Last chance for the winning path

Last chance for the winning path
GLIMPSES
Jose Ma Montelibano

Please polish yet keeping to my original thoughts and words as much as possible, Want the flow smooth and rhythm my style:

I only gave what I thought was a very good idea. There were a lot of very useful information that somehow got buried in the rubble before anyone could put them together and see the simple gems in them. Yes, my idea was very simple, which they should be if they have a chance of being understood by a greater number of people from all walks of life.

I think, though, that simple is profound. It is not easy, though it should be. But life has become like that for many of us. We have left the simple for the complicated, and ended up confused instead of being informed. By definition, simple is just that – simple. By definition too , complicated is like that – not easy to understand.

My simple idea was based on facts. The 2022 Leny presidential campaign showed a grassroots movement led strongly by the young and enthusiastic, yellow and pink adult forces. With 15 million votes for a sparsely funded campaign against the most dominant man political forces combined against her, my simple idea was to tap the first 10,000,000 votes, rally them to be the army for the good guys that could raise 1000 pesos each and reach a campaign fund of 10 billion pesos.

While the grass roots campaign certainly does a lot to raise necessary funds, it’s greater power is the generation of passion and enthusiasm that can catapult unlikely winners into the winning circle of 12 senatorial candidates. The campaign money is overwhelming. This oligarchic election war chest is both from political and big business sources. The idea to band together is a simple one, but profound. It is profound because it challenges our spirit to rise above smaller goals and concerns, then converge towards the most important. In this election, to bring 2 to 4 good guys into the Senate is the primordial goal that all of us should willingly concede to.

An electoral revolution, or a mini people power movement, means many of us doing the same thing, not many of us doing different things. The idea that I presented, though simple, challenges our intelligence and, more than that, challenges our willingness to sacrifice for the bigger cause. And I now observe that many are enthusiastic for the simplicity, but mired in the conflict of emotions when two goals collide against each other.

The Senatorial campaign is halfway finished. Our good guys are doing as well as they could from their own strength of character, their established credibility and track record, and their respective mini armies doing what they can. Yet, they will fall short. The odds against them are simply monumental. It takes an atmosphere similar to what Leny was able to generate in 2022. It takes millions of Filipinos to be part of their active campaign.

I am not losing hope. I am only accepting a trite and old pattern continuing to hold sway against the higher aspirations of people. I am not losing hope, I am only witnessing the sadness creeping in again. We have called the enemy as forces of darkness and evil. If so, they are simply continuing what they’ve always been doing. The sadness that is creeping in me is to see that the good guys are still willing to tolerate the pain inflicted on them and the nation by not taking the most relentless resistance available to them.

It seems, again, that I have to turn to external, maybe even Divine, forces to cause the proverbial societal implosion from deep pain and frustration. That has been the more common way of radical change in the world. We have to be more prepared for that experience again. It will not be a pleasant one, neither for winners or losers, when there is more chaos and tension than reason or vision.

This writer is not only elderly, but also facing serious health challenges. I tend to be more fatalistic and accepting of the powerful patterns that govern not our intelligence, but the way our minds have been made to think. It is not my lifetime that I am more concerned about. It is the foundation of hope that I can contribute to before I go. To the end, I hope to share simple and maybe profound ideas. That is the least I can do.

I often see videos of wisdom that the elderly love to share with each other. One such video, or several versions of the same message, has become my favorite. It begins with a question. Or maybe a conclusion. The message says, and I quote, that in 100 years, no one will remember us. Our children will be gone, and so will our grandchildren. Who then will remember us? This statement forces us to rethink everything even at this late stage of life. If no one will remember us, what did we live for beyond the ambitions of our lifetime? What substance are we leaving behind for the generations that will follow us?

I know that my name will be forgotten. That is alright by me. After all, how many times have I submitted what I personally wanted to what I thought greater than me. And I think of all the good things that I tried and actually contributed to the common goal according to the time-honored values of the Filipino. I remember my mistakes too, and how I tried to learn the good lessons out of them. This is what I live behind – my contribution to the culture and value system that future generations will be guided by.