The wind is changing

MANILA, Philippines — I watch this change from my window. My old self knows more intimately the changes of the earth. I feel it on my skin — the kind of perspiration only summer can bring. I feel it in my bones, when the weather turns damp and dreary, the bones altering in shape and size. Even the doors chronicle these changes, expanding and contracting, causing squeaking when the doors get too big for their hinges. I take a deep breath right before this change. I am not always so sure what is to come.

Many of us, if not all of us, are in some kind of suspended feeling over the recent events in our country. As writers, we do not endorse candidates on the page. We may do so in our private lives, but not here. It is our job to see the forest for the trees, the bigger picture, the greater light that we presumed we’ve gleaned from the experience of writing difficult things down. Even when we are personal, we know it will only work if it becomes general and all-encompassing. We are not writing journal entries of our feelings, sharing to the reader intimate details for the thrill of it, but finding connections between disparate things, offering our readers something to consider, to mull over… differently, offering different lenses and perspectives, like optometrists asking if this or that lens allows you to see the smallest print possible.

It would be stupid to not acknowledge that the wind has changed in our country — whether it is good or bad, we have yet to find out. We are often impatient for the long eye of history to make a judgment on such a pressing present (presidential?) moment, but we cannot speed time as much as we cannot lengthen time.

There are major differences between us Filipinos. This is nothing new, I suppose, the only new thing being that the differences divide us now more than ever before. That difference is caused by the inequality of most of our systems, from education to law to housing to employment. The advantage in the difference is always skewed to benefit the rich, and that difference is the most painful reality of all. We all suffer from whatever misadministration in government happens, but we suffer differently from each other.

That great difference makes the vulnerable even more vulnerable. The less power they have over their economy and their education, the less voice they have in the movements of power that should ultimately care for them the most. That vulnerability and lack of movement just becomes more pronounced every year, and as every year brings more danger brought about by climate change, all the more the most vulnerable are made even more vulnerable. Even I struggle to find more words to describe the urgency of the work ahead. How many times have I used the word “different”? I cannot seem to find different words for different. I have become repetitive and weak in expression.

Perhaps imagery will work better. Examples will drive home the point faster. The streets continue to be lined with beggars, with children, with the elderly, with the disabled. They write their travails on pieces of cardboard or tell you their stories in quiet voices. They have no food, no home, a relative sick and in need of medicines. My heart sorrows at knowing they have inherited this poverty over generations. The rich may think of “mana” as good things. Not for all Filipinos. Or there are the young folks waiting at the fast food drive-through selling broas or pastillas, wanting to continue their education but unable to. Can you help? Can you help? Can you help?

We’ve all been fed the line of the syndicate that operates on these streets but I can no longer seem to believe just that. These are real people with real faces and what separates our fates is cruel and unjust and heartbreaking. Why am I in the air-conditioned car that has a window you can roll up to make looking away less bothersome? But these days, you can no longer just lock your door or look away. How can you look away? They beg to be given money for sustenance but, more deeply, beg to be really seen, to be really witnessed and to be really cared for.

In every dinner conversation, the topic of migration comes up. Portugal is offering a golden visa? An exodus is beginning. The sense of a sinking ship is even stronger. Even here, there is difference. Not everyone can pack and move away and dream elsewhere.

And what is with all these get-rich-quick money schemes appearing on my cellphone? Quick money from jobs, from loans, pre-approved applications to all kinds of suspect things, instant jobs on “Amazon”! They seem to be more daring in their scamming. What on earth is happening to the truth in our country?

Those of us who have lived longer know the game of elections and its intrinsic premise: there will always be a winner and there will always be a loser. But there is such a thing as sportsmanship, even an oath at the beginning of any game, where both sides promise to act like graceful people no matter the outcome. I have found very little civility thus far. We continue to argue on social media. We unfriend and cancel each other as if doing so makes right any more right or wrong any more right.

For the minority that did not win, promises made to be committed to the country remain just as true and even more crucial. We will hold you to that promise. You will continue to play a pivotal role in our country and must continue to engage in democratic processes, supporting an administration you may not believe in and thus must watch even more closely.

For the majority, you must act with even more grace and humility, lend a hand and cross the aisle, and make each voice a part of the nation’s work. You cannot abandon the minority and label them simply as the enemy. With winning comes magnanimity and your idea of unity will truly be tested if you are able to unite the opposing forces in our fraught and fragile democracy. We will hold you to that promise.

And I must remind those who are in power: history will be looking at you, but that is still a human eye. In the end, it is God’s you will answer to and you must be able to look the infinite in the eye.

Any which way the wind blows, all of us must choose to keep the most vulnerable in mind, in the smallest and simplest of our decisions, from where to eat to what we buy, to what we will do to keep the truth shining, to if we will close our eyes and windows. In the end, the poor and vulnerable who have first place in heaven and with God will ask us: what did you do for the least of my brethren? You may not believe in this but you must believe in something greater in this world or forever remain foolish in the belief that one lives for oneself alone.

Summer is about to end. We all look to the same sky and ask for its benediction as the clouds become dark and overcast. I look at summer’s blooms with even more longing knowing that soon they will need to adapt and change, seek shelter from the rain, find the internal workings of their nature to work with nature; seek ways to continue following the sun.

* * *

Follow me on IG @ricareadsandwrites.