This is something I should have written 18 months ago.
I have always believed myself burdened with the curse of conscience. I could never get the hang of closing one’s eyes, ears, and mind, to the awfulness that some of our fellow human beings are forced to call their everyday lives. And seeing, hearing, and realizing the hardship that so many others are made to endure — whether by fate, destiny, God, society, or the good old semi-feudal, semi-colonial state — has, in turn, prevented me from being comfortable with living a “normal” life, with a “normal” career and “normal” aspirations.
I always had to do something. To get involved, to at least try and make a difference.
A line from Gary Granada’s Uunahin Ko Kayo has always struck a chord with me: Ang pangarap ng marami sa mundo/ Ay hindi ko hahayaang mabigo
This, for want of a better term, restlessness, pushed me to join the student movement when I was in the university, and later, the ranks of what can be loosely called the progressive movement.
For the most part, it was a decision, and a life, that I do not regret. Besides the fact that I felt “compelled” (or as I said before, cursed) to do this, being in the progressive movement has given me moments and experiences I would never trade away. I have witnessed human beings at their finest: generosity in the midst of grinding poverty, courage in the face of insurmountable odds, good will in the grip of the most heartrending tragedy, hope triumphant, time and time again, over despair.
Some of my best and closest friends, including my wife and soulmate, I have met in the course of my life in the progressive movement, and it is something that I will always hold dear.
Sometimes though, the things that are dearest to you can also break your heart.
And I suppose this is what I came to understand 18 months ago. That the more you love something, the more you invest of yourself, your effort, your time, the more painfully your heart will break when it finally lets you down.
It took me 18 months to write this, and that I now can, is a sign, I hope, that I’m better.
In the end, who I am remains essentially the same, and so, my choices stand. I cannot even imagine myself doing anything else. It is sad, in a way, but it is also, unfortunately, true. In my darkest days I thought — no, I wanted to believe — that heartbreak could change who I was, lift the curse, so to speak. But wounds heal, and eventually we remain who we are, scarred yes, but ultimately the same.
So I continue to soldier on. Fighting the same battles, tilting at the same windmills, living the same life.
Maybe someday, I’ll even get to be as happy as I was before.
