The Filipino Dreamer

                                                                                                                                          January 18, 2013

Republic of the Philippines
Mother of the Orient Pearl
Home of Heroes and Dreams
000-01

My Dearest Philippines,

Pardon my insufficiency for words of appreciation but I grieve to see how ruined you have become by your own people. The centuries-old fortified dream towards democracy momentarily and scantly liberates your people from the feudal lords of yesteryears. There have been many documented legends of your rise and fall, even heroism untold all for the love of untying your people's hands from religious land-grabbers whose whips forced you to kneel down and pray before the Crown. Fathers and sons, anguished and bootless cries of mothers who lost both; what any man cannot withstand any wound, no matter how mortal, inflicted upon them, should they lost not only their legacy to the land where generations spring from but to whose womb of an all-loving mother, a child breathes the air of life?

And after all the years of fighting for freedom, there came the white acclaimed heroes who dug their claws into the golden Crown, ditching it and put all illusions to rest, again, momentarily in the guise of independence and democracy. The Republic of the Philippines, that's how you are called today.

What if you have achieved true democracy?

What if you become the first world?

And... what if you failed to dream?

What if?

Whoever said that democracy today, in the facade of independence and the Republic label has been truthfully achieved, is a dyslexic moron. There is no democracy in a promise land when the 'few' ruling Elites continue to control the crux, that is the bread, of the working class or masses comprising, sadly, the 'majority' without taking the honest efforts of bridging the adverse economic disparities. My dear Philippines, before you were promised freedom, you were already bound to another knot; bound to enter another shithole, another nightmare. What the holders of super powers say, Philippines do. Every yard or inch of freedom you claim to have enjoyed now emanates from another, not from your people whom your Constitution regards as sovereign, but from those who pushed you to frame the same; a duplication of what they originally have!

Of course, you did not have much choice. Or if you had, you are restrained to fully exercise it because you are not dominant enough, nor free enough, and not liberated enough to do so. You are hanged by your own ropes of free dreams and oppressive realities.

On the brighter context, Republicanism has triggered the hope of your dear countrymen, from forgotten generations, to the newlyborns of today, to dream even more, to seek more and to willingly die for more. But Filipinos dream for all the wrong reasons. And now I understand the sadness in your eyes. Your beloved people never dared to wake up from their dreams and face what is real. They continue to die for many dreams which are either forgotten or killed. And the dreams of yesterday are the same dreams they bear today.

I too, am lost in translation somewhere in between my rich, brute history and my undoubtedly cloudy Philippine future. Like all others, I also dream. But behold! If such appeal to your pride, I was able to wake up from these dreams. I have seen you bleed over and over. My heart sunk to witness repeated violence and lawlessness directed upon you. For the countless degradation and mockery of your being, I bled of tears. And the worst part which shattered my heart is your beloved people, whom you believed and trusted to raise the freedom flag high with dignity, all takes part in a conspiracy to strip off the thin thread of hope towards liberation that the 'majority' anchors their hope upon.

Freedom becomes scarce, I must say. And the competition to get the last of its piece gets tighter, day by day. The ladder of dreams gets higher and waning; unreachable by those who are debunked but a wink of an eye for the reigning cronies of our dreaded past. This has to go on for a long while, I suppose. And should we choose to forget who wounded us before, maybe, I must say, nay, I am sure, we shall also forget who we truly are... Filipinos in our own being, all the more worthy to die for!

But I still look up to the day the rays of your oriental sun dawns upon your people with so much hope and love; that may the waves of the Pacific never cease to calm their distraught souls; that the Palawan pearls continue to gleam for the promise of elevation; that these hundred islands of your archipelago shall never be a factor to divide your people the more; that someday, someday, someday, if that day shall ever come, moonlights shall never go pale because true freedom has been enjoyed.

                                                                                                                             With all my love and hope,

                                                                                                                               Your Filipino Dreamer