An Open Letter
9.05.2004
Sassy has forwarded me an email that was so successful that it shocked me. I believed others would have gotten this email ahead, but this is my first time to read it. I am, to this moment am in denial that it is true but immediately I have felt the urge to email her back, and post this open letter. As for whatever that email contains I'll make it my next post.
Sassy,
I will try to post this reply in my website as an open letter. Forgive me if I would feel that I have to, but with so little time for blogging it will be best to have something posted with teeth in there after my stagnancy. I have been too preoccupied with my many private concerns that blogging and the political mind had to give way to business matters. It is sad that with so many things I can say about how it is here in the Philippines now, I had to defer to more pressing concerns.
It saddens me though that it took me up to reading this email to find out that the political concern demands urgency.
Sucks to know the truth. It hurts more to know that these are our problem solvers. So much more hurt, than knowing that we have problems that are seemingly unsolvable. I will not argue in length to the accuracy of these charges nor ask for the sources. The sad truth is not in what is said in this email about our leaders, but what we believe in as a people. The fact that our leaders elicit such jokes is alarming enough; the fact that we just can laugh about it is even more disturbing. Have we as a people forgotten that this country's independence was won by lives lost, and dreams deferred or shattered?I would not want to sound self-righteous, for I have in many occassions dismissed responsibility when I could have done so much more. I am at fault everytime the pragmatist in me takes charge of the idealist. But what am I but a blogger that posts what I think, speak what I mean and chat with taxi drivers about the debate that is the Philippine situation. Is it that each of us Filipinos would have felt the same in one moment or another? In moments knowing we could have
bettered on ourselves, and moments of looking back where we could have done more. Each of us perhaps want so much change but have opted to defer these for more personal gain. We all perhaps dream about making that ultimate sacrifice - a similar planned twist on death - a conscious effort to be a hero like Rizal. But like everybody we are afraid. I am like many others am afraid to do more and I do not hide that my heart pounds in fear everytime I think about the future of this country.
More than a hundred years ago the Illustrados were the movers of intellectual thought in this country. Even as they disagree something is common in them: the passion to make this nation great, and the desire change the system. Even as their goals and means to their ends are to this day remain debatable if right or wrong - history cannot judge them negatively for their efforts. We as bloggers, and I do not mean to boast for what I have done will not amount to what others have done before me in the blogging community --- but we are one of the few that encourage free-thinkers in this country, perhaps at least the untainted ones. I know many in the academe and in other organizations desire the same but the internet, the bloggers --- Ours is a new movement - perhaps it will be recognized in history in the future, but not till we can do more than we do now.
I do not know if I am right, or if I hit it head on - what I know is that there are many others like me, who dream. Filipinos everywhere who forward emails like these, Filipinos in message boards and online groups desiring for better, the movement is unnamed, and unorganized, and to date unidentified. But is it this unknown something that is spontaneous in the Filipino that moves so many like you and me? Everytime something is wrong we rise up, and in our many moments in history of failure I have known Filipinos to fight on. Was there a moment in our history that we have not all together felt that something - all at the same time?I invite to experts to name it - to name this feeling that I know is not limited to me and the many others. Because ... when I read this email from you, I did not need to verify if is true. Merely reading it made drunk with a cocktail of emotions - so many that I can only list some now: dismay that there is nothing more, anger that it could be true, felt betrayal that it could have happened, doubt that it was true, concern that lawmakers are not as good as we think they are, apathy for I have my own concerns, a slight smile on a joke, a wandering mind off to nowhere, perhaps one dreaming - off elsewhere, frankly even one with migration in it, desolation and forlorness in apprarent defeat, a minuscule moment of euphoric dreaming that the Filipino can be triumphant in the end, deep breath and sighs in between each thought that I may just be romanticizing all these...
I have high hopes - I am always boastful in my peer that I have the highest threshold of things and that I can live with so little - or that I can handle more than the usual pain, the hurt, whatever you throw at me. When I feel this whatever it is I am feeling now, I wonder what many others with less would have to say. Perhaps none, perhaps more. I still have hope, some of it, and the last thing I want is for that to hope to be gone.
Thanks for the email Sassy;
it made me think about so many things.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Jardine Davies
If you are intrigued by the contents of the email, I invite you to read this.
Labels: Internet
posted by Jdavies @ 9/05/2004,
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The Author
J.Davies
Jdavies lives in Quezon City, Philippines and has been blogging since 2002. A brand manager in a leading technology company and a freelance new media/web strategy consultant, he has refocused his blogging from personal, political & sociological observations, to marketing-related efforts and Internet trends that are relevant to his career and branding advocacies.
About This Blog
This blog is a depot of thoughts and observations on marketing trends which remain personally relevant to the Author as far as his marketing career is concerned. Having evolved from the personal blog of Jdavies, much of the earlier work contained herein are laced with personal speculation, political views, and similar advocacies. These posts are being kept for posterity's sake and for no other reason. No effort is being made to claim that the author will not contradict himself from his previous positions or that such advocacies are absolute.
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