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FEATURE (September 22 –
September 28, 2008) Kas makitak (A young Ilocano’s insights on
truth and hope in a time of crisis) Kayceline Joy R.
Buted A.B. English Studies major (This piece won first place in the
essay-writing tilt sponsored by the Sociology Guild of Mariano Marcos State
University last September 18, 2008.—Ed) I
am but a mere ‘“ubing”; young, trivial,
blithe, innocent, frail. My idea about the
world, how it works, how it does not, is likely to be as minor as my age; or that’s
what older, “wiser” folks so conveniently say. But my age is
nothing but just a number, a mathematical figure that simply grows higher
with every year I manage to survive, or every birthday I get to celebrate or
not. It is not a gauge of how much I’ve been taught or how much I’ve learned.
It cannot measure how little I’ve witnessed or how little I’ve experienced.
It can never tell how much I know, how much I care, and how much I see. It
can never determine how little I can do to change what I see. I hail from a
little-known province, a place that may even be unheard of to the rest of the
world. I am not clothed in silk, I am not bathed in milk, I am not educated
in a posh university, and I am not living “the life” as other kids my age are
fortunate enough to afford. As is expected, I should know very little about
chaos, adversity, violence and crisis; what with me living in an area far
from the frenzied struggle of urban life. I’m expected to be unmindful, to be
unaffected, to be detached, to be ignorant. How odd it is that I am
everything but that. Every day I wake up
and I greet the world with distaste, far from the supposed optimism a young
one such as I should see the world with. Not with what I see, not with the
world as terrible as I witness it with every single day’s dose of the bitter
truth. I go to school and I
pass a few beggars on my way, mothers with their half-clothed children
walking barefoot on the streets, hinging on some strangers’ sympathy and a
few coins here and there. I watch as a number of students pass me by at the
lobby, some carrying hand-me-down bags, some clad in old shoes and slippers,
some others I never got to see in school again. I wonder as I stare at the
lady sitting next to me at the bus, her look was so distant, I felt her
emptiness drape my existence. Could those scars and bruises have anything to
do with that? I open the television and my youthfulness is obliterated;
poverty, war, tragedy, death. I may just be an
“ubing” but I believe I’ve seen everything there is to see, the truth people
older than I force me to turn a blind eye to, the reality they expect kids
such as me to ignore. But they are wrong, I’ve seen it all, and my age does
not prevent me from seeing what is beyond it. In the midst of
chaos, bombs, screams, cries; of struggle, hunger, pain, strife; of hate,
anger, rage, scorn; of oppression, slavery, helplessness, abuse; in the midst
of unending crises, hope springs. It is heard when the air is cleared of the
sound of exploding bombs. It is felt when the body ceases to hurt and all its
wounds are healed. It is realized when the heart stops bleeding. It is fought
for when the desire for freedom reigns in the hearts of those who live in
bondage. Hope springs. Beyond the awfulness
of life and all its ugly facades, a ray of hope is always shining, waiting
for people who wish to seek its light. The world does not have to end with
the last bomb that is to be fired; it need not end with a lifetime of
wanting. For as long as breath, peace, contentment, and whatever the heart
yearns for can be imagined, hope can be found. I am but an “ubing”
but I believe that it is never too late for hope to be found. What the world
needs now is a realization, a wake-up call, a good slap on the face. We can
never scare our problems off by bombarding them with state-of-the-art
weaponry; we can never achieve peace by means of war; we cannot escape
poverty by stealing and killing; we will never find happiness if we do not
stop engrossing on our misery and hopelessness. There is no such
thing as hopelessness; it is merely the lack of courage and perseverance to
seek for hope that slows us down, that convinces us to just be content with
what we have, what we are, what we’re suffering from and accept it as just
part of fate. People experiencing the
lowest of lows do nothing to change their lives, they simply sail through it,
convinced that they are destined to experience hunger and pain, and to change
their destiny is impossible. It is the
absence of patience to seek for a silver lining that makes us succumb to ways
that are contrary to what we say we are striving to achieve; like in the talk
of peace. Instead of focusing on bettering diplomatic relations, nations wage
wars with one another, killing innocent civilians whose lives could have been
saved had the warring nations patiently settled their differences amicably.
Hopelessness is our scapegoat. Older, “wiser”
people may say what I think is irrelevant, that I know nothing, that I am
ignorant, and that my ideas are as petty and childish as I am young and
trivial. But age is but a mere number. It is in the experiencing of life that
we are educated; it is the opening of the eyes to the truth that makes us
wise; it is the wanting to change the world that determines how much we
really see. And through the eyes
of an “ubing,” I see nothing but hope. Ilocos Times copyright 2008 |
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