“Despair is considered the gravest of sins. It is easy and comfortable. It is the absence of faith and a failure of the imagination.
And in these times, it is awfully tempting.”
-Brian Bouldrey

I am trying to be happy. A number of text messages we’ve been receiving condemn this banal space for being too angsty, even sappy. Death, in all its dark, liberating glory, however, has a way of making its presence felt, even through the most mundane of things like, say, a text message. “Namaalam na po ang mahal nating guro at kasama na si Sir Nic Atienza. Makibalita na lang kung saan siya ibuburol. Pls pass.”

Gloom betrays the bright lights emanating from those ever-present Shawarma stands, or the happy chatter of pedestrians reveling at all the possibilities of capitalist consumption made easier by, what else, Christmas. The Acad Oval is unusually, positively dark tonight: the chance of bumping into a familiar face is significantly reduced, and one can just walk the expanse of the sidewalk and one lane closed with a happy heart. Happiness, after all, is such an easy concept.

But despair is much, much easier. In the current scheme of things, hopelessness is an effortless, almost inevitable state of mind. It is easy to find. It is always staring at you in your face; an empty wallet, or a street kid asking for your empty C2 bottle, or the fact that GMA is still the country’s president. Only, you’re looking for other things, or deliberately looking the other way, so you don’t see it. For me, it came in the form of a terse, detached communication.

I don’t claim to personally know Sir Monico, though he used to stand in front of me as my professor, lecturing about Rizal, the speaker which he used to amplify his faltering voice boomed with condemnation of how the youth these days seem too preoccupied with the comforts afforded by the latest fashion trends, or new cellphone models, or the coolest, hippest gimik spots. 

I know, however, from my past tibak endeavors that he was a driving force            in the First Quarter Storm Movement, which instigated a flurry of political actions to topple the Marcos dictatorship. He wrote immensely on the virtuosity of mass movements. He translated The God of Small Things. In my previous circles, he was almost a god. 

I am inching my way towards homeostasis, but news of deaths always finds ways of impairing my attempts at stability. Despair, a reaction in itself, robs me of the capacity for a more active engagement. More importantly, it precludes rage.

I should be happy. I want to be happy. I should want to be happy.

We don’t despair.

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