Lessons from the ancient

The past can teach us a million things
One of them is that whatever has happened in the past can never be undone. Once it has happened, no one can erase it. You might try to cover things up, make people forget the things that happened but it will always re-surface; like a scar that appears in place of a wound from before. And, just like history, your deeds are judged by the people and this will either confine you a place in history, either being infamous or famous, or place you among the dump of what was... waiting to be discovered by some dedicated historian.

That on the picture is what remains of the ruins of the Tejeros Convention Site, quite an old structure; fairly ignored by people and a mute witness to the birth of the first Philippine republic -- A republic that, then as mostly as know, is ruled by the elite and the powerful and marked the end of a society that is by the people, for the people in this country. In this event, a election that allegedly was rigged by the residents of that province wrested the leadership from the middle classes and gave them to those who are in the higher classes.

It was, in a sense, the death of the Society of the Son's of the People... a movement that sparked the movement that was poised at defeating colonial powers. It was a large change, marked as the Birth of the Republic... but now only a few would go down where I was and see what remains of that place. The tunnels they used that lead to the river, an old escape route for them, that now stank with trash. The lichens now grow and slowly destroyed the lime and red-brick walls where the voices of men that planned the future of this nation once talked.

There is something else that history taught me -- it is that where one forgets the mistakes of the past are bound to repeat it: a vicious cycle of reality. In the end we must learn, live with those mistakes and remember them so that in the future we can make wiser choices. But, as I see it, where are we now? We still hand the reins of power to the elite and the selfish and not to those who would lead us to a better future.

May God heal our selective amnesia.