Hope and eggs

Fr. James V. Schall, SJ, a student and teacher of philosophy at Georgetown University, once spoke about the important principles of property and ownership. According to Schall, many philosophers, including Aristotle, differentiated private against common property, with the former allowing individuals to give and receive, and the latter, only to share. One can only give (or retain) what is his; where there is no specific ownership, sharing is the only just option. I think this differentiation, and the principle of a queuing system, accounts for about 80 percent of the development we in the Philippines have yet to achieve.

I form this conclusion on the basis of having spent seven and a half years of education and employment outside the Philippines. Having stood up from the chessboard, so to speak, one is able to see things others may have taken for granted. At first, there is a tendency to focus more on what is lacking; we’ve all heard stories of returning expatriates complaining about traffic and pollution. Damn right there is work to be done.

But what may be more difficult to discover is the optimism that is required to transcend these challenges. That can only be learned through the example of other optimistic people, and through building resilience. I fully believe Filipinos are capable of such optimism and, therefore, transcendence. No simpler example demonstrates this better than the following story:

My family and I recently visited a famous resort in Nasugbu, Batangas, the name of which we shall hide under the pseudonym PdPF. At one of our breakfasts, my brother told me at our table that the egg station had finally been restocked. I sprinted to the cook and gave an order for four sunny-side-up eggs, cooked in pairs on the two frying pans in his station. I told him I would quickly bring back some other items first to my table, and would retrieve the eggs upon my return. Lo and behold, (I had not realized this then) I returned to find two people directing the cook on how to prepare the eggs he had initially laid out for me.

I received my first pair of fried eggs just fine, busted though it was, which was probably the reason I received them. Thankfully, the second pair was cooking beautifully, with the whites of both eggs merging gloriously to form a tasteful side dish to our tocino. At last, the cook lifted the pan to plate the eggs. As I reached out slowly with a pleasant smile to retrieve the eggs for my family, a quick hand flashed from somewhere and grabbed the plate.

“Thank you,” said the clever and smiling lady to me.

A contained wave of surprise and anger led me to nod at her silently. But as I collected myself, I asked the cook whether he told her the eggs were being prepared for somebody else. He said he did.

I approached the kind lady, knelt in order to be less threatening, and said, “Ma’am, sorry, but just for awareness, please do not do that again.”

She glared at me, saying she had actually come before me. The husband followed up with an “Is there a problem?”

Opening myself up to the possibility, I returned to the cook to ask, “Sino ba talaga ang nauna (Who really came first)?”

The cook said I did.

I returned to the couple’s table, told the husband there was no problem, and left with these stern words: “He actually said it was me, so please.”

My brothers gave me a hard time for obsessing over a small matter. But I think the couple were lucky to receive only three sentences from me. I do admire them for not attacking my character, but good God, she was told by the cook that the eggs were being prepared for somebody else. In the same manner that I would not expect a barista at a coffee shop to give my drink to somebody after me just because I returned quickly to my table, I would not expect this kind of behavior at a resort.

True, the issue involved mere eggs. But this fact should also lead us to ask a rhetorical question, the answer for which I think we are capable of changing over the next several years: Did I really return to a country where I cannot even trust that an order for eggs will not be taken by somebody else out of turn? What more of our roads, queues at the MRT, our healthcare system, our taxes, our environment?

The redeeming value in all of this was that the cook actually had the guts to stand up for what is right, despite his understandable defeat by the powerful lady. So while there are capable individuals who can use their influence to take undue advantage, there are those brave enough to fight for the right thing, win or lose. There are those brave enough to stop a person of critical interest from fleeing the country at the risk of a contempt order from court officials.

In the words of St. Thomas, “justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.”

For nobody else but ourselves, let us periodically ask what we ought to do, find other people who believe in pursuing the same, and join them.

Jed Santo Domingo, 26, is executive assistant to a member of the Monetary Board.