fresh snow after winter’s first snowfall.  night runs with my brothers.  long drives alone, with my favorite cds.  stargazing.  sleeping in and lounging on weekends.  the smell of right-out-of-the-dryer laundry.  a baby’s chuckle.  movies and popcorn with dad.  quick trips to the supermarket.  driving mom to work.  making my little sister laugh.  a nice soft fluffy comforter for sleeping in a cold room.  hot chocolate.  having the train doors open for you.  catching the last train home.  an unexpected phone call from a very good friend.  having at least one very good friend.  chance encounters, chance conversations.  mentors.  learning.  baking cookies that everyone likes.  the peace and quiet of walking alone, christmas lights lining your road.  a book that’s hard to put down.  uninterrupted and easy sleep.  a pat on the back.  a smile.  airports.  plane rides.  really good chocolate milk.  really good chocolate shared with someone.  beautiful photographs.  the perfect shade of blue, or green.  coming home.  being home.  being with C.

-

I need to remind myself of these things, especially during these times.

It seems wrong, to keep silent and not write anything about the massacre, but it also feels wrong to write about it without being able to do anything about it.  What can I do?  What can we do?

In the short six months that I’ve been back home, frustrations and disappointments have crept up, along with inspiration, pride, and hope.  We all do what we can, and the little things add up to form the big changes, but there is the nagging feeling that there is so much more to be done, and the frustrating feeling upon figuring out how to do them.

It breaks my heart everytime I think of how much power the government has to do good in this country, and how far it is at the opposite end of the spectrum of doing good.  From the Filipinos it exports and does not protect, the children it does not educate, the sick people it does not heal, to the social services it does not substantially provide.  The democracy it does not uphold.

I do what I do at work and find meaning in it.  But at the end of the day, there are stories in this country that are left to unravel on their own, with much deprivation and disempowerment.  Stories that need happy endings.  Stories of which I would like to be a positive part.  Stories that are untold, but are lived every single day, by the person sleeping on the sidewalk, the children tapping your car window at the stoplight, the jeepney driver who stops in the middle of the road to get an additional seven pesos worth of decent living.

What can I do?  What can we do?

The elections are coming up, and it seems such a gargantuan task to choose my president and cast my vote.  More so, it seems a much bigger task to campaign for a possible president and really influence the turnout of May 2010.  What can I do?  What can we do?  Yes, there are voters workshops to attend and to eventually conduct, there are debates with friends and colleagues on the presidentiables and issues, there are the little things that add up to the big changes.  But what happens if the machine that adds these all up is tweaked by the uglier force of corruption and greed?  We hope for the best, and while Hope keeps the dream of a better Philippines alive, it is never enough.  I want to do more than hope.

For most developed countries, citizens travel and live abroad and it is considered a privilege. A wild adventure for many; a search for self for some. Whatever the agenda, citizens of developed countries fly away from their homeland with excitement. They leave by their own free will and they come home whenever they wish.

The rest of the world is another story.

We Filipinos, for example, leave our homeland for many reasons. The lucky ones leave for the rich learning that traveling provides. Other fortunate souls leave for better education or training, some leave for a change of lifestyle, and then there are those who leave to survive. Unfortunately, the reason one might have for leaving the country is largely dependent on one’s social and economic status in our unjustly stratified nation.

It is one of the greatest ironies of our culture: family members living oceans away from each other and elementary textbooks saying that Filipino families are very closely knit. Yes, the closeness can exist despite the distance but one would think that it wouldn’t seem so natural for Filipinos to leave their families behind. The Philippines becomes a distant home to uprooted Filipinos, and after many years of being away, that distant home becomes a vague concept that departs from the world of reality and remains in the realm of nostalgia and memory.

Filipino doctors signing up to be nurses, Filipino teachers selling cosmetics, Filipino engineers securing hotel lobbies – it seems that our current migration pattern is not only taking our people away from their families, but it is also taking them away from themselves, from what they set out to accomplish in life. Filipinos are transforming themselves just to get out and stay out of the country. Worse, it is the very Filipinos who are much needed in the country who are leaving.

How have we as a people allowed ourselves and our nation to come to this?

The government and its enthusiasm in exporting Filipinos in exchange for remittances is an easy cop out. It is true that they are worthy of such blame, but we should also be pointing our fingers to ourselves. It is our country, our homeland, and yet we turn our backs on it now that things are not so sunny and abundant. We have become too complacent – perhaps too exhausted – to exert the mental, emotional and physical energy to really own our country and take care of it and improve it.

But let us remember that we Filipinos are a people of passion and conviction. We are capable of believing in something greater than ourselves, beyond ourselves, and we stand up and fight for our beliefs. We Filipinos have innovative minds, diligent hands, and big loving hearts. We can lead and we can nurture. We are versatile people.

We just need to step back, re-evaluate, and give more, sacrifice more, go above and beyond ourselves. Wisely direct our passion and conviction towards rightfully electing a trustworthy government, truly believe that our country can still get better, welcome and accept foreign help without condoning exploitation of our people and resources, and nurture what is left of our youth’s idealism. We need to accomplish all these with commitment – unfailing, wholehearted, steadfast commitment. We need to have a firm grip around hope. Because it will be hard and it won’t come easy.

We must take it upon ourselves to make the Philippines the sort of country we want to have. We can help remind and inspire one another to be better and wiser citizens. We can also generate and support innovative ideas sprouting in different communities all over the country. In certain places in the Philippines, passionate and dedicated individuals are rising up, heeding the call to serve their fellow Filipinos. Be it for equality in health care, technological advancement in agriculture or the improvement of our small sari-sari stores, there are outstanding individuals pursuing goals bigger than themselves. These individuals – social entrepreneurs as Ashoka would call them – spend their days and nights working towards a better Philippines. With the wisdom of the old and the promise of the new, each one of us can contribute and do our part in rebuilding our country.

We were truly a great nation once – our neighboring countries looked to us for ideas and models to improve their own economies. We cannot say the same thing today, but that doesn’t mean that we should just leave. We are responsible for our country and where it is heading. It is not just the government or the elite members of society who have the power to change things for the better. All of us Filipinos are responsible for that change and we are capable of making it. We cannot expect for our country to take care of us if we are not willing to care for it first.

This is not a commentary on whether the Filipino diaspora is right or wrong. It is neither entirely one nor the other. But we can take action now to rebuild our country and ourselves as its people. We can take little steps forward until we are home again.

*This was published last November in Inquirer.net.  Might be worthwhile to share it here.  You can view the original article here.

There are very short periods of time when I’m not really here. Mostly, it’s when I’m walking from one point to the next, passing in between people rushing, walking leisurely, and standing still.  The other day, I ordered my regular drink from Starbucks - or what was my regular drink back in San Francisco - and at the first sip, I completely disappeared from Ayala Avenue and was somewhere in between Sansome and Bush.

It is a little bit peculiar, this sporadic feeling of walking the invisible streets of elsewhere.  Perhaps we take with us wherever we’ve been, and Home, slowly but surely, becomes not a place, but something that exists within us, something we keep inside our very selves wherever we go.

A typical Saturday morning in a popular restaurant chain in Makati: to my front, left, and right, a group of friends - one group seems to be having their regular breakfast meet up, while the other two seem to be coming from a sleepless night of partying. Diagonally to my left, a pair of Caucasian females, talking over coffee and pancakes. At nine on a weekend morning, the place is curiously alive with stories and sleepy remembrances of a fun night. I sip my milkshake - the perfect breakfast for a morning to be spent alone. This is the first time I’ve done this here - go out by myself to find my own spot - and I must say that I am liking it so far.

Earlier on the train, a family of four was struggling to stay on their feet while the train was moving. I gave up my seat to the mother and her infant, and the father stood right in front of them, groping for something to hold on to as the train busied itself with its stops, and a young girl about the age of seven or eight had her arms wrapped around her dad’s waist, looking like she’s holding on for dear life. They were clearly not regular train riders, and they were doing their very best not to stumble and fall on the other passengers. Another stop, and the infant’s milk bottle falls to the train floor, and the family laughs. Their family is together, on an ordinary Saturday morning, and they couldn’t ask for anything more. I smile with them, as the father picks up the bottle and the mother looks up at me with a simple joy in her eyes.

And then suddenly, back to breakfast, from my diagonal left, a little head emerges, stares at me, and as soon as I meet his gaze, he pops his head back in to hiding. I indulge the little blond boy in his game of peekaboo. He must be bored out of his mind, as his mother’s friend laughs quite hysterically across him. The exchange of innocent heartfelt smiles with the little boy makes my breakfast a lot more satisfying.

I am still processing all of it.

I stood, under the fierce heat of the sun, for about three hours, waiting for her to pass by.  I can’t say I knew exactly why I was there.  There was the thought of democracy, of her symbolizing a right that seems to be so elusive to our people.  Mostly, it was that thought that made me stand there.  And then that song played, “Ibon mang may layang lumipad…”  That song which I was singing when I was three.  I sang, in the middle of Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas, and I sang wholeheartedly, wholemindedly.  There were uncertain tears welling up inside, but they were too uncertain to fall.  What was I going to cry about?  I’ve cried about the country many times before, but there was something happy and sad about the whole experience.  Bittersweet.

Early tomorrow morning, from 1 to 7 am, I will be volunteering at the Manila Cathedral.  I never met the late President Aquino.  I was too young to listen to her speeches, too young to really understand what the woman in the yellow dress meant.  But this whole affair moves me, makes me want to push myself further to see beyond the uncertainty, beyond the color, beyond the mass sentiment.  I want to experience all that I can, and discover the meaning of all this for myself.

—-post-volunteering stint—-

The point is: she could have said no, and she didn’t.  Whatever the late President Corazon Aquino meant to each one of us, the position she filled was optional for her; it wasn’t a life or death situation for her or her family – it was a life or death situation for the country.  And she made the less safe choice, the selfless decision to run for President, and make whatever was left of our democracy flourish.

My volunteering stint at the Cathedral wasn’t as successful as I hoped it would be, but it was an experience nonetheless.  While I was hoping to discover the meaning of all of this after the early morning hours spent amidst the Filipino people mourning the late President’s death, the realization hit me en route to the Cathedral.  President Aquino took up arms because while it wasn’t the easiest thing for her, it was simply the right thing to do.  It is my hope that we make our own decisions with as much honor and integrity.

Rest in peace, Mrs. President Aquino.  Maraming salamat.