of the foreigners, we’d be betraying our ancestors. I couldn’t imagine myself worshipping the same God who created these invaders. The next day, I was executed in my sleep. How they actually did it, I never wanted to know. Whether they stabbed me or beheaded me, it didn’t really matter. It will never matter. What should matter is that I was killed because of my faith. I was a martyr. Just like many of the men seated at that table. But unlike me, they died for the right faith. Unlike them, I never heard anyone pray to me or pray for me. Not even my own wife or daughter.
“I figured they converted to the white men’s faith upon the orders of the chieftain. They must have uttered dozens of prayers before they died. None of them for me. I guess the white men taught them not to pray for me, lest God be infuriated and send them all to burn in hell.”
“Did he?” I’d ask.
“What?”
“Send them to burn in hell?”
A long silence.
“I don’t know,” he’d finally say. “I hope not. I never really asked Him about them. Never would. If they’re in hell, I’d rather not know.”
“What if they’re here?”
“If they’re here and they still cared for me, why am I still alone?”
“Maybe because you haven’t searched for them.”
“True. And if I search for them and find out that they’re not here, what good will it do me?” That would be the end of our conversation.
Before her death, the babaylan (priestess) was certain that she was practicing the right faith. And when the solitary brown man spoke up for his faith, he firmly believed that he was fighting for the right God. They were as sure about their faith as I am about mine. They knew they were right about their faith as much as I, a Catholic, know that I am right, and just the same way that Buddhists, Muslims and Protestants know they are right. But no matter how you look at it, it’s simply impossible for all of us to be right.
What if I’ve been practicing the wrong faith all along? What if my God is not the really the one true God? What if the right faith is one that was already practiced by my pagan ancestors?
These questions remind me of my college days in the University of the
In the sculpture atop the cover of the Manunggul Jar, both the passenger and the oarsman are facing forward. But when my turn comes, I’d ride the canoe facing the oarsman.
“Why do you prefer to ride the canoe backwards?” the mystical oarsman, the one tasked to ferry the dead to their final resting place, would ask.
“Why not? There isn’t much for me to look forward to, is there? The heaven I always wanted to reach is nowhere near where we’re headed.”
“Mortal, your heaven is nowhere. It does not exist.”
“Right. But my life did. It was there, far behind you, where we came from. I can’t see it from here. But I can imagine it. I can reminisce. I can’t do that if I’m facing the same direction that this canoe moves in. it’s difficult when the inescapable emptiness that lay ahead is all that you can see.”
“So you prefer to see the emptiness behind me?”
“It is not empty.”
The oarsman would let out a dismissive snort.
“You are very much like him,” he’d say.
“Like whom?”
“The man who died after being nailed to a cross. He was the first passenger who opted to face me throughout the journey. Most of the passengers were quiet and traumatized. They were often too shocked to speak to me or contradict my orders. If I told them to face forward, they’d simply follow. But you’re not like them. You are like him. I think his name was Yeshua. Or Yeshu. I’m not really sure.”
“Yeshua?”
“Have you heard of him?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not surprised. Many of you did.
“Like you, he preferred to ride the canoe backwards because he was concerned about the world he’s leaving behind. He said he could not take the final journey without knowing what happened to his mother and that other woman who stood by her as she watched him die. In his life, he had made many people put their faith in him. He made them all believe that he was their savior. But as he sat helplessly in the canoe, he slowly and painfully realized that he could never save them all. He could never save any of them.”
“Save them from what?” I’d think I already know the answer but still ask anyway.
“I don’t know. The man talked about a lot of fantasies. He said that he was the Son of God, that his death would bring salvation to mankind. He said this journey to the afterlife could not be real because the prophecies never said anything about this. I told the fool he wasn’t the first one to die because of false prophecies. But the man was in a state of total denial. He told me about all the miracles he performed, including the resurrection of a dead man. But if he did see a man rise from his grave, he certainly wasn’t the first person to mistake his dream for reality. And even if that resurrection was real, it happened not because of him but because of the intervention of a divine being far more powerful than him or his imaginary father-God.”
“Did he find out what happened to his mother and the other woman? To his followers?”
“I don’t know.” A cruel smirk would form on the face of the oarsman. “But he kept asking me, kept looking past me to see if someone miraculously followed us to rescue him. And when he got tired of asking and looking…he prayed. Can you imagine that? He prayed to his father-God. And when we reached his resting place, he wept, shed more tears than any passenger of mine ever did. His prayers were never answered. And all his followers’ prayers, whether to him or to his father-God, will never be answered. Yet many mortals like you kept on praying. All of you kept on praying.
“If you prefer to face me while you ride this canoe, you are free to do so. If you strongly desire to reminisce, I will not stop you. But the more you keep yourself attached to your past, the longer you shall weep when this journey ends.”
“Do you think I can find him there? In the resting place?”
“Why do you all keep asking that question? I don’t know. But if you find him, what good will it do you? He’s not the Son of God he promised himself to be. He was never your savior. He couldn’t even save himself.”
“He was the source of my strength.”
“The imaginary source of your strength,” the oarsman would correct me. “You’re not the only person who thought of him as a source of strength, though. I once ferried a girl who lived in a town called Zara. She was glad to know that Yeshua wasn’t really the true Son of God. She was one of the many children raped and massacred by the soldiers who were on their way to conquer Yeshua’s country of birth for the glory of his father-God. If you want to credit him for your strength, shouldn’t you also credit him for the atrocities his followers committed?”
“Oarsman, what’s the point in being rational when you’re already dead? Whether I’m right or wrong, I’d still want to see him. Because that’s how I feel. And no matter how irrational that feeling is, I can’t make it go away.
“Before I died, I had already empathized with Yeshua, Yeshu or Jesus, as we called him, because it was difficult for a son of God to endure what he had to endure. And now that I know that he was a mere mortal like me, that he was just as vulnerable as I have been all this time, shouldn’t I empathize with him more? Doesn’t that make his sufferings far more painful than we Christians thought they were? Again, I don’t care what the answers are. I feel that I need to comfort him, tell him that his sacrifices did not go to naught. At this point in my existence, my feelings are all that I have to follow.”
That would be enough to silence the oarsman. But the smirk on his face would remain, Because he knew, as much as I did, that at the end of the journey, I would weep.
I wonder how many generations of ancient Filipinos believed in that mystical oarsman. And when they thought of riding that canoe, did they ever think that their version of the afterlife would be unknown to most of their descendants and that the few who’d remember it would only view it as an eccentricity of our dark past?
What about us? 1,000 years from now, what will our descendants believe? Will they think of the cross as an eccentricity of their dark past –our bright present? And if their faith shall no longer be the same as ours, will they still pray for us? Or shall we be forgotten the same way we’ve forgotten our pagan forefathers?
Will I ever get to heaven? Will heaven turn out to be the kingdom of the God I know or will I be greeted by gods and goddesses I never heard about when I get there? Is faith the one thing that could bring salvation to my soul? I don’t have all the answers. What I do know, however is that once upon a time, all inhabitants of this earth were pagans. And if getting to heaven is just a matter of practicing the right faith and believing in the right God, then all of us have a pagan ancestor burning somewhere in hell. And if anyone of us ascends to heaven, he/she will certainly have a reason to visit hell, whatever forms heaven and hell may take.
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