Later in the evening, someone e-mailed me from Toronto, a former UP classmate who had taught at the UP Department of Political Science and the Pamantasan ng Maynila in the early 1970s. Migrating to Canada with her family, she found a job in a reputable Canadian university and had lived in Toronto the past thirty years. I had not seen her for quite some time and only knew that she had been thinking about returning to the Philippines and doing some civic and educational work here upon retiring from her work. She actually came to visit last April 2003 in an attempt to dry run some of her educational ideas, most of which involved tutoring elementary school children in Sorsogon.
Her e-mail surprised me with the rather strong sentiments it expressed in response to my column. She had come across the article in The Philippine STAR’s internet edition. Starting with the immediate issue of disabling traffic, she continued to list the litany of concerns that Philippine authorities have failed to address across the decades. She appears to be much overwhelmed by what she encountered in her most recent visit to the country and what she currently reads about dramatically worsening Philippine conditions.
One may ask how many Filipinos abroad, especially those with the patriotic inclination, professional skills and material resources, might even now be rethinking earlier decisions to return to the Philippines. Like this lady from Toronto, so fired up earlier about going home to assist in building a morally stronger and materially more prosperous nation, there may be quite a few others who are now anguishing over taking up difficult but fulfilling missionary work on one hand and, on the other hand, wasting the remaining, productive years of their lives in an apparently hopeless enterprise.
My former’ classmate’s e-mail comments are reproduced here with a few editorial notes:
"Your crazy traffic piece reminded me of my suicidal foray into the Quezon Memorial Circle last April to enjoy Max chicken with Suyin and Ella [the writer’s niece and sister respectively]. Do you know that we couldn’t get out of that park because there was no pedestrian lane to the other side? You could try running for it if you have a strong death wish. Holy smokes, Felipe, you’d think the infamous Arc de Triomphe traffic is bad? or the Autobahn? This was ten times worse. Drivers with fire in their asses! But what about people on foot like me? At least you could go underground, beneath the Arc to get to the Champs Elysees on the other side."
"The QM circle has no underpass or overpass. If there was any, it was certainly not known to my intrepid companions nor did we find any sign of it after walking the entire park’s perimeter. That’s when we realized that the only way to get out is to be in a vehicle, be it a rolling coffin at that! So we waited, for h-o-u-r-s, for a taxi to come in as there was absolutely no way you could flag one down by the road, not with them all whizzing by in a devil’s frenzy."
"Your article and the hairy memory it triggered plus all that continuing impeachment hullaballoo, airport debacle signifying desperate minds and desperate measures in the past few days culminated in a dizzying headache yesterday. And then later at home, to top it all, one of the Pilipino newspapers, a Calgary newspaper distributed in Toronto had this headline, "Isinumpa ba ang Pilipinas?" The author, from Leamington, Ontario, while cautioning on the logic of mentioning religion, proceeds to wonder why the only Catholic nation in Asia is also coincidentally probably the least progressive. His suggested cures for the problems of population control, squatters, traffic (again), corruption, drugs, politics and all the other incurable ills of the country [were] just about enough to send me to bed early, seeking refuge at merely 8:00 last night. No supper, no kidding. That’s the earliest I have ever retired in recent memory."
"Good Lord, I know I should stop reading [this] stuff. "Puputi ang buhok, madadali ang buhay ko!" I can’t live there. How do you and other people do it?"
Filipinos who have stayed in the country all these years, or who, having worked abroad or migrated had chosen to come back and dedicate themselves to the frustrating task of nation-building, will find it difficult to give a rational answer to her impassioned query. How, indeed, have we managed to remain stubbornly focused on a probably impossible dream? Without being stupid or crazy, how can one continue this obsession with, as O.D. Corpuz beautifully puts it, "the nation that we could be," that indeed most of the authorities appear resolutely to keep Filipinos from being?
Beyond pragmatic reason and dry logic, there is actually a most human answer. Enough Filipinos are still enamored with the idea that their nation deserves better and that while history might have served this nation badly, its destiny need not be as barren. For them, it is never a question of just being pragmatic or prudent and thus loving their nation wisely; it is always loving their nation unconditionally and incredibly well.
Tragic historical outcomes – even daunting serial political and economic crises – fail to dishearten these willful Filipinos. They stubbornly plod on, minimizing the many aggravations inflicted by their mostly feckless and often treasonous authorities, ever drawing sustenance from an incredibly powerful dream of a fully empowered, just and caring Inang Bayan.
Such people will not simply survive. They will overcome.