How did you fall in love with the Philippines? Human Nature's Nikki shares her patriotic love story.

How did you fall in love with the Philippines? Human Nature's Nikki shares her patriotic love story.

by Nikki de los Santos

Where thou art, that is home.
-Emily Dickinson

It was not love at first sight.

My story was preluded by a post-revolutionary Philippines, a time before I even existed: The shadow cast by Martial Law had been lifted and the protests were hushed by ebbs of prayer, fueling Filipinos with a newfound sense of courage and hope for their country. For my parents and many belonging to their generation, the triumph of the EDSA Revolution heralded in a more promising future. But despite all the idealism, there were a number of Filipinos who had lost hope within those lost decades, and whose ideas of freedom did not necessarily have anything to do with the Philippines.

Most Filipinos took this renewed liberty as an opportunity to build a new life for themselves and their families. For some, it meant building a life in the United States. As a result of my newlywed parents’ post-EDSA pursuits, I was born a full-fledged product of the American dream, with the blue passport and voting rights to prove it. In the latter half of my formative years, however, my parents decided that they had been away from their homeland for too long and it was about time to introduce their children to our heritage. So I was uprooted, completely unprepared and unilingual, to spend at least the next 16 years in the foreign realm of Manila.

I did not learn to love the Philippines immediately because for most of my life, I felt like it didn’t love or have any place for me. I often felt like a foreigner in my own country, unable to properly train my tongue in the contortions of Filipino diction or condition my palate to crave the flavors of local cuisine. Resigned to the idea that it was too late to develop a sense of home in the Philippines, I stopped trying, swayed by the cynicism that there was no future for me here, that disgruntled Filipinos were right, that money and living and employment opportunities were richer on the other side of the globe.

As I eventually realized, it’s easy to dream about a world you don’t have than to see the value of the world that you’re immersed in, especially when you’re surrounded by reruns of socio-political frustrations and disenchanted citizens who, like you, can’t find a stable reason worth your hope. It’s easier to disown your country when you have a ticket out. So I made plans for future pursuits in a place where I can help people and make a difference – elsewhere.

Spurred by the apparent rejection by a place that I felt would never completely embrace me, I was convinced that I would finally be able to do good once I managed to get out and move on. But things didn’t quite turn out the way I had planned. You could blame it on my university, which took me in despite my adolescent misery and, for the first time since childhood, gave me a sense of home.

I had originally intended to study liberal arts abroad, so I could not have predicted the irony that my local academic pursuits would become a definitive reason for me to stay. For it was during my university years that I was rigorously trained in the humanities and social sciences, which cultivated my intellectual capacities for critical thinking and insight into the social world that surrounded me.

The most wondrous thing about my education is that it did not limit its concern to abstract knowledge. Rather, it purposefully shaped both my heart and my intellect in the depth of human experience and social realities, not stopping at what I know, but pushing me to determine what I’m going to do about it. It taught me that social consciousness required service and responsibility beyond charity, and that in order to speak for the marginalized, we first had to learn how to listen to their voices. And how could I do that if I had chosen to neglect the reality of my own society, all because of the wistful anxiety I attributed to a country that didn’t love me?

If it were not for my education, I would never have learned how to live with hope in myself or my country. Learning how to think critically essentially led me to learn how to care – something that self-consciousness had always hindered me from doing. Social consciousness eventually replaced self-consciousness and awakened a passion for poverty studies and a commitment to social empowerment. I was trained so well in the social use of my intellect that it ultimately led me to question why I thought I had to leave my country to do good and make a difference. Because the truth was, there was so much good that needed to be done here and that I was capable of contributing to, regardless of the immovability of my accent.

It was not purely a Messianic call that led me to love the Philippines. I could travel anywhere in the world to do good. But as fate had it, I was here and now. The call of my fatedness – of the social and cultural circumstances that shaped me – all came down to how I could fulfill my desire to help people and address the social realities that I was passionate about. Because that’s exactly what love entails: one’s total, courageous, self-giving response to anything you find value in. So why run, when there is still so much to do, so many sights left to see, and so much cultural and social beauty I’d neglected to value? It was not simply a call to do, but a call to be the person I could have been if only I’d chosen to find happiness and contentment in my country earlier.

It was a simple but defining insight of love for country that I owe completely to my education. But if it was my university that embraced me and gave me direction, it was my involvement in development work and social entrepreneurship that gave me the direct means to serve the society that I intended to help empower with every capable fiber of my being. I was lucky enough to be embraced by institutions that believe in directing my capacities to developing the skills and capabilities of the marginalized and helping them reach their potential despite their own fate. In doing so, I have the privilege of witnessing the creativity and innovation of Filipinos every day and contributing to nation-building for a living.

It turned out to be grace that stole me away from the American dream and built new aspirations in which I could invest my hope and courage, even if it did take over a decade for me to see its purpose. Love, like liberty, is better late than never – and when it comes, it’s definitely worth staying for.

 

How did you fall in love with the Philippines? Send us a blog entry or share your own personal love story in our comments section below. Spread the love! <3