What if every Filipino got to know the Philippines?
On a hot day after fieldwork in another far-flung community, a boy told me: “It’s so nice to see how you love the Philippines.”
A simple statement brought up a whirlwind of other questions about our country and how hearing about our distaste for it has become the norm. We were driving through the countryside of La Union; it was a cool day on a hot week. Beautiful, I thought, passing all the green fields. But what if not all of us were seeing the same thing?
My throat tightens as I think back to the atrocities I’ve seen and experienced fairly recently. After the typhoon season of 2020, I met victims who, even before the storms, were already struggling to survive. Indigent communities with families, people who swept the sweat from their brows as they tried to articulate their desperate need. Mothers who would pick a fight with their neighbors to ensure they would be the recipients of a tarp to roof her kids. LGU leaders who would rather keep the relief goods for themselves and, because of election propaganda, would delay distributions or let them rot in storage.
Other victims, noticing the food drive was running out, would throw tantrums over missing a hot meal — but who can blame the hungry at a time like this? Especially when this may be their only shot at dinner after losing everything to the storms?
We’ve heard it before: The Philippines is difficult to love. But I believe it is also only through love that we can make things better. If there were no love, no passion, there would be no fight for change.
I’ve had calls and conversations with other youth leaders over how we had to halt relief operations over the Anti-Terrorism Law that could put our communities at risk; or how to save our future, a future that adults seem to set aside for an industry that only benefits them. My rage — our rage — comes from knowing that things could be better, but we’ve only been experiencing the worst.
We’ve heard it before: The Philippines is difficult to love. But I believe it is also only through love that we can make things better. If there were no love, no passion, there would be no fight for change.
My fight comes from a love that derives itself from being privileged enough to experience the Philippines, even beyond its faults. Through the years of working with For the Future, this compounded anger for leaders past and present is juxtaposed with meeting and seeing just how beautiful our homeland and people can be.
Maybe this is why the boy asked his question — he sees me work for a home that some feel is not worth the fight. Then this thought arises: maybe things would change if more people had the chance to see what kids like me saw.
If more people had the chance to wake up to the sight of the Zambales mountainscape — seeing every ridge sway and swoon, each summit glisten in orange and pink — or sip our morning coffee on one of the floating platforms of the magical Agusan Marsh, maybe then more people would nod in agreement when we talk about “love.” I think of what could change if more people could look one of our last Philippine Eagles in the eye, feeling all the sorrow and hope from its stance — or heard the song and dance of the Yangil Tribe celebrating their home.
These little, lucky moments, being in a place so alive with friends who share the same love — that’s what melts me into embracing what I need not deny: I am a Filipino. A proud one.
What if everyone could see these things, too? What if everyone had a chance to sit in one of the last standing Philippine forests, small amidst the trunks of our eldest trees, dirty from the soil from which arose our deepest treasures? They, too — I’m sure — would weep for a place so alive. What if everyone had these moments? Would people still be surprised?
It was a long night the other week with my team, emotionally tired from another solar light distribution. Yet that night, we found ourselves sitting in the mud, necks craned up, eyes widening at each star that glittered in our sky. My chest swelled. Of all the places we could be tonight, how could we be so lucky to end up under the only clear patch of sky — the swirling Milky Way above us? Is it this?
These moments that we have with our home that let us love it, despite the problems? That allow us to continue to fight? It is this for me. These little, lucky moments, being in a place so alive with friends who share the same love — that’s what melts me into embracing what I need not deny: I am a Filipino. A proud one.
If every Filipino could get the chance to know the Philippines, even in its dirt, maybe fewer people would be surprised when they see the stars — and when they hear a fellow Filipino love and fight for our home.