Forum Mid-year Giveaway: 2018. WINNERS POSTED UPDATED 7/6/18

I am Jose Lorenzo Sereno, or Joren for short. I was born in 1987, the same month our 1987 Constitution took effect. I was born in a time of change, when the howling winds of dictatorship and death had finally broken against walls of people holding hands and rosaries. I was born to two people who in their own small way had struggled to ensure that my sister and I, a year apart, would live in a better world.


My father’s name is Mario Jose, or Jong for short. He was born in 1957, in the now highly-popular Davao City. He was a simple and shy boy who excelled in academics. He was quiet, dependable, and had dreams of his own that he could not fulfill. He was after all born poor, and relied on scholarships to get through school. Still, it was only a matter of time before his efforts paid off, when he was sent off to far-flung Manila to study in this very school. He was a Cervini boy who played his guitar in its quiet halls during holidays while other dorm-mates would go home to the province because he could not afford the trip home. In these cold nights, he endured.


My mother’s name is Maria Lourdes, or Meilou for short. She was born in 1960, in the lively streets of Kamuning, Quezon City. She was not a simple and shy girl. She was intense early on, picking fights with boys and scaring them off with her ferocity. She was brilliant, but initially unchained. And while her Tagalog mother would keep the family afloat through businesses and a day job as a public school teacher, her half-Tausug father would do whatever he wanted because he was brilliant, fiery, and wildly popular. The fire of the hearth and the fire of the sword. They forged my mother into what she is today. And in the Ateneo de Manila, she met my father.


Fire and Ice. A popular theme nowadays. But quite apt in my case, because I am both my father and my mother. And it is as their child that I speak to you today, to the youth of today.


Do not forget your history. Do not forget where you came from, your mother’s name, your grandfather’s dreams, and your ancestors’ legacy. Do not forget the courage that made our forebears bleed throughout our seven thousand islands, when others tried to impose their will on us and curtail our freedom. We are what they made us to become – fire and ice.


Today, it is easy to be silent. It is easy to simply try to survive, to compromise otherwise unbreakable principles. To befriend otherwise detestable individuals. To give them a pound of flesh that by all rights is undeserved, but that they take by force. Be it from the barrel of a gun, or the twisted words of the law, do not give them that satisfaction.


My mother is far more eloquent than me, and her entire ordeal in standing up against a regime that is entirely fixated on power and control to the detriment of national interests and the rule of law is a journey that is not yet over and deserves complete attention. Nor is the hardest part of it done. She stood, when others knelt. She decried the lack of due process, the lack of legal safeguards, the utter lack of competence, and was struck down because of it.


She still stands. Whether as Chief Justice or as a simple citizen of this young democracy, she will continue to stand and speak. But her voice will only carry weight if others join in. If others likewise speak what must be spoken. Remember that she does not speak from her experience alone, but she speaks what others want to say but fear saying. She speaks for the mothers bereaved, for the fishermen and indigenous people driven from their ancestral lands and seas by aliens and strangers. She speaks because she must, because nothing – not position, not power, not cowering silence – will save you when the devil comes for you. And he will, because after all the jungle of laws have now been cut down.


Take courage. It is not about lacking fear but embracing and overcoming the fear, and fighting on despite the fear. Recall the whispers of your blood, the blood of the brave Bicolano; the fierce Ilocano; the valiant Kapampangan; the unconquerable Visayan; the true Filipino. We are called today to take courage, because as much as our parents gave us what we have, it is in our hands to take this and make of it something more.


As a final note, let me share with you my poem. It was written in just a few minutes, when my emotions were purer than they are now, when I was still a bit sentimental. Today I have shed off sentiment, and steeled myself for whatever lies ahead. Omnia in bonum. It is all for the good. May God bless you all today.