Of Inspiration and Voting (A Holy Week Wish)
My dad and I were running down our to-do’s for this summer before I start my senior year and he his third year as a professor.
My schedule includes an April of writing, reading, associate editor work (style book, etc.), and bottles consumed alone as well as with other summer bums and with someone with whom pinky promises were exchanged. My May is still in limbo, but I’m hoping for a young scribe’s pilgrimage to Dumaguete. Oh yeah, and I have a doctor’s appointment that’s five months overdue.
Dad’s schedule, albeit only three weeks (victim of trimesterly schedule), includes looking for a missing birth certificate, a misplaced marriage contract, and lost pesos needed to pay debts. And somewhere in between mixes in a passport renewal, bottles to consume, and a new course curriculum he was asked to develop.
Voting is as big as an after-thought as Holy Week obligations. (So how many times will we be in church this week? And don’t we have to fast or something?)
Every night we see the campaigning on the news, and a cable channel even has candidates on the record nightly, debating real issues. Still, few candidates ignite inspiration in Dad and I, at least nothing close to the inspiration that enticed us to spend 15 hours at a COMELEC office to register.
I honestly don’t know if we’ll be at the polls, nor do I know what to say when smarter persons ask me why I even bothered to register if I wasn’t going to vote.
I used to proudly say that I registered to abstain because affirming not-choosing is a bigger statement than not having my name on the list of voters that candidates are supposed to persuade (not buy). But the sharpness of abstaining has been dulled in my eyes, especially after the choice beat out several candidates in the recent Ateneo Sanggunian elections, causing political uproar by generally politically immature persons.
Abstain has lost its muster much like how idealistic citizens have succumbed to the ugly game of politicking by becoming candidates. Voting is a duty lost on a citizenry, much like how the sense of honest leadership is a concept lost on our supposed leaders.
Fuck personal shit! My cause for prayer this Holy Week is on the realm of the nation, and it’s a prayer for inspiration – specifically from those who sincerely desire to be leaders for the purest of reasons and with no ill-intent.
May they entice me to get up to go to the polls, and may they be worthy of each and every voter’s approval and support, however half-hearted.
My schedule includes an April of writing, reading, associate editor work (style book, etc.), and bottles consumed alone as well as with other summer bums and with someone with whom pinky promises were exchanged. My May is still in limbo, but I’m hoping for a young scribe’s pilgrimage to Dumaguete. Oh yeah, and I have a doctor’s appointment that’s five months overdue.
Dad’s schedule, albeit only three weeks (victim of trimesterly schedule), includes looking for a missing birth certificate, a misplaced marriage contract, and lost pesos needed to pay debts. And somewhere in between mixes in a passport renewal, bottles to consume, and a new course curriculum he was asked to develop.
Voting is as big as an after-thought as Holy Week obligations. (So how many times will we be in church this week? And don’t we have to fast or something?)
Every night we see the campaigning on the news, and a cable channel even has candidates on the record nightly, debating real issues. Still, few candidates ignite inspiration in Dad and I, at least nothing close to the inspiration that enticed us to spend 15 hours at a COMELEC office to register.
I honestly don’t know if we’ll be at the polls, nor do I know what to say when smarter persons ask me why I even bothered to register if I wasn’t going to vote.
I used to proudly say that I registered to abstain because affirming not-choosing is a bigger statement than not having my name on the list of voters that candidates are supposed to persuade (not buy). But the sharpness of abstaining has been dulled in my eyes, especially after the choice beat out several candidates in the recent Ateneo Sanggunian elections, causing political uproar by generally politically immature persons.
Abstain has lost its muster much like how idealistic citizens have succumbed to the ugly game of politicking by becoming candidates. Voting is a duty lost on a citizenry, much like how the sense of honest leadership is a concept lost on our supposed leaders.
Fuck personal shit! My cause for prayer this Holy Week is on the realm of the nation, and it’s a prayer for inspiration – specifically from those who sincerely desire to be leaders for the purest of reasons and with no ill-intent.
May they entice me to get up to go to the polls, and may they be worthy of each and every voter’s approval and support, however half-hearted.
posted by M.V. at 8:16 PM
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