Country she is inheriting
As my daughter approaches adulthood, I hope she will meet this uncertain world with grit, courage, and enough fire to stand her ground when the ground beneath her shifts.
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As my daughter approaches adulthood, I hope she will meet this uncertain world with grit, courage, and enough fire to stand her ground when the ground beneath her shifts.
My daughter is approaching legal age. Soon, the law will recognize her as an adult, though I will still see the child whose hand I once held. She will explore a world beyond my protection. Like any father, I worry.
In Islam, fatherhood is an amanah, a trust rather than a claim of ownership. A father cannot keep his daughter forever within reach. His responsibility is to prepare her to remain upright when she moves beyond it.
I worry about the choices and difficulties she must face without me. That concern has widened to the country in which she is coming of age and the society our generation will leave behind.
Before us lies a direction for which “uncharted territory” may finally be appropriate. We see institutions tested, questions reduced to contests of loyalty, and citizens pressed to choose sides before considering the principles involved.
What is unfolding around the Vice President is part of this picture.
This neither defends her nor condemns her opponents. Questions of innocence, guilt, and accountability belong to law. That is why institutions matter most when sympathies are divided.
None of us approaches public affairs without convictions, loyalties, or sympathies. Maturity requires recognizing when these cloud our judgment. Fairness, due process, institutional restraint, and human dignity cannot depend on whether we favor the person before us.
As my daughter approaches adulthood, I hope she will meet this uncertain world with grit, courage, and enough fire to stand her ground when the ground beneath her shifts.
Not courage without judgment, nor strength without conscience. I want her to resist intimidation while remaining open to the truth. The world has enough people who are fearless because they never question themselves.
Still, our children should not require extraordinary courage merely to survive the country we leave them.
Who, then, is responsible for what we have become?
It would be easy to point at our leaders or blame those who came before them. Yet they did not descend upon an unsuspecting nation. In one way or another, we enabled them. We elected some, tolerated others, defended our own, excused what served us, and learned to live with what should have disturbed us.
Should we now blame one another? Should every Filipino stand accused? Before we do, let us pause. The answer may already be in front of us.
I once wrote about Manuel L. Quezon and his preference for a government run like hell by Filipinos over one run like heaven by foreigners. We often repeat the defiance but neglect the obligation behind it: however badly we might govern ourselves, we can always change it.
Bad government was not the destiny Quezon accepted for us. Self-government was the responsibility he entrusted to us.
That thought leaves me with a question I may never fully answer: Have I failed my father and the democratic tradition his generation entrusted to mine? And by not doing enough with that inheritance, have I also failed my children?
Perhaps failure is not inheriting a troubled country or being unable to repair it alone. The greater failure would be to recognize where we are heading, surrender to resignation, and leave our children believing this was the best we could imagine for them.
My daughter is not merely waiting to inherit this country. She is already learning from what we reward, excuse, condemn, and permit in our name.
I want her to be strong enough for the world. But our responsibility does not end with preparing our children for a troubled country. We must also make the country less troubled before it fully becomes theirs.
They should inherit not only our warnings, but the evidence that we tried.
We governed ourselves into this moment. We can still govern ourselves out of it. We ought to make this right.
