I am going home soon.
I do not complain. This is privilege denied to many Filipino workers who spend several years if not decades overseas before they can smell our tropical air again, before they can hold the faces of their loved ones once more.
I feel blessed. Only recently did the national university resume sending teachers like me for graduate studies abroad. I have a debt of gratitude to repay to each compatriot, for even dodong and inday who buy a piece of candy contribute to my training via expanded value added tax.
I am under pressure. The Nov. 30 deadline for my thesis is just around the corner. I have chosen to examine how the thought of philosophers Martin Buber and Dietrich Von Hildebrand can enhance the ideology and professional practice of journalism. Writing a theoretical rather than an empirical research paper has its own unique set of challenges. Will I come up with the minimum requirement of 80 pages of this treatise? I hope so.
Buber discusses the world of experience versus the world of relation. Journalists enable audiences to vicariously experience much of reality. But does journalism enable relation between audiences and sources? Does the journalist relate to the source as a sacred “Thou” rather than as an “It”? Is the journalist a person in the performance of his task, or is he a mere functionary within a media matrix?
Von Hildebrand discusses the nature of love. He defines it as, among others, being for the other, and seeing the other as “mine” as a response to appreciating the preciousness or value of the beloved.
Can love be a factor in professional comportment? Will the journalist turn out stories as a function of seeking the good of the other? Or is the other just a fascinating subject for a good story, a go-to guy for the glib quote, a protagonist or antagonist in a power struggle, a prompt for a passionate essay, a cog in the click-baiting machinery?
How can seeing persons as persons and finding a person worthy of nothing less than love affect the five keys of journalism ideology — autonomy, public service, immediacy, ethics and objectivity?
* * *
I am going home soon.
It is autumn. Through some orifice in this box-like, lemon building, the wind is rushing in. I hear it howl. I look out the window. Tree branches shake, still green, but showing decay on the fringes. A season’s first harvest of leaves has fallen on one roof.
Franziska, one of my German classmates, stopped by for a final visit last night after the rain. It was Michaelmas — the feast of the archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel.
Fran explained why she gave me a dainty little puzzle for a parting present. I am to tinker with the three-dimensional artifact in the future, when proctoring examinations.
I remembered Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Snow Queen.” Kay is trying to figure out a puzzle and he couldn’t, until Gerda, his best friend who had been out looking for him, found him, hugged him and broke into tears. Some teardrops fell into his eyes, and into his heart, and suddenly the puzzle fell into place and spelled the word “eternity.”
It is the day after Michaelmas, Saint Jerome’s day, the eve of the feast of Saint Therese. Mara, my classmate from Cuba, has been here to leave me with a pack of round chocolate cookies. Fernanda, from Brazil, rushed out of work to take home my purple mums, white chrysanthemums and burgeoning carnations, along with other things I cannot take with me on the journey. Three or two more people are on the way, Ole from Denmark, to say his big goodbye, and Feilidh from New Zealand, to take me to the airport.
Muthoki, from Kenya, is here. She is also going home soon. And this is all about the mysteries of coming and going, of meeting and parting, of getting close and dealing with distance, of wondering about the meaning of learning and wondering what it all means when my time pours out into eternity.