Signs On the Celing

Philippines Today Essay Writing for Students
Entry:


When you are lying on a hard narrow bed, reluctantly inhaling the stink of cockroaches that mingled with the rotting wood of the walls which distance you can easily bridge by simply stretching your arms, staring at the low ceiling and seeing nothing, trying to drown out the banshee disguised as your neighbor just beyond the thin wall, can you ponder about abstract ideas such as nationalism and globalization? The escapists would simply dream of winning the lotto and the things they can do with millions of money, while the non-imaginative ones would worry themselves to sleep, perhaps, subconsciously wishing they won’t wake up anymore. Many Filipinos are in situations like this - hopeless and penniless. This is the average Filipino.


Would the average Filipino think of lofty things like nationalism? Would he speculate and prepare for cultural phenomena called globalization?


Some say that globalization is like a river, rushing, almost impossible to stop. If this is the case, the average citizen would be the tiny stone being carried along, resigned to the aimless, endless, crazy whirl. And some say that globalization is making the world smaller and smaller and smaller. Perhaps until people like us, without affluence or even financial security, will have no more place to hide, our own corner horribly shrinking.


But I say that globalization is just like my ceiling, an expanse of gray but a home to spiders, bumpy, but still enough to build their webs.


Some say that nationalism is a value. But it’s not the first value I would like my children to learn. In fact, I tend to agree with an author who said that patriotism is a form of selfishness and, with our present economic situation, a luxury. Some equate nationalism with dignity and freedom. And many men and women have given their lives for this almost whimsical thing called national identity.


But I say that nationalism is the quality of the thread being used by that spider, the spider on the ceiling.


You see, we are like spiders. We build webs. All kinds of webs. And we build these the way spiders knit their homes - backwards. It moves in circles, automatically producing the material for its web. And since it does not look ahead, it could not avoid a bump. It falls. The web gets deformed, the thread is stretched, thinned, "weakened". And the web-making stops for a while, until the spider is able to go back again.


We find ourselves hitting against such "bumps". For example, the emerging global markets infringe and often overrun the small local businesses. With such a dismal future for any business here, the risk-taking but practical entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs of our country would not think of investing and putting up any income-generating activity. They would migrate. They would rather take risks abroad. Abroad, they would have better chances of leading a more comfortable life. This view is also held by teachers and nurses, who would have no second thoughts in selling their lands and houses here just to pay the placement fee demanded by recruiters. Some of them are willing to become caregivers just to obtain immigrant visas and get out of our country. And they are our highly skilled and well-trained citizens. What if you’re not skilled or don’t have a masters degree? Does this mean that you have no hope at all in escaping this country? There is one quick method about it. It’s also risky. It’s called marriage, that is, marriage to an old rich man - he may be in his sixties but if he’s willing to pay for your fare and get you a fiancée visa, why not? Do anything so that you won’t be a Filipino citizen anymore. Nationalism has weakened.


Wait, we still have our OFWs. They don’t relinquish their citizenship. They also bring in the dollars. They are our heroes. And heroes have nationalism. But aren’t we just deluding ourselves? The OFWs don’t go out because they wanted to show nationalism. They go out, and sacrifice, to earn salaries they can never earn here even in two lifetimes. Our OFWs are not heroes. They are symptoms of a disease that our country had been suffering and ignoring for too many years. They work abroad because our economic situation here cannot satisfy their needs. Just like a spider’s blind attempt to pull itself up and continue building the "changed" web -- the globalization, a different face of globalization.


And sometimes there are other faces of globalization.


Globalization has widened our knowledge of political situations. When you watch the world news, our own problems here become less significant. Why give too much ra-ra on oil price hikes when children in Congo and Uganda are purposely drugged to make them soldiers? Going out to the streets to protest against the Balikatan seemed ridiculous when you are protesting against the same armed forces that fought the women oppressors in Afghanistan.


Perhaps we can solve our own problems here the way they had solved theirs? We can also ask them for help, believing that they can better understand our problems. After all, everything foreign is superior. But, by thinking that the foreign is better, we subject ourselves to a cultural violence. This is also a sure way to self-destruction. And, down the road, we may feel relieved when a country annexes the Philippines as one of its states. This way, we break nationalism.


Can nationalism therefore be practiced this way? Similar to the way a person uses a file in the computer. You can store it and forget about it, even accidentally erase it. Or you can retrieve it and then edit it. You can also move it into another directory or place it in the recycle bin. We can do any these when the situation demands it... when globalization compels us to. This means that globalization can dictate a Filipino on what to do with his nationalism.


But the bumps on the ceiling cannot solely break the strength of the thread. It cannot even stop the growth of the web. The thread, after all, comes inside the spider. Nationalism is inside every Filipino. Though it seems that the only result of globalization is the extinction of nationalism, such will never happen, unless, nature had allowed spiders to run out of thread.


The nationalism within us continuously tries to get out. Though God knows that these days, we are not very proud of our country. There is so little to be proud of. Yet our hearts beat a little faster when we learn that a Filipino wins a gold medal. We stand a little straighter when we hear a Filipino receiving an international award. And we look at each other with unspoken shame when the international media reports a crime committed by a Filipino abroad. Obviously, we care about our being Filipinos. And if we could just do something -- something to help, we would.


We can think of web as our country. And the ceiling where we build our web is dotted with structures of globalization. We bump and we fall. But we do not weaken the thread by thinking that the foreign is better, that the only way to have a better life is to migrate abroad. Why not give our country another chance?


There are still teachers who preferred to teach in small, overcrowded classrooms. There are still nurses who wanted to stay in our inadequately equipped hospitals. There are still entrepreneurs who put up small businesses. They wanted to give our country another chance.


If the thread is severed, the whole web will collapse. It can even choke the one who lives in it. Do you plan to pull yourself up and continue building?