40 years
A week ago, my colleague at Ateneo, Dr. Leland dela Cruz, asked on Facebook why it had taken the Israelites 40 years to make the journey out of Egypt and into their promised land.
Using biblical references, he suggested two major reasons. First, a much shorter path—along the Mediterranean rather than through the desert—would have led them straight into hostile territory, and they would have gone to war as an exhausted, unready people. The circuitous route was safe; it was also meant to help them form a deeper trust in the power and wisdom of their God.
This leads to the second reason: this conversion, from an impatient to a surrendering people, needed 40 years to fully complete. The Israelites needed 40 years to mature.
Both reasons, Dr. Dela Cruz said, were all about trust in God, to take comfort in the notion that “the length of the journey may not be about the end goal but a journey of conversion.”
Forty years. It’s a magic number that’s been on many minds recently, as we celebrate the ruby anniversary of Edsa—quite ironic on a number of levels.
A bloodless revolution to match a bloodred stone. A revolution that hoped to change the lack of transparency and accountability in a government so preoccupied with itself and its cronies—and today, an anniversary celebrated with a government unraveling in threads of the same fraud, corruption, and robbery.
A revolution that saw a country rally behind a woman who pleaded for people to fight back—and now, at almost the same time, another woman expects the public to have her back as she attempts to divert attention from serious allegations of corruption and the very few accomplishments she has had, while heading the Department of Education in dire need of serious rehabilitation.
The questions will always knock on the doors of our memories: have we really learned our lessons? Is Edsa still relevant 40 years later?
Was what we fought for at Edsa of any value if people forget the history that led to it?
Forty years feels like a lifetime, both lived and wasted, of so much time spent trying to solve deeply entrenched problems, of years lost to badly designed systems, corrupt government officials, greed, evil.
Many would be despairing at the notion that even 40 years later, we would still welcome leaders who represent the worst of us while trying to paint them, dress them, and reimagine them as the best we have.
Maybe 40 years is enough time for some to give up, to leave, to call the country hopeless. To claim that those who continue to fight are just wasting their breath. To say that maturity means being a “chill” person who never complains about the state of the country.
But there’s also something to remember about 40 years. In 1946, 40 years before Edsa, the Philippines transitioned out of the United States Commonwealth and became an independent nation. In 1906, we saw the end of early anti-American resistance that drove leaders underground. In 1866, revolutionary leaders such as Antonio Luna and Artemio Ricarte were born.
The notion of 40 years as some magical number is common across many cultures and religions. Many biblical kings ruled for 40 years. In Islam, the Quran says that 40 years is the age of a man’s full maturity. In Judaism, 40 years marks the division between two ages, the time it takes for a new generation to arise. It is a number often called upon to describe great change, an upheaval, an approximate largeness to be left to the imagination.
Despite its construction as a number of profound greatness, 40 is simply another number. Random. Arbitrary. Symbolic only as far as we, as humans, have made it so.
Dela Cruz also wrote, at the end of his essay: “part of [the trust in God is] the willingness to fight … fighting might mean standing up for what is right.”
Allow me to paraphrase this, in light of today’s 40-year anniversary of Edsa. We need to look at the 40 years not as a guidepost on which to base milestones. Rather, they represent the journey we must continue to take, of fighting for our true independence and freedom, of doing what is right.
Maybe the 40 years is to check that we have still not given up, have not called the country hopeless without at least trying to change it, instead of expecting leaders to change themselves, have never equated maturity with silence in the face of continuing injustice.
The 40 years is a reminder to carry on the revolutionary spirit that allowed us a new government in 1986, that brought us into independence in 1946, that went quiet but never died in 1906, that was born in 1866—we, the cradle of noble heroes, indeed.
The question, then, is not: is Edsa still relevant today? That would reduce revolutions to mere trends that sprout every 40 years.
After all, in the many years between the so-called 40-year gaps, we had wars of independence, writers who rattled the cages, thinkers who pushed for reform. We have had many people whose good work was constantly overshadowed by the corrupt few.
Maybe the question is: How can we keep fighting?
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
