“There is no hope for our country.” My teacher once said, in the middle of the classroom with our ears wide open. Her eyes tell me that she was tired of waiting, waiting for a bright life. She was right though; there is no hope for our country. A country shed with many blood but not loved by its keepers. You can hear your neighbors singing in karaoke’s with disgruntled voices of drunkards. You can hear them laughing and smoking, while their children worries of their father’s state when he comes home. You can hear the shuffling of cards and their complains of why they are poor. They blame the government yet do nothing themselves. What was the point of blaming the government if we ourselves did nothing but drink beers, gamble, do piracy and cheat? Most people in the country do that and my mother refers them as “unproductive people”. Yes they were, they are being merry and complain about why they were poor yet, and they didn’t work hard for the money to do all that. “Only in the Philippines.” My mother said as I watched my father go drunk among our neighbors, who do the same. I feel ashamed to hear that, the drinking, the gambling, the piracy, the cheating…is this the image of the Philippines? Are these her people? Is this what the world sees?

They say educating the young can shaped the future. How can they shape the future of the Philippines when the young study hard so they can work away from the country? Maybe it was a lot better if we didn’t fight our colonizers after all. And there are our leaders who don’t want to let go of their powers for the next ones, who claims popularity to win instead of telling the issues. They dance here and sing there so people can vote for them, can dancing and singing actually help improved the Philippines? They corrupt their power and show us that power is a very dangerous thing. Those beautiful laws shaped by the constitution are not even enforced. People just break them and if something bad happens, they blame the government when they should be blaming themselves. There is no justice as you watched even our own law enforces do crime and all those beautiful ideas and inventions by our young minds all unsupported and sold to other countries who claims its success. You watched our own people’s crimes so obvious even in the eyes of a baby, which made things much worse, yet we do nothing but support it.

You learn about our heroes; Christians, Muslims or Lumads they were, who died for our country to gain freedom and peace. Many have names not even written in our history but they died, they died for the country which we have not loved so easily. But the war isn’t over; we have been fighting all our lives. And our quest for our future is lost. Only we can turn this country to whatever we wanted it to be, despite our western mentalities and quest for riches and powers. No foreigner can help us, how can we be independent if we still submit to them? And all I know is, even if one person shows love for this country, is still weak without the help of many. Because we are all in this together and if we don’t, we will all, a doom to all. Do you think now, that there is hope for our country? When we no longer listen to its music and see its beauty? Well I think there is and my teacher is wrong. Because even if only one small candle is the only light of the world, that is still what we call hope.