Why I do it

Dear readers,

It has not changed even after 440 pieces — I still love to scoop a discovery made up of little bits of nature inside or outside ourselves, season it with my own observations and confusions and serving it to you weekly, on a platter laid out in the science section of the news buffet. Some of you think that I get paid doing this. Some of you think I get a kick having to weekly appear in a newspaper. Some of you think everyone is entitled to some degree of self-promotion and that this is my share.

While it seems easy for others to think of possible reasons writing a science column is so great, I would like to give you reasons for you to doubt that. First, this science column together with other science-related columns appears in a science section inside the Business section which also often includes the obituaries. It is the newspaper version of the proverbial “enigma wrapped in a blanket in a box filled with Styrofoam peanuts...” I have had many readers asking me why it is placed there and I always tell them that perhaps The STAR wants to give them the chance of finding something distilled in a bunch of unrelated stuff, which is really what science does. But I really do not know why The STAR places it there. I am as curious as you are. But I do not think it is The STAR’s fault. They were the first among newspapers to have a science section. But we as a society really do not value science as part of our culture. Beyond speeches and isolated triumphs in science departments and colleges in universities and individual research grants, science is still treated as a subject most hated, avoided or feared. The public at large is still largely in love with just politics and show business.

For those who think that having a science column gives you some kind of turbo-charged ego boost as you are made regularly accessible to subscribers and Web surfers, please know that many of my readers only accidentally find my columns in bathrooms, bus seats, as wraps for provincial “pasalubong,” or to sit on as buffer for sidewalks or wet benches. For online readers, you cannot even find my column online as easily as before. My readers keep asking me for instructions on how to find the column in the new website. I have given up asking The STAR webmasters (who never answered me) why after clicking “Science and Technology,” only the titles of the science news appears and not the columns. The science columns appear only when you click any of the science news and only at the end of the page if you ever get to finish the science news.

Another reason why I should probably not have chosen science writing is the perception of many that writing involves a mechanical movement of the pen on paper without any coordination whatsoever with what you have done with your brain which is this thing called your mind. A few years ago, when I was being asked to do another kind of job still related to the public understanding of science, the interviewer asked me, or rather revealed the contents of his own head to me by saying, “How can you know all these things when you ONLY write?” This perception is compounded by another widely perceived notion that science writing is a narration of science facts or an unabashed recital of one’s own horn in publications and accomplishments which are often irrelevant and inadequate when it comes to writing a piece for the non-scientists. In this adventure, I usually am only one column ahead of you in understanding things. I cannot deny that under the shade of the schools I went to or any of the degrees I have acquired.

With those reasons, go ahead and think that science writing in this country pays a fortune and makes one famous and feel really important. But there is a reward, indescribable and uncountable as the sea which I will tell you by way of a story. I have known of and admired this brilliant neurologist but have not met him personally. By chance a few tears ago, I found that it was him sitting by himself along the beach where I spent a few days. I approached him and asked him if he could help me with a task that would involve among other things, building a human brain exhibit. He stopped me as I spoke and asked me my name (I had forgotten to introduce myself). When I did, his face lit up and asked me if I was the crazy woman writing the science column in The STAR all these years. When I said yes, he embraced me and twirled me around. He and I started a conversation that involved being deeply grateful that we are just allowed by life to be who we are. We have not stopped having the most delicious conversations since then. Thank you, Dr. Cuanang, for letting me in your world.

Those of you who have written to me that they sensed the joy I have in my craft as they read the shadow story of the writer that accompanies my writing, you got it. Yes, I write science because it is not a job but it helps me be me. I want a me that grows to encounter things, places and most especially, probing minds whom I so seek so I can understand a bit more about myself, others and the world and share it with wonderful readers like you. There is no other reason why I write science.

So my dear readers, thank you for meeting me in this Thursday space all these years. You have allowed me to be me and that is more than I can ask for.

Merry Christmas.

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