Trade-offs of a Diaspora

The government, under past and present administrations, has been proud of its deployment of around eleven million Overseas Filipino Workers.  Almost all administrations trumpet this exodus of Filipinos abroad.  Without this deployment, the Philippine economy would have sunk in the pit long ago.

What help us tide over the financial global crises are the remittances of our overseas workers.

This Filipino Diaspora is more of an indictment of how Philippines had been badly governed.  Instead of being proud, any administration should bow its head in recognition of its failure at governance.  There is nothing to be proud about of having to send Filipinos abroad for greener pasture since there may be no pasture to speak about back home.

The foreign currency remittances have been the price tag of the trade-offs these modern day heroes have to endure.  In some countries such as Hong Kong, the word Filipina is synonymous with domestic helper. We have heard of tales of the cruelties our new heroes suffer under foreign employers.   Even foreign governments treated our fellowmen abroad harshly: just recall Flor Contemplacion, and Sarah Balabagan.

These sensational cases involving OFWs are not as destructive as the ill-effects the Diaspora have on the basic social unit of our society – the family.  Cases like those of Contemplacion and Balabagan received the most attention, and the parties involved usually are beneficiaries of the dole-outs of our image conscious politicians.

Suffering silently and without media hype is the Filipino family.

Parents leave small children to the care of relatives so they can work abroad, and earn decent living to support the children, and even the extended family. But parental care has no substitute.  Children of the OFWs suffer the psychological stigma of being left to their own, not to mention the pain they endure as they miss the embrace of their loving parents.

If you have eleven million OFWs, just multiply this with two children – the least a family has considering that the national average is three children per household – you readily have twenty two million children, without one or both parents in the household.  Twenty two million is already a big portion in our eighty million population overall.

The fate these children suffer under the set-up is only one facet of the story.

The marital woes must be taken into account when we speak of the trade-offs.

When both parents work abroad, the children suffer the most. When only one goes abroad, the marital problem multiplies a thousand fold.

The difficult part of working overseas is not the work or adjustment with the new culture.  Filipinos are known to be resilient and hardworking.  These are not issues to them.

Loneliness abroad is gnawing.  We are used to chit-chats, share jokes, and laugh with our neighbors even with the most mundane issue of the fighting spiders.  That we are by nature a cheerful and happy people despite the economic hardships should be conceded.

Being uprooted and thrown into lands where even the fellow-next-door is a stranger contributes largely to the loneliness of our OFWs.

Loneliness and being alone are strong emotions that prod one to seek for a company in a foreign land.  Under these circumstances, marital infidelity is almost unavoidable.

Try to take a census of your friends, relatives, and neighbors, the tales of broken marriages are most common.

I don’t have many friends whose spouses are working abroad.  The numbers do not exceed ten.  Of these few friends, there are four broken marriages.  Of the four friends, two received divorce papers almost at the same time.  One friend who followed his wife in the US was shock to learn the sorry news of his wife’s pregnancy.

Broken marriages and children without one or both parents in their growing-up years, these two are just the right elements for the destruction of the family.

The government should not take pride in sending Filipinos overseas. The trade-off in this Diaspora is the sacrifice of the family in the altar of foreign currencies. We may survive economically the present but we may have unwittingly bargained away the future generations of Filipinos.

Our nation without the strong family as the bedrock is doomed to fail in the long run.  The trade-offs may not be worth the sacrifice at all.

To top it all, we seem not to recognize the real trade-off.

soulmates

shaped in the same cast, we trek apart

searching for our own cithara sings

the melody written in the universes of our fate

distanced by space, longing for the presence

we keep on humming, the same tune of our birth

when we sing, there is always the broken chord

that empties our being, and longing

in the concert hall of our heart, we know what

the music that completes the song

the soundtrack that our destinies must play

to our heart we keep, the testament of our birth

wherever we trod, we hear

the murmurs of the heart

the same melody we have always known

that by fate we, each, sing alone…

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Sunday July 1, 2007 – 06:17am (CST) Edit | Delete

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soulmates

February 14 is St. Valentine’s Day when as the cliche goes, love triumphs above all. Today, I commit to digress from my brand of writing, in honor of somebody to whom I promised to write a topic about – soulmates. She asked me whether I believed in soulmates, by way of an answer, let me assay further….

 

More in depth in Classical Definition

 

“Plato wrote in his Symposium that humans have been looking for their soul mate ever since Zeus cut them in half. In his mythic story, Plato describes a world where there were men, women and people who were both men and women. Apparently, humans began discussing how they could climb up to heaven and replace the gods. The gods were upset by this and discussed what should be done. The simplest solution would be to destroy mankind, but Zeus came up with a better idea. He suggested cutting all human beings in half. This would serve two purposes. First, it would immediately double the number of people making offerings to the gods. Second, it would weaken the humans, so they would not be able to carry out their plan. Zeus’ idea was accepted, and the humans were all divided into two. Naturally, the humans were upset at this, and Zeus decided to enable each half to have intercourse with their opposite , symbolically creating a whole. Consequently, the males sought other males, the females other females, and the people who had been both male and female sought their other half, allowing population to reproduce.”¹ This concept is outlined in the modern musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch

 

New Age concept of soulmate

 

There is a prevalent concept in some segments of the New Age movement that some souls are literally made and/or fated to be the mates of each other, or to play certain other important roles in each others’ lives. These souls are thought to have created something in a past life and they have chosen this lifetime to help each other “heal.” Following this concept, one can have many soulmates. For example: One could see another person they have never met in this lifetime and instantly hate or love them because of previous interaction(s) with the other in one or more previous lifetimes. The most popular use of this concept is in applying it to those who were loved intimately in other lifetimes which were then found in this one.

 

Also, being conscious of the “soul mate connection” is not necessary, according to this idea.

 

Soulmate Emotional Destruction Theory

 

Ultimately the consequence of this notion is the unfortunate reality that soulmates often possess the ability to inflict serious emotional injury unto their twin flame, greater than any other being could. This often results in the separation of idealized love, due to the severe emotional impact. Many soulmates are destined for an eternal search, not for lack of meeting, but rather lack of acceptance. The encounter is often analogous to the collision of matter and antimatter, a violent explosive reaction will occur, but if held through to completion only pure energy, and thus harmony, will result. Unfortunately few encounters are held through to completion.

 

Eastern View

While the Greeks had the idea of soulmates as mythology, Eastern Philosophy, Hinduism more particularly, has believed in the idea of soulmates as something real and experiential. Man has many past lives, not necessarily as humans but as other forms of organism. In man’s quest for nirvana, that is, complete bliss, he undergoes the wheel of reincarnation, sometimes as a cricket, a frog, a cow, or as man. But the spirit behind this earthly manifestations is the same constant spirit in search for nirvana. In this wheel of reincarnation, the spirit , in one of its earthly lives, encountered its true mate, which due to temporary existence is cut short by death. But in future lives, as if by coincidence, the two constant spirits would meet in other bodily presence. Their past lives would be re-awakened in an instant as if two combustible materials ignite each other, and they identify and recognize each other. In that one particular lifetime, they realize that they are only complete in the presence and love for each other. But alas, their present circumstances may not be similar in their past lives, so the love for each other is muted and pounded in the arms of another person.

The deepest love of all has cosmological origin, and in the spread of eternity, that kind of love may not find fruition at all. But when these two spirits indeed meet but are trapped in different circumstances, in time and space, they still recognize their true love for each other, that kind of love that is not imprisoned in the flesh and circumstances, the love that springs eternal and magical.

The celebration of Valentine’s Day is not necessarily the celebration of true love, but the sanctity of the search itself.

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Tuesday February 13, 2007 – 08:32pm (CST) Edit | Delete

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