The Death of Dreams, The Birth of Nightmares

The future is only as beautiful as the dreams of today’s children. All the comforts we relish today, all the freedoms we enjoy, all the wonderful technologies that keep us alive and driven to move farther forward, they are all legacies of the children who dared to dream big long before were born. And whatever beautiful breakthroughs shall be here tomorrow only depends on what today’s generation can come up with.

When I see pictures of Rome, Athens and the pyramids of Egypt, I can’t help but think of the dreams had by the children who grew up to build those cities and structures. When I see pictures of the New York Skyline, I think of the impoverished European immigrants who sailed across the Atlantic hundreds of years ago, most of them carrying nothing with them but their dreams and their promising children. When I see pictures of the Great Wall, the remarkable Chinese architecture and calligraphy, and the elegant clothes worn by the Chinese as early as 2,000 years ago, I think of the ancient Chinese children who dreamed of refining their own culture. When I see the filth of the Philippines, the beggars on Manila’s stinking streets, the murky waters of the Pasig River, the anarchic way by which illegal vendors occupy the two lanes of Commonwealth Avenue at night (until the Metro Manila Development Authority acted on the matter), the sewers that are always clogged, the coverless manholes, the potholed roads, the agony of commuting when the streets are flooded, the garbage on the streets, the garbage on the escalator steps of the MRT (Metropolital Rail Transit) Ayala station (which reveal that even the highly educated professionals in the country’s central business district have the shamelessness to throw away their trash anywhere), animal carcasses flattened in the middle of highways, the shanties under the bridges, and the 10 to 20 children who cram themselves in one small tricycle just to get a cheap ride to school everyday, I can’t help but think of the beautiful dreams the ancient Filipino children never had.

Albert Einstein taught himself calculus at the age of 12. That must have been in 1891. And in that year, how many Filipino twelve-year-olds were dreaming Einstein’s dreams? I doubt if any of them even heard the term calculus. If the legend is true, the legendary apple must have fallen from a tree and onto Isaac Newton’s head sometime in the 1660’s , when the man responsible for the Laws of Motion, Calculus, Universal Law of Gravitation and the Particle Theory of Light was still in his early twenties. In that period, how many twenty-something Filipinos had heard of Johannes Kepler, Nicolus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei –the giants on whose shoulders Isaac Newton stood? In the 19th century, when the likes of Thomas Edison and James Watt were dreaming of marvelous inventions, how many Filipino children were familiar with the concept of invention? Since that was a time when there were no public schools in the country, zero should be a safe answer. From 1521—the year in which the Spaniards supposedly discovered the Philippines—to 1896—the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution—what dreams did Filipino children dream? Aside from becoming corrupt politicians and wealthy feudal lords, I doubt if there’s anything bigger for those poor children to dream.

The painful truth is that the children of pre-20th-century Philippines never had the chance to dream most of the glorious dreams we have today, let alone the dreams of their western counterparts. But that truth is only painful in the sense that there is not much for us to cherish as a nation today as a result of our ancestors’ limited dreams. Had they had bigger dreams, perhaps their frustrations had also been much more painful. Even the dreamiest child would run out of good dreams if everyday of his life, the only kind of success he sees is that of corrupt officials and feudal lords. No wonder most of yesterday’s Filipino children either grew up slowly killing their beautiful dreams or nurturing the evil ones. No wonder the country is what it is right now.

There is still hope, though. Because compared to the people of wealthier nations around us, the Filipinos have been free to dream big for a very short time. Someday the dreams of today’s children may also be realized. Someday this nation may also be great. Maybe. Depending on what dreams our children today have. But what dreams do today’s children have? They dream of becoming the people they admire. But whom can they admire? Whom can they follow?

It’s bad enough that we do not have an Isaac Newton or an Albert Einstein for our children to look up to. The situation even gets worse when corrupt officials bask in the spotlight, their success broadcast on national television, all for our children to see, while our great scientists and artists fade quietly into their deaths, and into oblivion.

Not too long ago, Jun Lozada testified in the Philippine Senate against Comelec (Commission on Elections) Chairman Benjamin Abalos. The former alleged that the contract to establish a National Broadband Network (NBN) for the Philippine government was awarded to a company called ZTE because of the latter’s sinister machinations. As the senate hearings went on, several columnists pointed out that the hearings were an exercise in futility, that everything Lozada had done would lead to nothing but failure. And they were right.

A few years ago, a few enlightened congressmen moved to impeach President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after an audio record of her phone conversation with Virgilio Garcillano (a COMELEC commissioner) was found. The conversation supposedly occurred during the course of counting of ballots in 2004-when Ms. Arroyo was among the presidential candidates, which was unforgivably unethical. Many journalists predicted that the impeachment attempt would be a failure. And they were right. The congressmen involved in the impeachment attempt failed.

In 2003, surveys revealed that former Senator Raul Roco was the leading candidate for President. By May 2004, when the elections were held, he was dead last among five candidates. The years 2003-2004 were among the saddest for Filipino idealists. That was a time when even the idealist supporters of Raul Roco swung towards Gloria Macapagal Arroyo because they feared that Roco did not have the political machinery to defeat Fernando Poe Jr.—a popular movie actor with absolutely no experience in governance. Many of them claimed that a vote for Roco would go to waste because he would certainly not win. And in a way, they were right. Roco lost.

Now I’m compelled to think of the heroes who fought for our freedom more than a hundred years ago. Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Antonio Luna, Gregorio Del Pilar and Apolinario Mabini dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom. Did the prospect of failure ever bother them? I’m sure it did. And I’m sure during the turbulent days of the revolution, not a few pragmatists advised them to throw away their dreams because they were bound to fail anyway. And the pragmatists were right. Jose Rizal was executed by the Spaniards. Bonifacio and Luna were executed by their own comrades. Emilio Jacinto died of Malaria while leading a group of brave Filipino soldiers in Laguna during the Philippine-American war. Gregorio Del Pilar was killed by the Americans in battle. Apolinario Mabini was exiled. Should they have thrown away their dreams before they even attempted to realize them?

What if the Philippine Revolution never happened? What if Jose Rizal never wrote Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (the two novels that sparked the revolution)? What would we tell our children when they ask about Filipino heroes? Who would be there for our children to emulate? I know many of our heroes failed. But I am grateful for their attempts. Because had they not done anything at all, I would have grown up feeling absolutely no sense of national pride. We all would have grown up feeling no sense of national pride. They failed. But their failures matter. Because of them, there are still a few good men who work honestly and efficiently in government. Because of them, there are still soldiers who die for their country. Because of them, there are still teachers who teach in far-flung barrios, notwithstanding the threats of malaria and abductions by rebels. Because of them, there are still poorly paid Filipino judges who make the justice system work. Because of these failed men, there are still impoverished cops who run after the thugs, and not with the thugs. Because of them, there are still patriotic entrepreneurs who still continue to invest here instead of bringing their money to another country. Because of them, there are Filipino children today who still DREAM of becoming good men and women tomorrow.

The hearings on the NBN scandal and the impeachment attempt against President Arroyo in 2005 may have been failures. But these are failures that will forever matter. These failures will inspire. Because of them, tomorrow will never run out of good men and women who will take a stand against corruption.

Sometimes, when I think of witnesses like Jun Lozada and the congressmen who tried to impeach President Arroyo, I can’t help but compare them to test pilots. When a test pilot climbs into the cockpit of a newly designed aircraft, he doesn’t know if he’s going to survive the flight or not. But he’ll certainly fly the damn thing. When the flight is successful and the pilot lives, everyone below celebrates and can’t wait to rub shoulders with triumphant pilot. But if the aircraft explodes in midair, even if it’s not the pilot’s fault, the people below—the engineers, mechanics, financiers and spectators—would do anything to dissociate themselves from the failed flight attempt and the heroic pilot’s name would end up buried in oblivion. Yet, no matter how many test pilots die, the world never seems to run out of them. Because as long as children can see the planes that fly, there will be children who’d dream of flying. As long as they can see the courage of the test pilots, they would have a reason to be courageous themselves. As long as children can see heroes, there will be children who’d dream of becoming heroes. When a plane crashes down, the right thing to do is not to quit flying but to build a better plane. When heroes fail, the right thing to do is not to stop being good but to be better.

Which reminds me of Raul Roco’s defeat in the 2004 presidential elections. When Roco’s supporters voted for Arroyo just to avoid a Fernando Poe Jr. presidency, they forgot two important things about voting. First, voting is not just a matter of letting someone win a government post. To vote is to take a stand and let that stand be counted. Second, why, in the first place, were there so many people eager to vote Fernando Poe Jr. for president? (I don’t mind the fact that he’s an actor. What I can’t stand is the thought that many of those people who voted for him did so because he was a popular actor.) It’s because so many children of yesterday grew up dreaming the wrong dreams. If none of us could stand for our right dreams today, if all of us would be afraid to fail, if none of us could vote for the candidate we truly believe in, how can we expect the next generation to have better dreams?

When we talk of dreamers, we should not only remember the ones who were gifts to mankind. Because the worst atrocities in human history were committed by the most passionate dreamers. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. What do these men have in common aside from unspeakable terror upon mankind? They all lived in environments wherein the ultimate form of success was either victory in war or triumph in politics. And being the passionate dreamers that they were, they aimed for nothing less than the ultimate success.

When the Roco supporters opted not to vote for him because they feared that his political machinery was too weak compared to those of Arroyo and Poe, they were essentially handing the gift of success to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a success that the children of today would also want to have someday. None of those voters should be surprised then if the next generation produces ten new Gloria Arroyos and zero Raul Rocos. When we silence all the Jun Lozadas, we let the corrupt rule our land with impunity. And tomorrow, no one should be surprised if the innocent children become the corrupt rulers of the land.

I wonder what kind of dreams Osama Bin Laden had when he was a child. Maybe the young Bin Laden had often heard about the adventures of Francis Drake, the British pirate who was knighted for sinking Spanish ships--many of them merchant vessels manned by helpless, impoverished civilians—and despite the fact that he had raided African villages to capture slaves he would later sell to his wealthy compatriots. Maybe the little Osama thought that if a British pirate who had brutally killed innocent sailors and enslaved poor African villagers could be knighted, his own acts of terrorism might also compel the world to eventually address him someday as Sir Osama.

I wonder what kind of dreams the children of Iraq had when the country was under Saddam Hussein. Maybe some of them were thinking, “If a man like Saddam could be called a President, I might as well be the next Saddam.” I wonder what the children of today’s Iraq are dreaming. Maybe some of them are saying, “If a warmonger like George W. Bush could become President of the world’s most powerful country, I might as well become the George W. Bush of my own country.” I wonder what the children of Gaza are thinking. Maybe some of them are thinking, “If those men who bomb our homes can be called soldiers, I might as well be the fiercest soldier for my people.” I wonder what the other children of Palestine are thinking. Maybe some would say, “If all those citizens of other countries couldn’t give a damn about our dreams to live in peace, why should I ever care about their own dreams?” I wonder what all the impoverished children of third world countries are thinking. Maybe some are saying, “If life can’t offer me any job that’s more fulfilling than being a rebel or a terrorist, why shouldn’t I get the best job I could have?”

Walking on the streets of Manila, I still held the empty can of cola in my hand until I could find the nearest garbage can. As I walked on, several bystanders stared at me incredulously. They must have been thinking, “Why can’t this stupid guy just dump his trash on the streets like most people do?” And I was thinking, “Why can’t I just give up my dream of having a clean Manila? How much cleaner would the city be because of one piece of trash that I refuse to dump on the street?” Sometimes, it gets really exhausting.

I hope there are more dreamers out there. Ones who are stronger, brighter and more powerful than I am. I hope there are more people out there who can show the children of today that there are good dreams to dream. I hope they would never grow tired of their own beautiful dreams.

Because when all good dreams die, the worst nightmares are born.

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.