Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Carvajal: Hope as courageous and ridiculous By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
FOR lack of space last Saturday, I did not say anything about a very crucial point that Fr. Melo Diola raised in his position paper on preparing for 2010. It is so crucial that I must find space for it here. It is about the human (and not exclusively Christian) virtue of hope that Fr. Melo said should spur us into action against all odds.
I find it crucial that we should agree to give hope by acting to solve some of the ills (at least those that come within range) besetting out country. Without a deep understanding, hence, appreciation of what hope is all about, we will sit dead in the water with the facile cynicism and shallow despair that are immobilizing so many.
At this point, therefore, for my second and even stronger endorsement of Dilaab’s move to prepare to do something to make the elections of 2010 a step in the right direction for the Philippines, let me introduce my readers to Thornton Wilder’s idea of hope. Wilder wrote: “Hope, like faith, is nothing if not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”
The ridiculously crazy depth we have reached in our moral perversion definitely calls for a lot of courage to get out of. We have gone so low that many well-meaning citizens consider any attempt to reform as ridiculous and we need more courage to go against the groundswell of cynicism and despair among the wronged members of society and their sympathizers.
It is precisely at this point that we need the human virtue of hope to spring us into action. It is when things are so bad that one needs the courage to do something that many would consider ridiculous and that is fight the system. If hope, as Wilder says, is nothing if not courageous and ridiculously so, then it is hope we need to fight this country’s ills and bring it back to vibrant and purposeful life.
As a Church-based movement, therefore, Dilaab is hitting the bulls-eye in encouraging hope to swell in the hearts of all men of good will. The time for action is now, no matter how ridiculous our moves might seem to the cynic and to those who despair of this country ever coming to its senses. The time for hope is now…hope that is courageous enough to do what cynics consider ridiculous.
As I have said last Saturday, we can start by agreeing with Dilaab that we need to put the right people into office in the elections of 2010. However, we cannot do this if we do not level the playing field by effectively preventing cheating and vote-buying.
As a journalist, it is my task to write to inform and inspire without making my writing a cop-out. It is, therefore, with a great deal of personal resolve that I now put myself (not just my pen) at the service of Dilaab’s preparations for 2010.
