The Emancipation of Maria Clara

I am watching the CSI supreme episode as write this. It is how I spend most of my Sunday or sometimes Saturday nights. It is like your mojito or let's say margarita or perhaps a dry martini on the nearby bar. The only difference is that I can sip mine from a director’s chair while typing these words and listening to Horatio or Grissom. Nevertheless, of course, that is not of any relevance to what I am going to tell you. Well, this is all about me. You must have guessed that somehow unless of course if you’re a self-destructive moron. I know you’re not otherwise you won’t be on that seat reading other people's blog so keep reading.

I have been in existence for over a quarter of a century now. If you are trying to derive my real age from my date of birth, you can stop now because I assure you that your efforts will be futile but if you insist go on then just remember that you have been warned. You can speculate all you want. Don’t worry it’s absolutely free of charge.

I have been perpetually blogging for over a year now and I think I will be for a very long time. I am planning to change things. Not that I don’t like the way I am right now it’s just that I want be bolder this time. In fact, I like myself so much that I want the whole world to see the real me.

I am a ghost. You got it right. I am a nobody just like the rest of the people in the face of this planet. I am a normal human being so listen to what I have to say. You can read my story or criticize my thoughts if you want. Who knows? I maybe you.

I was born to see the world from a different perspective. Unlike most kids, I have the unhappy and perhaps the most boring childhood. I never had toys. I never had playmates. My idea of playing was sitting on a branch of a dying tree while making up some sort of sick fairytale or wondering about the things around me and oftentimes I would interact with myself. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a psycho. I guess that is what people do when they are alone and a bit lonely, they pretend that they are not. We’re all good at that but I guess I never grew out of it. Now, I am stuck and I became this pretentious and boring individual though I must admit that I can be annoying sometimes. Well, the world is full of annoying creatures, isn’t it? I guess it only proves that I still belong here. Whew!

I grew up with big dreams and high hopes. Once I wanted to be a scientist locked up on my lab somewhere in a basement of an old house. There were instances that I wished to be a lawyer or some kind of a law enforcement agent but of course they were just phases in a life of a confused adolescent. However, I must say that I have been and still am an aspiring writer. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing like this at all. Ironically, though, I ended up as a physiotherapist. Yeah. So much for those literary attempts. You see we are living in a world where fairness can only be expressed by being unfair to all. Yes, I’m still human!

And so here I am trying to live life with utmost perfection because people are telling me to do so. Well, not exactly. I mean they don’t actually tell you right on your face that you have to be the epitome of a perfect human being. They just make you feel that you have to and when you don’t they will disown you or make you leave the planet without any notice which makes me really sick but you have to do it sometimes to live harmoniously with the rest of the Homo Sapiens which makes me even sicker.

Of course, I am not perfect. No one is. And just like you, I am a sinner too. I’m not proud of it but I am not ashamed of it either. After all, we all are. The only thing that counts is that my mistakes are all worth it. Let’s just say that my perception of perfection is jaded. I neither believe in good nor in bad. I only believe that people do things because it either makes them happy or it is necessary. Twisted minds.

Going back. It’s not easy to be perceived as Maria Clara when you’re actually not her, the real her. As you know, Maria Clara, as they say, is an epitome of a Filipina – religious, timid, submissive. In a patriarchal and religious society like the one that we’re living in, people expect a lot from women and treat them less than they treat their chromosomal counterpart - men. This not only means that we’re still in planet Earth because, as I have said earlier, the only thing that translates fairness in this world is by being unfair to all but it also proves that I am normal. I don’t need a straight jacket then. That’s good.


I have read Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Rizal’s famous novels. I happen to meet Maria Clara as I flipped through the pages and I began to visualize her - a pretty, timid yet fierce young lady clad in an 18th Century Filipiniana. For most who are familiar with the Filipino culture and tradition she is a ghost from the past, an imaginary remnant of what used to be a then Filipina. They would often say that her image as reflected in the modern Pinay is dead just as chivalry is in the modern world. That I have to disagree. For me, she is here. She is in me and the rest of young Filipinos with out there. In fact, she is you. She is that half naked woman in the FHM. She is us.

I would often hear conservatives complain about how tormented modern Pinays evolved, about how modernism destroyed our virtues and our way of life, about how westernized we became. I think they’re all wrong. They cling into something which they barely understood, on someone in which they patterned their idealism that is unfortunately an alien to them. They’re all hallucinating or maybe they’re too preoccupied criticizing the rest of the humanity that they failed to know her beyond those perfect gowns, those charming eyes, those enigmatic smiles, those little acts of spirituality, and those flawless demonstrations of old virtues. It’s a bit ironic I know for people not to understand her when she’s there all along trying to make them see what she really is. It’s a classic example of how we see things according to what pleases us, of how men impose their hopes unto something leaving the whole story behind unrevealed because they’re just to scared that it might bring the whole system down. Kinda like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (without Tom Hanks of course).

We are her in every way. She’s not just a character in a novel. She is the novel. Maria Clara is us. She is what a Filipina should be - an individual. I think this is how Rizal wants us to be: To think independently, to act according to our will and not according to the rules that others set for the rest of humanity, to fight for our rights and die for it if necessary. Her past is our present and her story is happening right now. She was born out of sin, out of a grave mistake. Her real father was a friar who raped her mother inside a confessional. OK we don’t know much about the exact demographics of priest violating their vows. This is not about them. I don’t believe in those creatures of earthly sanctity anyway. Holy snakes in a sheep’s skin. Yes, I do believe in God but I certainly do not believe in religion. I don’t believe in anything too complicated enough to contradict itself. I sometimes don’t believe in myself. I’m still waiting for that God particle in the Big Bang Theory.

Where was I? OK so we are the old Maria Clara. We break rules, we follow our desires, we face our fears, and most of all we want change. We leave old beliefs for the better, for the more appropriate and acceptable one; we cross barriers simply because we want to see what’s on the other side; we explore because we thirst for experience and knowledge; we dream and we hope because we know that out there the possibilities are endless. At some point, we reinvent ourselves not because we want to change the world but because we want to see the world from a different angle. Sometimes, we try to conform to the rest to be accepted but most of the time we stand out because we are different. We are a little bit of everything. We can be these submissive, timid creatures in a minute and we can be these fierce, independent, rational individual the next. Our strength has been put to test by time, by numerous EDSA Revolutions I must say. Our talent and flexibility are evident in almost all parts of the globe. We give life and we nurture kids who became dignified members of this society like no other. We have been and we still are the catalysts for change (and maybe so is Barrack Obama). We are special not just because our complexities differentiate us from others but because we are women challenged by the modern world and most of all, we are extraordinary because we know we all are. Do they all know that fabulousness is our ethnicity? Now Pinay, go and spread the word!