There is something taught within Filipino culture that I’ve always found comfort in whenever I am confronted with life’s frustrations. “Ikaw na ang magparaya“–which loosely translates to, “You will have to be the one to tolerate.” You be the one to concede. You understand.
To me, the general tone of it is that of acceptance, not defeat. Which is helpful when you are not in any position of power. When the things you say are easily ignored or dismissed, when the things you care about are not the same things others care for, you need to find ways to cope. To survive. Accept it today, if only so you can live long enough to find a way to fight tomorrow.
It doesn’t mean I don’t bristle at the unfairness of the world. It bleeds into my writing every chance it gets. This week has been an amazing week in so many ways, but it’s also been a week of long conversations and soul-searching with old friends. It’s always amazing to have people you grew up with, who have learned to see your circumstances because you’ve been discussing the way things are for so long. To have friends who see things the way you do: with a writer’s disposition and tendency towards uncovering the truth, to finding questions instead of answers. Of looking inward, instead of out. Of understanding, instead of laying blame.
It culminated into this thought, which one of my friends put simply:
We have a responsibility to leave the world a better place.
On good days, I’d like to think my writing is the best I have to offer, is my way of making a contribution to the world. (Which is my ego talking–my children are a thousand times better than my writing, but then that has very little to do with me and everything to do with them). It’s paralyzing when I look at what’s around me. When I understand the challenges, and what it means, and that all I have to fight with are these…words.
And they’re not perfect words. No one can do this perfectly. But I owe it to myself to try. To find ways to shape anger into words, to find hope amidst wreckage. To paint these pictures with as much care and thought as a person is capable of. I’d like to think that what I lack in talent I make up for in giving a damn.
I’m still tired, at the end of the day. The more one learns, the less impact it seems one has. The world wants to remain a certain way, and to ask for more from it requires work that very few are willing to take. So I fall back on that thought.
Ikaw na ang magparaya.
Or I guess I can fall further back on my hot-headed Bicolano ways and go “Ba’yi pa.” Which probably loosely translates to “Fuck this shit.”
