Despair.

Between despair and persistence

Have we grown too tired to demand better? It’s not the first time I’ve heard of Filipinos giving up. It’s not the first wave of brain drain I’ve witnessed either.

As a little girl, after Marcos declared Martial Law, I would lose classmates (and teachers) every year - their families migrating to another country. Then came 1983, after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, another big wave. The exodus waned for a bit after the EDSA Revolution in 1986. But then, it wasn't long before the series of coup d’états happened, then people left again. For so many other reasons in between, wave after wave, Filipinos have sought a life elsewhere.

Each wave leaves scars; even the trickle of departures has contributed to our brokenness. When mothers (who are teachers) leave home to become domestic helpers. When our doctors, accountants, scientists, and engineers go, our capacity to build a stronger nation weakens. When the middle class grows weary and withdraws, the corrupt gain more freedom to rule unchecked. While remittances sustain households, our economy stalls without the energy and vision of skilled people staying and creating here at home.

I’ve been trying to swim against this current, (so I would like to believe) with my “lifework” - my battle cry - we need more entrepreneurs, more enterprises! Helping budding entrepreneurs, encouraging researchers and scientists to commercialize their work, pushing for policy and legislation, advocating economic complexity, blah, blah, blah. Did I just say blah, blah, blah? Yes, I did. I’m starting to question if I’m just a self-proclaimed martyr or a cock-eyed hopeful citizen who once gave up an immigrant status in some so-called land of “milk and honey.”

Now, with revelations of widespread corruption, another exodus is happening. Many are giving up.

I’ve asked myself the same question since I was 6 years old and first aware of politics: what will happen to my country? When I was a teenager (towards the end of the first Marcos rule) my dad was working with USAID, we had a go-bag because we were prepared for similar scenario as the Fall of Saigon. There were regular bulletins briefing us how we will board the huge helicopters in Magallanes and be taken to Clark. My selfish foolish question then, "what will happen to my cats?" My very nationalistic mother said, "I've experienced and survived WW2, I will stay." Thank God, there was an EDSA revolution. I didn't have to be separated from my dogs and cats.     

But seriously now, the Philippines has not collapsed into civil war, nor has it suffered foreign invasion. Does that mean there is hope? Or are we simply surviving, waiting for the next wave… until we snap!?

Hope is not automatic just because we’ve avoided collapse. “No war” can also mean slow erosion - where corruption normalizes, and people’s expectations shrink until they no longer demand better. That’s the danger!! I see it not only on TV, but in people I once held in high regard, who have also fallen to the dark side. How painful to see this erosion of the soul.  

I don’t have the answers. But I know that our endurance has meaning. Maybe hope still lives in that space between despair and persistence, if only we choose to act on it.

Perhaps the prophet Isaiah helps me hang on and hope:

“But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary;

they will walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:31