Kris Aquino, Miss Metaphysics

Even if she’s now in Los Angeles wallowing in self-pity and wondering what the fuss is really all about when all she did was love married men and fight for that love, this soap opera-loving country cannot get enough of Kris Aquino.

The youngest daughter of Ninoy Aquino, so like her father, but in strange ways, can make us all sit up and take notice while she cries copious tears on nationwide TV over a destined-to-be-doomed love affair.

If you were exploring caves in Batanes in the last few days or caught in the vortex of a typhoon while Kris was into her latest melodrama, I suggest you pick up the papers and watch television. The story is too long and complicated to write here.

Unbeknownst to us, Kris has actually contributed to the sum total of Filipino intelligence via two of the friendliest of communication media – television and gossip.

Toto and Inday, you now know the meaning of metaphysics with the all-encompassing question uttered by Kris in "The Buzz": "In loving Joey, there are no questions asked. But while I’m loving him, can I still afford to love myself?"

This question would floor Aristotle, that great philosopher who first introduced meta ta physika sometime in 350 B.C. which we now know as metaphysics – that branch of social philosophy that "deals with the nature of being and reality, essence, truth, space, time, causation, essence of God as well as the origin and purpose of the universe."

Indeed, while loving a person, can you still afford to love yourself? Only a pure and true romantic can totally forget herself in her loving, which is the case of Kris. And in her loving and forgetting, she sucked us all into her telenovela.

We watch transfixed as Kris’ encounter with Joey’s wife Alma shames her well-bred, respected, discreet and extremely wealthy family. As if the beginnings of her affair have not done that already, the Alma encounter and the succeeding dramatics must have taken the goat of the Cojuangcos and the Aquinos. Now, Kris is on her self-imposed exile masquerading as exercises in "finding myself." She is that lost.

The lesson on metaphysics vis-à-vis love here is that forgetting yourself while loving someone can cause pain not for the lover but for the other loved ones who cannot stomach seeing their darling relative turned into a national pastime.

Should Kris be blamed for loving with her heart and not with her mind? Should Kris put family and reputation above love? Kris may also ask: Why does "true love" demand so much sacrifice? What is the meaning of true love? What is in married men that make them attractive? Should love’s will be done?

Those questions, dear Aristotle, we present to you for dissection for until those are answered, we Filipinos will forever be bound under the spell of metaphysics fans (they probably don’t know it) like Kris Aquino and her like-minded cohorts in showbiz.

Though we are getting lessons in metaphysics through heart-rending questions from TV stars and their telenovela lives, sometimes its just best to give up on the lessons and concentrate on better things in life like looking for food to put on the table.

But they just won't let us go. Take Mr. Metaphysics himself, Boy Abunda, who once asked TinTin Bersola the mind-boggling question during the coverage of Rico

Yan’s wake, "Bakit kaya tumutulo ang luha natin pag tayo ay nalulungkot? (Why do our tears fall when we are saddened)?"

Bersola, practical TV host that she is, answered Boy’s question with a mawkish sniff, "Sagutin mo ang sarili mong tanong, Boy (Answer your own question, Boy)." Now, that’s our kind of philosopher.

We hope Kris would have the answer to her questions when she gets back after which we Filipinos can collectively move on to our next lesson in social philosophy, which is axiology that deals with the problems of values. Maybe Kris can teach us the finer points of axiology’s two divisions which are ethics and aesthetics.

Until Kris’ next lover, then.