E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Dry thoughts in a dry season
Sunday, 03 20, 2005
In the recent weeks, I had been through some sort of undefined malaise that clung tenaciously to body and mind that even the most mundane things that I used to do from sheer force of habit acquired through years of personal discipline seemed new undertakings fraught with uncertainty and trepidation. And, however, hard I tried to shake it off, the vague feeling dogged me in my wakeful and sleeping moments that I began to doubt whether I was unreasonably being worried, dissatisfied, discontented, or all together at once.
Have I unwittingly made too many enemies in the course of the practice of my profession and in the pursuance of what Dylan Thomas once described as his “art and sullen craft?” I do not delude myself that my legal skills have approximated the sagacity of a Jose Diokno, or that the prose I had so far devoted in columns that appeared in this paper has taken sprouted wings and flown to heights of journalistic achievement and excellence. But I do fear that the occasional sharpness of my tongue might someday cut off my head that thinks for me.
So this season of Lent, I will be kind to my enemies. I will do unto them what they would have wanted to do to me that made them enemies of mine in the first place. I might even be sorely tempted to be compassionate to a couple of compañeros who virtually have tried to rob an associate and me blind of our rightful share of professional fees. They say gold is tested by fire, and man, by gold. They have failed the test of gold; I pity them and will pray for them. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But just the same, I will pray that my grievance against them will be settled once and for all.
I steel myself with the assurance that these former associates are unwitting instruments of some higher purpose — a test on my simple and trusting view of the world and human nature due to my youth and inexperience. But a sense of outrage — because the deception was perpetrated by persons sworn to be agents of justice — takes a very heavy toll on my soul, that foolishly I cry out: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” The petulance does not last long. I suddenly discover that God has not abandoned me; He was just behind me, watching and guiding me every step of the way.
When my mother died in October last year, I thought for a while that the personal bond I had with her had been cut off. How wrong I was! Even as I stood by her bier, feeling guilty that I had not spent with her as much time as I should before she shuffled off this mortal coil, I heard a warm, reassuring voice say, “Woman, behold your son!” and went on to admonish me, “Behold your mother.”
Unexpectedly — and blissfully — I understood for the first time what Wordsworth meant when he wrote: “What though the radiance which was once so bright/ Be now forever taken from my sight / Tho' nothing can bring back the hour/ Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower/ We will grieve not but rather find strength in what remains behind/ In our primal sympathy which having been must ever be/ In the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering/ In the face that looks through death / In the years that bring the philosophic mind.” Not quite alone anymore, I looked down on my mother's inert form. Which hurts worse: the pain of a son being bereaved, or the pain of a mother who has lovingly brought up her son to responsible manhood and shared his trials and tribulations even as he was old enough to win trials of his own? Mother, behold your son: a lawyer now.
On my way to work, I often have to wait for what seems like an eternity for the traffic cop to untangle the usual traffic jam so my car could move on to deposit me to wherever that particular day chooses for me to earn a decent-enough living. I dread these traffic snarls because they bring me face-to-face with an inhumanity that, somehow, I am part of but I am helpless to eradicate. I see this inhumanity in the sad, vacant faces of unwashed street waifs knocking on the window of my car, which I keep tightly closed lest their hollow voices saying, “I thirst,” reach my ears and forever resound in the caverns of my mind.
I hate myself because it is beyond my human endurance to weep for them. I hate the times and the society we live in, for allowing 10 percent of the population enjoy 90 percent of the wealth while the remaining 90 percent of the people inexorably get hungrier, thirstier — and engender more children who are mercilessly caught in the snarl of everyday existence. Has the spring of our compassion as a nation finally run dry? Has the final wave of social justice ebbed away from the land once eulogized by Rizal as “our lost Eden?”
But while I hate myself for being helpless in the face of the social evils of the day, I have not given up hope. Someday, a just and moral Filipino will come. I just hope to be still alive when I see him deliver this nation from the abyss of corruption, and declare: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
This Fair Hope of the Motherland will slay the dragons of corruption and strike down the walls of social injustice all over the land. He will go through the agony of having to choose between partisan benefit and national interest; he will reject the temptation of the perks of power and pelf; he will truly care for those around him. By then we need not hide our faces behind newspapers proclaiming that we have steadily graduated to newer heights of corruption. Instead we can proudly albeit belatedly say to our neighbors: “It is finished!”
Thus meander the thoughts of this practicing lawyer/aspiring writer on this hot, oppressive Saturday afternoon. To the best that I can, I have tried to be true to both my profession and avocation. And should some reversal of fortune befall me on account of my sharp-edged tongue on the one hand and my sharp-pointed pen on the other, I can only say, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
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