As I Was Once Told

Benign & Bespectacled
As I Was Once Told
by April Mae Serafica
I was once told—and that one time was not at all easy to take in—that every bit of pursuing my
immeasurable love for journalism flourishes from my insatiable obsession to prove that I am better than
the rest of the world. Out of all the corrupt people in this world; especially those who spend others’
money to buy them all the things no one else in the world would ever have or wish to have alone; those
who risk others’ safety to preserve their own, when it should be the other way around; and those who
even take others’ lives just because it might make their own live a bit more comfortable—I was the one
condemned as “power-hungry”. Aside from losing one precious friendship, I have lost that argument
without even defending myself from the lax judgment on how I am such an airhead. I shall skip to the
next paragraph for this hurts my ego substantially, yes.
They say that pain changes people, but no, that kind of pain did not change me. Call me obsessed, but I
would rather be anything but apathetic.
Up to this day, the cure to cancer remains unknown. In spite of scientific efforts from the holistic to
cellular level, said disease continues to take away numbers of lives in bits or all at once. I therefore
reinforce, for what might be a modified personal judgment, what Gat. Jose P. Rizal had claimed, in the
fictional personality of Don Crisostomo Ibarra of El Filibusterismo: that the Philippine society is infected
with cancer of an untreatable form, one which, more so, is incapable of alleviation.
There are two reasons why treatment regimens don’t work: first, the group of destructive cells are too
massive to be controlled, hence being in more control of the fate of the host in which it lingers. Second,
the treatment itself is ineffective against the disease, aiming target to other healthy sites within the
host.
I repeat, the Philippine society is an oblivious host with life completely endangered by cancer—the
disease brought exclusively by its massively corrupt and seemingly interminable Philippine government.
And yet, you might wonder why I have come this far. You might turn the page because you think that I
am incoherent and unorganized. Of course, yes you do. Because you do not have the same drive that my
type does. You do not believe in reformation. Moreover, you do not believe that you have the power to
cause revolution.
You are but one of the eighty-so percent of cancer-infested society. You are part of the majority that
fights to live, rather than lives to fight. You call me and my brothers control freaks, ambitious, selfish,
conceited, greedy and all of the other things you are more apt being called instead of us.
As you would fondly label us—we are the activists. And yes, at some point that is true. We are at some
point, violent. But you are a fool believing that we are the pests in this society. For you do not know that
while you are busy cursing our heightened courage you will never have, Ms. Janet Lim Napoles is
grabbing your dough from your pockets; the yellow government is too busy brainwashing you with a
variety of out-of-the-country trips to promote international camaraderie when it is more of maintaining
a mirage of albums on their young’s social networking sites; and the demons at the senate are taking
you by the neck, draining your rights from your soul drop by drop to make things right for them.
And there you are, too busy ranting on the fact that we get so aggravated by these things happening
behind your back while they try to get you on blinders and never look at their demonic activities ever
again.
You say this is obsession—the undying hope to awaken you and your sleeping men from the bed of
thorns you seem comfortable sleeping in, while children go hungry and die on the streets, while women
remain powerless over the rest, and while your brethren lose any form of legacy because some other
family took them from you to make their own. May I just say that obsession is the unbreakable desire to
make more and more for oneself, which is not this.
Because this is the inevitable exercise of our will to make a better life for you and your families, hoping
that eventually, as one, we can work together towards an honest future with our rotten government.
Yes it is ambitious. Yes it is quite controlling.
But it will never be an obsession.
Because I was once told to find what I love doing and continue doing it. To never stop until I stand on
the edge of what I have always wanted to achieve. And so I tell you now, whether or not the judgments
are reversible, that I, with my brothers in this undertaking have always wanted to make more and more
not for ourselves, but for you, your children, your children’s children, and so on.
And that is not obsession. That is passion.