A light-hearted discourse on being significant

WHILE I was thinking about this piece a couple of days ago, early birthday greetings started trickling into my inbox. I was pleasantly, but also in a discomforting way, reminded that I am about to be only two years shy of becoming what others jokingly call a dual citizen, i.e., a Filipino and a senior! On a high note, becoming a senior citizen in a couple of years wouldn’t be so bad, as I will finally be entitled to some benefits that include skipping the queues at the payment counters and getting free movies. Not exactly the ROI I expect on my tax payments over the years, though better than nothing, I suppose! But on the more significant aspect of it, where reality bites most, there is the uncertainty of health care access and pension payments in postretirement. Many of the published retirement indices we see online don’t necessarily include the Philippines in the top brackets of most desirable. IMHO, this dimension of public welfare is one of the least addressed and prioritized. As for me, my goal is to keep being a productive citizen and provide for my own needs, as I am not too hopeful that government will ever be able to make some progress given its always full plate, or is it?

This year, I celebrate life and being alive on many counts — it’s my 25th year of graduating from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, which had largely solidified the course of my professional track, and it is my 37th year of serving the country’s public sector as a development economist. I cite these two milestones because I find that they are most relevant to the life I have chosen, my thoughts on Philippine politics and governance, and my overall perspective of what it means to be Filipino.

The funny thing about birthdays is that they consequently make us think about how we have fared so far and whether we’ve used our time well in the past years to reach personal goals and contribute positively to society in general. It’s a cutoff and alarm of sorts. As someone who has now devoted her entire professional career of 30 years working for government and on various programs that support government’s development agenda, I can rightfully say I’ve paid back for all those years when I was a ”iskolar ng bayan” from high school to graduate school. In all these years, when my work experiences were directly or indirectly supporting the agenda of five past presidents, the one thing I’ve deemed to be usually true is that they all begin with perfectly pitched plans and then end up underachieving. It’s not a curse; it just is. Somewhere along the way, I, as one of the many well-meaning public servants, would often feel like an insignificant statistic in the annals of Philippine history, but at the same time, in my own way, I recognize that I have devoted part of myself to the Filipino nation.

I’ve neither really given serious thought to running for public office or being appointed to a cabinet-level position, though I’d been asked in both cases. Nor have I considered migrating abroad to work, or being employed in the commercial private sector even when opportunities presented themselves. No regrets there or any intrinsic bias against these alternatives, but I had decided early on, after completing my studies at Harvard, that I would dedicate my professional contributions to the call of public service on home soil. The strong nationalistic influence of my college years — as an economics student and campus journalist who was awakened to the milieu of the martial law years and its effects on the Filipino — carried over to my choice of a lifelong career. In my past employments, I had served as an economic planner for NEDA and the national oil company and post-Harvard, had moved on to development management, leading projects that advocated for good governance and enhanced public policies. In my current affiliation working with a private NGO/foundation that promotes regulatory reforms in the country, I am quite grateful to be part of a well-thought-out and well-intentioned program that enhances the capacity and credibility of Philippine regulatory bodies in performing their mandates and, in a way, contribute to the continuing progression of the country’s competitiveness and economic growth.

I was really tempted to borrow the phrase “the unbearable lightness of being” Filipino as a title for this piece. I liked the meaning that it connotes — freedom and detachment from the burdens of history, tradition and commitment. But alas, my life choices have thus far led me to what I call my own assessment of self-significance. As a development worker in the Philippines, I daresay that while my contributions are numerically insignificant in the bigger realm, they are no less worthy. When I account for them from my lifetime’s perspective, I have so far given more than I thought I could. On my birthday, it is my wish that many Filipinos would aspire to give more of themselves in the service of the bigger public, to do what they can to contribute to the greater good. All that — oh, and world peace, too.