Where Have They Gone?

Thursday last week, I had a rare privilege to listen to F. Sionil Jose, one of the most prolific literary writers of our age.

Just over 80, Mr. Jose spoke with ardent desire and sharpness of mind, discussing issues from nationalism to entertainment to economics to education. Strong in his convictions and blunt, the brilliant author shared the product of his years of witnessing life in the Philippines.
His world-view was astounding! It really spoke of age old wisdom. Some of his comments that I remembered:

In my life there is only one president who understood the importance of culture and art in the backbone of the nation--Ferdinand E. Marcos.

We are either Bicolanos, or Illongos, or Tagalogs. But we are seldom Filipinos. (On national identity.)

What is Greece without Homer? What is England without Shakespeare? What is America without Hemingway? What is the Philippines without Rizal?

We need to accept our colonial past, at the same time break free from its shackles.

We put criminals in the government because we completely forget their transgressions. We don't have a sense of history.

Young people, take heed. Twenty years from now you might find yourself waking in the morning realizing the country is no longer yours.

Kris Aquino and Boy Abunda are abberations in the media industry.

I may not agree with some of his ideas, I must admit that I admired him for his solid and unwavering convictions--something that most writers nowadays are found wanting. Mr. Jose's depth in understanding national as well as cultural issues are even prophetic. Consider his novel, Viajero, a book about Filipinos migrating to foreign lands and how they thrive in their existence. Viajero was written long before the exodus of OFWs. Somehow, F Sionil Jose's account of the migrant's motives ring true till today.

Gone are the days when writers used the language to empower the mind of the masses.
Gone are the days of del Pilar, Lopez Jaena, and Rizal.

The new breed of writers are on the loose, but who among them will emerge as leaders?

Prep D Blues

At age 6, I entered my first school.

Lourdes School is an exclusive school for boys, and since my 2 older brothers studied there, my parents saw no other reason to send me to another. I took the entrance exam which I vaguely remember as following the broken lines, and got into section D of prep school.

My father bought me a blue school bag with rollers underneath and the school logo painted white at the side. Inside were 3 notebooks: 1 for writing, 1 for math, 1 for assignments; a pencil box, and a box of crayons. I also had a Scooby Doo tin lunch box with a sandwhich for recess. My allowance was 50 centavos a day: 25 centavos each for 1 Santa orange during recess and another Santa during 2nd recess.

Man, life was good.

So there I was. I remembered entering a classroom for the first time and I was a terribly shy boy. A mouse made more sound than I did. I was seated beside a grinning, outgoing boy named Reynaldo Sta. Ana, and days after whenever I entered the room (dazzedly, at that), Reynaldo would point his finger at my seat and shout, "Dito ka Redentor!"

Ms. Dimaranan was my first teacher (later on I would find out that she was a substitute). I remember her with the horn-rimmed spectacles, slim figure, dark-skin, short hair and pearly white teeth (Gollum would have greatly fallen in love with her). But the scariest part of it was that she had the demeanor of a marine reject, and she made sure we were aware of it. (She would've given Sea Hag a run for her money!)

So one time, I was copying notes from the blackboard to my neat red and blue-lined notebook and during those days we would race one another to see who finishes first.* Needless to say I was one of the fastest "copiers" in class and after I was done I went to the teacher's table to have my notebook checked.

Ms. Dimaranan went through my notebook and then stopped with her lips pursed. My heart skipped a beat. I suddenly knew something was wrong. With her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, she blurted out--"Ano 'to??!"

It turned out that 2 pages of my new notebook got stuck on each other so there were practically 2 blank pages that I skipped.

Wham!

My notebook came crashing on my head and the next few seconds saw me wailing my head off. I don't know how many millions of my neurons died that day, but surely not enough to erase this memory.

As an adult I would occasionally visit my old school and I would see how small and fragile those prep students are. Needless to say, I would stop dead on my tracks and wonder, "What kind of monster would hit a kid like that for two blank pages of a notebook?"

Ms. Dimaranan was one of them. God bless her soul.

Whatever happened to her? I don't know. I don't think I want to know. But according to my mother's account, she wasn't renewed when the permanent teacher took over.

And world sighed with relief.

Mrs. Lavides took over our class and she was the sweetest, bestest, teacher I had ever known. I had recent news that she is still alive and would like to see her if I only knew where to find her. With her as my teacher, I excelled in class and felt secure--a far cry from the substitute teacher.

Man, remembering these things aren't all that bad. Prep school was a good experience (at least after the 1st quarter)--I learned further how to write and draw and count and read time. We learned to speak English at an early age and we had it good.

Mrs. Lavides taught us about the itsy bitsy spider, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the holy man who talked to birds and trees and sky.

My classmates were neat. There was Jimby who cried perpetually, Patrick Ycaro who was the oldest and tallest in class (I saw him once flash his middle finger and when I showed it to my dad at home, his face turned crimson and scolded me), Joel Jacinto who was the brightest in class, Carmelo Guerrero the skinny albino, and the rest of the class who belted out "Little Poverello" and "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" during mass.

Reynaldo flunked prep school and had another fulfilling year with Mrs. Lavides.

We were kids. We were happy. Life was good.

Up Close and Personal with F. Sionil Jose

(The following article is reprinted from a lecture given by Filipino National Artist, F. Sionil Jose.)

The best way--perhaps the only way--to start any discussion is to define the terms we use. This is not to obfuscate a discourse, even lengthen it so that we get lost in labyrinthine definitions. Rather, it is to be lucid and precise about the limits, the substance of the subject under discussion, specify its essence, its core.

The term social justice is all embracing, almost limitless because we append the word "social" to justice which we know is not an abstraction, particularly in our country. Social meaning every aspect that pertains to being sociable, or being up there in the upper classes?

Let me define injustice then as we in this unhappy country know it--rather than justice.

If social justice pertains to society, to a community and its institutions, then injustice is the absence of justice in that society. We are familiar with it: when a man cannot have three meals a day, that is unjust. When a sick Filipino--with all our nurnses and doctors and excellent modern hospitals dies because he cannot afford medicines or medical services--that is injustice. When a person is jailed or is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, when children cannot go to school, because parents cannot afford to send them there, these are injustices.

In 1986 when twenty farm demonstrators were killed in Mendiola because a President refulsed to see them, when farmer demonstrators are shot at the gates of Hacienda Luisita--and there is no outrage agains that crime--when a jobless man feeds his two children with recycled garbage and they die, when thousands of our college graduates word abroad as housemaids, or even as prostitutes.

All these are injustices that cry for redress.

Having defined social injustice, it is easy then for us define the opposite, which is justice and media--meaning television, radio, newspapers and all the latest technologies that purvey information. But there is something awry about the connective, "and"--media and social justice should be a partnership? Between media and a just society? Man and wife. Business and pleasure? Partners and crime, perhaps?

I would rather that the title be Media FOR Social Justice. This would mean advocacy, even a commitment, if that is at all possible, to social justice.

The Inner Journey

Just how much of oneself is true?

I step in front of the audience and I saw so much of myself in them. Some were looking for meaning, some tired of the daily runts of work, and some looking for healing. Some were even looking for God.

I hear them say:

"I wish I could leave my job and go somewhere else, but I can't. My family depends on me."

"I've given my life to my kids and wife, still at times, I feel empty."

"I have a good family, a good job, a stable income. Why is it that I still feel there is something missing in my life?"

"I pray and go to church, but why is it that God seems so unreal to me still?"

Such statements that come from the hunger of the heart cannot be totally repressed. Not by money, ambition, recognition, or authority. Somehow, our core, the true self that is genuinely happy and creative, was buried under layers of roles and scripts written by other people.

When we learn to listen more to the voice of the world, telling us "be this, be that" or "you aren't good enough for this", or "why can't you be like your father?", or "successful people have more money", or "you are not beautiful", or "life is not fair", we bury our True Self under layers of layers of these lies, accepting them as truths in our life.

And so, little by little, the original voice of our True Self becomes lost in the wilderness of feigned confidence and the roles we have imposed on ourselves, thus defining ourselves as "I am a doctor" or "I am a husband" or "I am a businesswoman". Then our lives become a cycle of daily attempts to fulfill these roles while we neglect to nourish our needs and start living for others, not knowing that we can only give as much as we can, if and only if, we first have it.

Sooner or later we experience a sense of sadness, or perhaps emptiness, and in the midst of the people who love and care for us, we find ourselves alone and detached from profound and genuine human experience. Only because we forgot the most important aspect of life: our self.

What is our Self? What is our core?

The core is us minus the title, roles, and societal expectations. It is where we are most confident about ourselves just for being who we are. A fusion of all our cherished values and dreams, before the rest of the world imposed theirs. It is a part of us that manifests periodically in our personal history, when we were most happy and at peace with ourselves, when we enjoyed life to the fullest and we shared our gifts and talents to the world.

This is where the Original Voice resides. A place between God and you alone. A sacred ground. This is a book where the Self is fact, not fiction. And in the pages of this book we find treasures and treasures of stories that tells of a creature of the Divine in relation with the universe.

Only when we have rediscovered our True Self that we will have true peace and happiness, and our self will be the gift that we will offer to the world for others to live, as the Creator has intended it to be.

Let the inner journey be the ultimate adventure in our life.

God speed!