Tony Velasquez talked to Joseph Estrada before Mar Roxas announced his decision to step down as the Liberal Party?s standard bearer and asked him what he thought of Noynoy Aquino running for president. Erap said he welcomed the idea, and if Noynoy showed he could unite the opposition, he was willing to back him up. ?Destiny lang yan,? he said.

An interesting concept, destiny. I myself have been asked repeatedly if I really believe in it, having also said in one of my columns, ?It is his destiny.? Specifically, it is Noynoy?s destiny to become the force for Good that will rout today?s armies of Evil, a destiny he needs to fulfill by running for president. Does that mean I?m getting soft or mystical as more of my gray hairs turn white?

Not really. The affairs of heaven, I?ll leave to those who propose, or suppose, to divine them. I can deal only with the affairs of earth. I do not mean destiny in the religious sense, as something foreordained by heaven. I know others do, and they are entitled to their beliefs. I myself have always thought that belief was tautological, not unlike the idea of MTB, as the kids put it, or ?meant to be.? If two jowas hit it off, they?re meant to be; if they do not, they are not. Or in this case, if you win as president, you are destined; if you do not, you are not. Naturally. How can you quarrel with a proposition like that? It?s a tautology. It adds nothing to human understanding, or plain knowledge.

I mean destiny as some kind of moral imperative. Or more simply as a vision, dream, or longing so burning, so compelling, one ?has no choice? but to act to realize it. It has its practical aspects. It entails being able to read the situation?particularly when one is thrust into it?being able to gauge the balance of forces, being able to glimpse the chance of success. But more than that, it has its mythical, larger-than-life, heroic aspects too. The second ?national anthem? of Edsa, after ?Ang Bayan Kong Pilipinas,? said it best: ?The Impossible Dream.? If you don?t yet know it yet, that song about a quixotic quest came from a musical called ?Man of La Mancha,? which tells the story of the most quixotic quester of them all, Don Quixote.

Destiny in this context is not something that unravels in spite of you, by a decree of God or Fate. It is something that unravels because of you, by dint of vision and sacrifice. Destiny in this context is not something foreordained. Looking back, of course history will always look foreordained?hindsight is always 20-20 vision. Looking ahead, for those who are compelled to do things because ?they have no choice,? there is no certainty, other than the certainty of arduous struggle, a stony path, a need for courage and fortitude. Maybe the quest will lead to victory, maybe it will lead to failure. But the quest will always lead to discovering in the end the object of the quest, which is oneself. And so it is a victory after all, even in failure, even in death.

These thoughts came to mind not because of Noynoy Aquino but because of (I like Hitchcockian twists) Mar Roxas. Specifically what he did last Tuesday.

Last Tuesday, of course, Mar held a press conference to announce he was making way for Noynoy. It was a grand gesture, it was a graceful gesture. Though he was president of the Liberal Party, he said, he had looked outside and inside himself and decided to make that sacrifice. Country before self, that was his mantra. And the country was best served by Noynoy, rather than he, running as president.

One of course might say a great deal of it was force majeure, he ?had no choice? in quite the pedestrian way that he was gaining little headway in his presidential bid. But it was also that he ?had no choice? in the bigger moral-imperative, duty-to-history sense of it. Doy Laurel had done it before him, for which he is remembered today. Mar did it yesterday, for which he will be remembered tomorrow. He saw his own destiny, and fulfilled it.

A sense of destiny is seeing not just what one ought to do, it is seeing what one ought not to do. What one has no choice but to do is never easy to see, other than from hindsight. But if that is so, what one has no choice but not to do is even less easy to see, other than from hindsight. I can believe Neric Acosta when he says that making that decision was the hardest thing in the world for Mar. He had to wrestle with his angel, like Jacob, or go through his dark night of the soul, like John of the Cross. That he made that choice, with swiftness and resolve, Acosta said, it is a sign of character, it is a mark of statesmanship.

I agree. It is also a sense of destiny.

Destiny is not foreordained, it is a certainty only of struggle and sacrifice. The only victory it guarantees is the moral one: You may or may not be able to do what you set out to do, but at the end of things you become the better for doing it. The quest for things outside yourself, if it is a noble one, if it is a quixotic one, if it is destined one, always ends in you finding yourself, realizing yourself, fulfilling yourself. People do win the most resounding victories even in defeat: Think the 300 Spartans, think The Last Samurai. People do get more by taking less: Think Mar.

Mar has stepped down to run as vice president, but I don?t know that he hasn?t become bigger because of it. I don?t know that he hasn?t become stronger because of it. I don?t know that he hasn?t become, well, more presidential because of it. The Olympics have always understood the concept and applauded the loudest not the runner who first crossed the finish line but the one who rose to his feet after stumbling and limped his way to the finish line.

Who knows? Mar for president?for 2016.

Maybe that is his destiny.