This is what growing up looked like

I’m pretty sure we won’t have another week like last week again. Maybe not for a very long time—not until we find another national hero who has the ability to unite a whole nation scattered on over 7,000 islands. I’m almost sad to go back to regular programming, as television stations say after their regular schedules have had to be interrupted, because the first week of August was both exhilarating and enlightening. Then again, after last week, perhaps there really is no going back to regular programming.

I guess you can say that I’m still on a Cory high. Or, better yet, that the spirit of the Edsa Revolution, which I didn’t completely understand when I was eight years old, and not even when I was rallying at the Edsa Shrine for Erap to resign, has finally reached me. Now, I have a better idea of how to get the Filipinos, especially those who choose to remain silent, going for the gold. Ironically, Imelda Marcos was right: We do want the true, the good, and the beautiful. (Of course, Imelda wasn’t many of the above, but that’s another story.)

 Losing a beloved leader, one whose legacy shone even brighter after her passing, has highlighted the fact that it is time for our generation to step up. I was going to see who Cory would endorse for the 2010 presidential, knowing her to be a principled woman. Now that we won’t have that, I’m clueless as to who to vote for. Then again, the time has come for me to think for myself, to trust my own judgment, hopefully, having learned from the people I chose to be my examples.

So, this is what growing up looks like.

Our icons have been dying on us one by one. This year alone, we have said goodbye to so many: David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and, more recently, producer/director/writer John Hughes. In the Philippines, we’ve said goodbye to Cory Aquino and the National Artist Awards. (The last one’s a joke, though half-meant, of course.)

 It is interesting that Cory’s death triggered a stream of memories among my generation. My Facebook account alone was taken over by a wave of 1980s nostalgia. Many of my friends changed their profile pictures to childhood photos circa 1980s, many of them at Edsa, carrying yellow banners or that big Laban sign. For once, I felt envy that they had been at the revolution. Others posted notes recalling their Edsa stories. One remembering getting lost in the crowd, getting picked up by burly men, and being put on the stage while someone was giving a speech, so her parents could find her. Her parents were nationalistic, I suppose, because she recalled putting Freddie Aguilar as one of her favorite singers in the autograph books that were so popular back then, and she and her brother being asked to sing “Anak” in front of visiting friends and family.

We thought we had forgotten, but apparently not.

Now, juxtapose these recollections with the films of John Hughes, and the genius with which he captured the spirit of the 1980s and the agony and ecstasy of the teenage years. Think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink.

This is what growing up looked like.

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