Dark and desolate

It's hard to say you've reached rock bottom - perhaps even foolish - if you take a look around you and see that you're tucked away safely within the shelter of your family; you are nourished three times a day, or more; and, still able to indulge yourself with some material wants using your own personal cash.

That is not poverty. That doesn't sound desperate. If anything, it looks to be a very appealing situation for any decent-minded person.

Yet it is precisely this that makes things all the more tragic.

It is for this reason that I shall not fill these pages with agony, for what use is it to me to have another space drenched in thoughts of self-pity. I shall not mope and cry foul for it only amplifies the grief there is in knowing that the world moves on, unmindful of what I feel or think.

No. I shall move on just as the world does. And I shall hope that somehow all this will come to an end before I disappear in the hollow abyss that resides in me. When that happens, then we'll never really know.

Continue Reading »

What is wrong with this picture?

The sheriff who got beat up for doing his job (overzealous or not) apologizes to the lady mayor who did the beating.

The lady mayor who committed violence under the pretense that she was actually trying to prevent violence gets praised. The vice-mayor, who is her father, backs her up, curses in public and gives the media the dirty finger. His son, a city councilor and president of the city's league of barangays, gets his group to throw its support behind his sister, and also gives the dirty finger for all the world to see.

A bishop (among several) has the gall to specifically request for a Montero as a birthday gift under the guise that he will use it in serving the poor. And the Church says it is standing by its bishops' claims.

Meanwhile, another priest is accused of rape.

The Church condemns gay marriage, while the rest of the world celebrate a US State's legalization of the same thing. You can be gay, the Church says, just don't have sex. And yes, that means no marriage too. And their definition of gay is?

Now you have the PCSO with intelligence funds bigger than that of the country's armed forces. It is handled by a person who appears to be not even intelligent enough to know what intelligence funds are supposedly for. The people hurling the most devastating of questions are the likes of Enrile and Lacson - not exactly of the heroic and corrupt-free pedigree.


Pilipinas, I love you but you pain me so.

Continue Reading »

The lady mayor can punch. Can we all take the hit?

I cannot help but feel incensed at the sight of Mayor Sara Duterte hitting another public servant for all the world to see. I understand it is quite a polarizing issue, but I want to weigh in on the matter.

There are basically two sides to the debate. There are the people who laud the incident by focusing on why Mayor Duterte went on to do what she did. And then there are those who condemn it by looking at the incident itself, regardless of why or what compelled her to do it.

I belong to the latter group.

I would not want to speculate on what Mayor Duterte's true intentions were. She could be telling the truth, or she may very well have had selfish aims in wanting to be there, in the first place. I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. That said, I (together with a lot of people, it seems) still think she was way out of line when she assaulted the sheriff.

Mayor Duterte may have had all the right intentions in mind when she supposedly asked for a 2-hour delay in the demolition. She may have had the right to feel irate at the refusal of the sheriff to heed her request. But nothing - absolutely nothing - excuses her actions during and after that incident.

Assisted by two of her personal guards (who could be clearly seen holding the hapless sheriff in place), she went on to humiliate and viciously attack another human being for doing simply what was essentially his job. To make matters worse, she would go on to make statements after that act of thuggery which not only reeked of arrogance, but of this sense of god-like omnipotence. She remained unremorseful and even proceeded to make more threats against those she deemed could move against her. Budget cuts to the judiciary, for one.

At the end of the day, all I see in Mayor Duterte is hypocrisy. She claims she wanted to have been there when the demolition started in order to prevent violence. But what does she do the moment she arrives, knowing that she did not get her way? She resorts to violence.

Let me repeat that: she resorted to violence because she failed to prevent violence.

Continue Reading »

Pause. rewind. play. erase.

In one test I took recently, I came face-to-face with a question that caused me to pause for quite a while. Not because I didn't know what to make of it. Not because I had no answer to give - in fact, I had one ready right from the get-go. It just suddenly occurred to me that I wasn't too sure anymore if I still actually believed what I thought was my confident answer to the rather innocuous question: What do you think is the most important thing in a job?

You'd agree with me that it's got to be one of the easiest things to answer. There are tons of ways to do so, and every one of them would be just as nice to hear. Each one socially acceptable. Each one makes you the good guy who deserves nothing but the very best.

So what caused my hesitation?

Well, to explain that I'll have to give you my answer:

...its public service component. The most important thing in a job is the way it helps and serves people. Not the person doing the job, but those around him. Every job has to have some way which puts the person engaged in it in a position to help others. Especially those who have less. A job has to go beyond earning money. Money that would buy us the things we want. Things that we'll never really get enough of. A person who's in it for the money will never be satisfied; always ending up empty or at least incomplete.

I used to think I wholeheartedly believe in this statement, this principle, without a hint of tentativeness or hesitation. I not only believed in it, I lived my life by it.

Unfortunately, I went through a phase that successfully led me astray and caused me to forget it almost completely. And it is only now that I am trying to pick things up and piece together what was once a solid, unshakable belief in the pursuit of my dreams and the manner I am willing to go about it.

I am not yet out of that maze that carried me away. And that is why I hesitated.

Continue Reading »

Message received

Earlier today, I received a text message from my best bud, M, who lives back in Naga with his folks and youngest brother. It spoke of despair and desperation.

What struck me about it was that I had seen it before. The same kind of message, saying the same kind of things. It was all too familiar. It had been in my phone before. Except that, that other time, I was the one who made it. I just didn't send it out.

For some reason, M and I are in the same boat, standing in the same crossroad. Not clear what we're doing there in the first place, and completely clueless where exactly we are headed. We are both in between jobs. We both feel capable of doing a lot - especially a lot of good - but we're not quite sure why we haven't been in those situations yet where we can truly show the world what we're capable of. We are fighting off our own personal demons. And all this time, we're both trying to maintain a calm and stable disposition so that those people around us do not feel alarmed or worry about our well-being.

The similarities are truly uncanny. This, considering the great distance that separates us and the different circumstances we find ourselves in.

I allowed the text to simmer inside my head. I thought about what it meant, and what I should say in reply. I decided to tell him the truth.

I said we were both confronting the same problems. Part of me wished that it was enough to assuage his feelings. Of course, I knew better. I wanted to tell him I was in no better position to really impart some wise advice, considering my predicament. But I just ended up describing to him how I was doing and how I was trying to cope with whatever was being thrown at me. And I hoped it was enough.


----------------------------------------------


It has been an exhausting journey, with all the ups and downs. And much as I would like to say I know there is something good ahead of me, I can't. At least not right now. My well of good vibes is empty, and I haven't a clue how to fill it up again. Not right now.

Sometimes - and I know this sounds creepy and all - I think the reason I can't see myself 5-10 years from now is that I may not be around that long anyway. But then I look back and I realize this is how I've felt my entire life. Surely some sense of comfort can be taken from that.

Continue Reading »