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THE MESSAGE. BRINGING INTO FOCUS FILIPINO PRESENCE IN AUSTRALIA
www.kalatas.com.au | Volume 4 Number 10 | July 2014
EDITORIAL & OPINION
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE
Lessons I learned from my children
a parent, a
father, an
adult, a provider, adviser, a disciplinarian,
a role model but most
importantly a human
being who
must learn
love in its
most unconditional form.
I do not joke when I say
that my children have been
some of my greatest teachers.
I may have taught them their
spelling, math, and many other
things but in the process they
taught me a lot and greatly
shaped me as a human being.
Patience is a true virtue and
is integral to being a father and
a grown-up. When my children were young, I had to read
over and over again the poems and stories they liked to
hear before sleeping. I learned
a lot of patience teaching them
stuff, sitting down with them
as they did their homework
(especially math).
When they got to be adolescents, I learned to be even
more patient as they went
through their phases of being
full-blown, angst-ridden, confused, inarticulate young people until they outgrew these
periods. I had to learn to observe, withhold judgment,
piece things together and make
sense of what they were going
through while being cognizant of their super-sensitive
feelings. Having three children with four- and five-year
age differences gave me the op-
most among
all my kids.
From Erica, I learned
to set aside my
preconceived
notions of
what children ought to
be and accept
what they are
and work
from there. I
learned to let
go of rigid expectations and
simply allow her to become
what she was/is to become.
When she became pregnant in
her mid 20s, I learned to immediately drop all emotional baggage that stood in the way and
love her unconditionally and
be supportive of her journey.
Erica is a survivor. She is
a single mother to my grandchild Ananda. They are both
very beautiful, most especially in the eyes of this dad/lolo.
Both of them can brighten up
any room.
She is fun-loving, although
she has her serious side. She is a
writer and writes her columns
with great insight. I see more
and more maturity and adulthood creeping in now that she
is in her mid-30s. I can only
smile.
Ala is our second child. She
was always bright-eyed, and
Illustration by REY RIVERA
E
very Father’s Day,
I joke about how
this da y of the
year is probably
the most confusing one for people like Erap,
Ramon Revilla Sr., Dolphy, Lou
Salvador and the many famous
people who sired countless
children. By the sheer number
of offspring they have with different women, how on earth
do they remember names, birthdays, the mothers and even
the circumstances of how their
children came to be?
While it is something said
in jest, I know that being a father can be very confusing and
challenging. One usually gets
into the role with some preconceived ideas on how to be
one. That’s how I initially approached it. But no sooner
than you think the template
you are following is a perfect
one, the cracks on the wall appear. You may do some patchwork quickly and once again
feel that things are hunky dory.
But then, even more cracks appear until you are led to the
conclusion that fatherhood
will always be a work in progress.
It is never-ending. As long
as you are alive, there is something to learn. And yes, one
never stops being a father. You
can’t help it.
Raising children is something no one will ever be completely prepared for. You will
face a multitude of experiences
from pleasant ones to the very
difficult and painful. It will
stretch you as a person in all
ways. It will lead you to question not only your understanding of yourself as a person,
portunity to know them individually as they went through
their different stages.
Erica is the oldest and also
the most energetic, impulsive
child, and the one that challenged me most as a dad. She
is very intelligent and talented. She excelled in gymnastics
and even made it to the national team. But she was also a rebel through and through who
liked to question conventions.
During her early teens, I
saw her transform from a happy, normal kid to a detached
and depressed one. She kept
Lydia and me up worried
many a late night as she went
through her difficult phase of
finding herself. At one point,
she was doing quite badly in
school. She abruptly wanted to
change school in her third year
of high school and transfer to
one where she did not have to
argue with nuns. It turned out
to be a good thing in the end
since she excelled in her new
school and got into ADMU for
college.
If life is a dark room where
we as humans must enter and
find our way without bumping
into the furniture too much,
Erica may have bumped the
easy, although quite sickly. For
a while we worried that Erica’s
stellar athletic achievements
would cast a heavy shadow on
her. But early on, Ala made her
presence felt as someone really different. She was calmer
and quieter than her elder sister. She had a sense of wonder
about everything. She had the
sensitivity of an artist. I noticed
that early on when I would see
her cry to sad music. And she
also loved to draw a lot. At the
end of a school day, she would
draw what happened in class
on her diary in great detail.
Ala is also quite a determined person. When we
moved to Sydney, she had decided to be an illustrator, went
to school, topped her class and
even got a state medal. She is
one of the most hard-working, dedicated people I know
who will do what needs to get
done and excel. She proudly
works long and difficult hours
to support her artistic career.
When she had her first exhibit last year in Sydney, I felt very
proud of her, as she beamed
while friends and strangers
were in awe of her work.
As an artist, I often look
up to Ala because I get reminded about the most basic
things I need to do to be an artist. One is to keep showing up
LESSONS, Page 14
JIM PAREDES
is a multifaceted creative. He sings,
composes, writes articles and books, teaches
at the Ateneo De Manila University, designs
and facilitates various types of workshops.
He is also a writer of books, a widely read
columnist for the Sunday Life section of Philippine Star, and a
well-known photographer.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
DANNY
DINGLE
ALLAN
ESPINOSA
JIM PAREDES
GIL MARVEL
TABUCANON
The use of philosophy
A
lain Badiou said,
“Ph i l o s ophy
is first and foremost this:
the invention
of new problems.” As a philosopher, when I bring up issues
like free speech and reproductive rights in my short essays, I am
actually eliciting a community
discussion based on the present
issue at hand. Whether it’s Pork
Barrel, Cybercrime Law, Bangsamoro state, or the plight of
the urban poor in Metro Manila, there are important questions to be had. Questions like,
‘can anyone tell us what to read or think’, ‘where do we get
our morals from’, or ‘is healthcare a human right’; are not just
confined to sterile, boring, cold
classrooms in universities. These questions have real, practical
applications to the social, political and economic lives of ordinary Filipinos.
When I think of the issue of
pork barrel, for example, I am
always reminded of an age-old
question: where does power reside, with the leaders or with the
people? For so long, as a people,
we have put up with corrupt
characters from Marcos, Gloria
and now the three stooges Revilla, Estrada and Enrile. Have we,
as a people, asked ourselves seriously: Are we that too gullible
to let these goons get away with
our money? If you think these
so-called “leaders” have power,
then you may be inclined to forgive and let them go, but if you
think that power resides with
the people, then your response
would be different.
I was particularly impressed
when Thai protesters staged
silent readings of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a
dystopian novel about government control, surveillance and
manipulation, in downtown
Bangkok in defiance against
a dictatorship that has controlled the country after a military coup d’état. I myself have
never seen anything more profound that this. The events in
Thailand created a ‘philosophical situation’ that is ripe for collective reflection: “Are Thais
going to let totalitarianism,
in which the state or few men
holds total absolute authority,
govern them; or let democracy,
the rule of the people or the majority, hold sway?
The irony is never lost to
me of course. While some concerned and enlightened Filipinos give their very best to resist
the tide of corruption and repression, the same cannot be
said of the ignorant masses who
would keep voting for these
same corrupt politicians. In one
way, our indifference towards
political and social discussion
and our uncritical acceptance of
their depravity is actually worse
that Orwell’s dystopia. Winston
Smith at least gave a fight; we on
the other hand willingly accepted our lot.
Plato said philosophy is an
awakening; it is what breaks
the sleep of thought. Let us utilize this precious philosophy to
our advantage.
ALLAN ESPINOSA
lives in Canley Vale NSW. He finished
philosophy in Notre Dame University in
Cotabato.
Follow Allan on Twitter @atheistpapa.