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Sunday, March 05, 2006
Essay: Love and politics don’t mix
By Erma M. Cuizon
Sun.star essay
A kid eggs you on, taunting from the side, at your back, until you’ve had enough of it, and since you’re a kid yourself, you run after him with a baseball bat.
The scene is that of only two kids playing, now on the verge of scratching each other’s eyes because play is getting boring.
Then when you grow up, you become a member of a fraternity and it’s more than a baseball bat that you use.
After you’re finished with college, you become a politician and you lead people to the edge of the cliff with your own agenda and you call it patriotism.
The playful kid in you is gone. And something else that stays with a kid, as long as you stay a kid at heart, is gone. Simple, honest love is gone.
A friend sent us a “Forward” in the e-mail on how children see love. It’s one of those light pieces that make your day, but which you might not read at all, after the first few lines, because Forwards get to be boring and fill up space in your mail. But this one mentions lecturer Leo Buscaglia, who wrote “The Falling of Freddie the Leaf,” which is a “classic fable” for kids (and adults) about loving, losing, learning---a book we would have loved to read if there were copies around and a film we can’t wait to see.
This piece of Forward ends with a mention of Buscaglia (who died five years ago), how he related one time about having been a judge of a contest that would find out the most caring child.
“The winner was a four-year-old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.
“When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry.’ ”
And this heart in kids may already be absent in adults who join rallies at the drop of a hat to shake the very foundation of this country or who arrest people for taking awake the freedom to shake it.
Then you probably haven’t read the Sun.Star Cebu news about how students in Mactan National High School “collected empty bottles and plastic containers, sold these and used the proceeds to buy” two cans of sardines and four packs of noodles for victims of the Leyte landslide. This is love.
It was a quiet item nobody any more remembers having read (if anyone read it at all) in the Feb. 28 issue. Perhaps the story seemed unreal. Just like the way we consider love, the news is in a corner of our head, at the back, unimportant.
Love isn’t adults trying to build up a rally somewhere in Edsa “for the future of our country.” They face truncheons and they scream, they’re asking for it so that someone gets blamed, like in that part of the kid play when play gets boring and so kids start hitting each other with sticks, fraternities with guns, politicians with speeches and closed fists.
Actually, reading about what children think about love wasn’t like the usual Forwards sent by a friend in Washington D.C.--–it was like a break from all the unkindnesses adults show to each other.
A number of professional people got together and decided to make a survey of kids (from 4- to 8-year-old) about love.
“What does love mean?” the question went.
“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth,” said Rebecca, 8.
With adults, like with TV personalities, they put words in your mouth; they’re not asking questions, they’re telling you to say what they want you to say.
Adults stand out in the streets, walk, wave, feel feisty, angry; their streamers screaming as they push truncheons, feel superior and cleaner. This is love of country, they say.
Kids are low-key about what they think is love. They don’t need streamers or Cory Aquino at the head of the line. “Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs,” according to Chrissy, aged 6.
“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it,” says Jessica, 8. “But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 4, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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