The urgency of the moment

THERE are things that you learn in your life journey that become ingrained in your value system, bringing you to where you want your profession to be, choosing the paths you want, pursuing a living that hopefully is your passion, and gradually inhaling when you reach a certain point where you look and find greater purpose, a deeper meaning, that needs a lot of steeling the nerves and calming the spirit.

Myths abound about how we train our lenses on nonviolence; when you think about it, nonviolence and nonviolence are two different constructs. The former is (negative, passive and temporary) the absence of violence while the latter “disturbs peace and challenges contemporary conditions” (positive, active because it looks at the root cause and more lasting). Nonviolence “analyzes conflict differently from the simplistic ‘we versus they’ or ‘good versus evil’ or ‘black versus white’ polarities that have characterized most cultures. It is an approach to conflict that seeks to understand the factors underlying the problem and create an effective strategy by which to address them — a strategy based upon universal values deeply rooted in all the great traditions.”

Martin Luther King said, “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” A contradiction I used to believe in my career path was always a zero-sum game. To win is to defeat the enemy/opponent. In my profession, it was just winning or being cheated. And love has nothing to do with it. Often, love is expressed in trust and endearment metrics.

Then came Bahayahay, Paul Bueno de Mesquita, PhD, and Kingian Thinking. After three days of forcing myself to read, reflect and letting the open process take its toll on lifelong values ingrained by agents of political socialization (family, education, media and peers influence the most in establishing varying political lenses that frame one’s perception of political values, ideas, and attitudes), you are who you are is morphing into something that questions one’s being when confronted by Kingian principles.

And these principles seem to be just an ordinary reiteration of words put together, sometimes contradicting each one and other times making a basic term a complex compound. A superfluous effort to find meaning in everyday words became a pointed internal debate on how you were reared. These principles were: “Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people; the beloved community is the framework for the future; attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil (this is too hard for me!); accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal; avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence and the Universe is on the side of justice.”

As I stayed perplexed for two and a half days, thinking about how these principles can be part of who I am and what I do, I somehow remembered what Gandhi said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall ... think of it, always.” And as the training ended, I was overwhelmed, questioning, I remembered what King said about the urgency of the moment. We all have that time, and often, we misread it as do-thing or feeling hatred and despair, such as where our politics is going and our shared aspirations to have a better Philippines.

In the same breath, “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever,” even while we seem to be retrogressing as a nation and leaders can’t find it in themselves to resist greed and entitlements and think only of themselves and their pockets, we pick our collective shattered dreams because we know this too will pass and our wings of hope will see a better tomorrow, holding on to that one principle I truly believe in, the “Universe is on the side of justice.” A karmic ring ties all of us; what we sow, we reap.

So, if by chance you read or hear of the Kingian Thinking in our country, remember its seeds were planted in a farm known as Bahayahay, a name that has evolved but started during the pandemic — seeds thrown and carried by the wind. The world needs to breathe. During the pandemic, as the world stopped, we saw the environment become healthy: the air was fresh, plants were green, and haze and smog were minimized, among others. And the world adjusted to

silence, embracing less talk and more actions — love than hate.

In the process of Covid-19, value chains fell because the pandemic made changes to the food supply. Hence, “grow what you eat, eat what you grow” became the rallying cry to survive and build a new ecosystem on food security; farm-to-table was the urgency of the moment. But postpandemic, it has been business as usual. Food corporations are back to promoting processed food, packaged using single-use plastic and generating 54 percent of the waste in dumpsites. A new way of sustainable development will have to be started at the household level to the community, growing to local governments.” Bahayahay is that new way where happiness is a farm.

The baton has been passed from Gandhi to King to LaFayette to de Mesquita to Irene “Inday” Santiago and 33 Filipinos of mixed backgrounds from across the nation. From India to the United States (Alabama to the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies) to Davao (the Kahayag Foundation). The dream has been shared, and we either stand still or we ride the wind. Indeed, “the future depends on what you do today.” But there is that sense, too: “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Reminds me of our politics and public service. Could agape be there?