CONRADO DE QUIROS ON THE IDEALISM OF THE YOUTH, DELIVERED DURING THE FORUM, "GENERATION WHY: IDENTITY OF THE YOUTH IN A CHANGING PHILIPPINES"
Forum sponsored by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Ateneo-Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations

It is easy to say at this point that you are not going to care about that judgment, you will never surrender principle for gain, you will never live your life the way others want you to. It is not so very easy when you graduate and come home to Christmas reunions, and family gatherings, and get to be compared-never coarsely of course but by hint and innuendo-to the cousin who is doing so well as a young official of a bank, or as the brain trust of a prominent, but corrupt, politician. And who now sports a new car, which is parked right outside the gate in all its gleaming glory, a "classy" boyfriend or girlfriend (defined as coming from an exclusive school), and a house and car to boot. Then will your true mettle be tested.

Equally, as you grow older and are thrust into the so-called "real world," your idealism will be challenged by what passes for realism, or pragmatism. You insist that senators vote on bills according to their conscience and not according to blind loyalties, and you will be laughed at as being naïve. You insist that public officials use taxpayers' money for the taxpayers and not for kin and friends, apart from themselves, and you will be belittled for being innocent. You push for a candidate who is fairly honest and upright over one who is patently inept or crooked, but who is immensely popular, and you will be snickered at as living in another world. This "realism," enforced through family ties, through fraternity loyalties, through circles of power, calls on you not just to understand the rules of perfidy but to play by them.

But-and this is the terrifying but-slowly, unwittingly, unconsciously, you could start yielding to its subtle allures. What is terrifying about it is that you are never really aware when it happens. Or indeed that it is happening at all. There is a scene in the movie "The Paper" (which I hope you'll see, if you haven't done so already) that puts this truth very funnily but cleverly. Michael Keaton is the editor of a tabloid and never has time for his wife, played by Marisa Tomei. Not even when she is about to give birth to their first child. Exasperated, Tomei confronts him at one point with this hypothetical question: "What if someone suddenly barges through our door, puts a gun to my head, and says, 'Either I blow her brains out or I blow up your office.' Which will you choose?" Keaton expostulates: What kind of question is that? Of course he'll always choose her over anything. But that hypothetical scene, he says, will never happen.

Tomei jumps on that: Precisely, she says. That is her very point. That scene will never happen. The choice is never dramatic, a man holding a gun to your wife's-or your own-head and making you choose between your wife or something else, your soul or something else. The Choice with a capital "C" rarely happens in life. What does happen is choices in lower case and plural form.

The big dilemma never comes, what comes are small, unobtrusive, seemingly trivial dilemmas about whether one has to keep a dinner appointment with one's wife or follow up a lead, whether one has the time to watch a son's game or meet with an important client.

The bargain is never really Faustian, with the devil offering you all the joys of the seven cardinal sins in exchange for your soul. It is invariably Lilliputian, decisions now and then about bending the rules to help kin or friend, exceptions now and then because of a ninong's pakiusap. It's not the big capitulation you have to fear, it's the small concessions. Those are what really tell, or take their toll, on you. The blurring of vision here and there that leads to blindness, the deafness to entreaty here and there that leads to callousness, the suspension of conscience here and there that leads to the deadening of the soul. It's the daily, steady, incessant accumulation of all this that turns you into the thing you once fought against, and you don't even notice it.

As we found out for ourselves, the real enemy is not the bayonets of martial law, it is the easy seductions of Everyday Life. As you will find out for yourselves, the real trap is not the tricks a devious world plays on you, it's the tricks your tortuous mind plays on you.

And finally, there is another word for naïve, or innocent, or unrealistic that you will constantly encounter if you should, by an exercise of will, or fortitude, or vigilance, decide to stand fast by the unclouded conscience of your youth, by the blinding light of the first flush of your life. It is the word "loser." The word will probably never by expressly used, but it will be the subtext of the judgment that will be rendered upon you. It will lurk like a snake in the tall grass underneath the faint praise that will be showered upon you for choosing a different path, for taking a low-profile job that serves the people rather than a high-powered one that serves yourself.

The late Martin Ocampo, a judge, was such a "loser." His name will not ring a bell, he got his 15 minutes of fame only as the judge in the case of the rape-slay of the Chong sisters. He lived alone in a small apartment in Cebu City-his family, I believe, had emigrated to the US-which was barely furnished. He did not even own a TV set, he did not own a refrigerator. His wealth consisted only of books, like Feodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," which he read dutifully and avidly. Books not just about law but about justice, books not just about the penal code but about the moral one. His passion for those books reflected in the wisdom of his decisions.

Nobody called him a loser, not to his face anyway. But that was implicit in the way his community treated him. Nobody made him ninong to a wedding: Who would want an impoverished judge to serve as patron to young newlyweds? Nobody invited him to grand balls, where the well-heeled wheeled-and-dealed and toasted to one another's health. Why would they want someone whose very existence indicted them? All this Ocampo met only with his vast amusement.

It did not bother him that he stuck out like a sore thumb in a world that expected judges to stride into the world regally, surrounding themselves with the signs and symbols of power. He wrote instead with biting humor about the way we lived in an upside down world, missing the point about what was important in life.

He died a couple or so years ago, but his memory continues to haunt me. As I hope it will haunt you too. It is part of our missing the point about what is important in life that he is not now remembered or toasted as one of the outstanding citizens we've ever had. One who lived a grand and heroic life by living a simple and honest one. One who lived a full and vibrant life by living an obscure and impoverished one. The day you espy the luminous purity of that life is the day you cling to your youthful passions with the constancy of a love-struck heart. The day you glimpse the dazzling heroism of that life is the day you unlock the secrets of dreams with the sureness of a conjurer's hand. The day you see through the incandescent fury of that life is the day you get the point about life, amid its false leads and subterfuges.

Sometimes, losers are the biggest winners of all.