Wisdom of Sorts from Nostalgia

When the monsoons came, flooding inevitably occurred. Ditches ran along the streets, open waterways we called “canál.” In dry season, from October to May, the mud dried and cracked and they were overgrown with weeds. With the monsoon season from June to September they filled up into stagnant pools teeming with mudfish (“puyo”), in areas strewn with lilac-colored hyacinths, and the occasional water lilies, yellow, pink, white and red.

In heavy rains and typhoons the ditches were inadequate to the task and water overflowed fairly regularly. Many old-time city houses, built of bamboo and nipa (a low-growing palm by slow-moving tidal and river waters) were on stilts, just as they more commonly were in rural areas. In the provinces, the elevated houses left ground room to raise poultry and hogs; in the city, they provided for flooding. In a matter of hours, the neighborhood turns into little Venice with bamboo and wood planks balanced precariously on rocks and tree branches to form desultory narrow bridges across the muddy water. Back then, floodwaters were occasion for playing. Now playing in the water is playing with death from leptospirosis.

I grew up in more innocent times. I was innocent, more than the times that viewed from the present are haloed in nostalgia. If I write today about a Philippines now largely unknown to young Filipinos I am indulging a fundamental curiosity. We are the memories of our conscious lives. Getting older, a strange desire grows to dig up the past as if, as in archaeological excavations, to finally understand how we came to be who we are.

A historian or student of history, according to Bernard Lewis (From Babel to Dragomans, Oxford, 2004), on a rudimentary level, tries to find out what happened. At a more sophisticated level, he finds out how it happened but most interesting is to understand what happened. Nostalgia is bittersweet. We revel in its tender woundedness. But going into nostalgia we can gain insight into human nature and destiny, something that might qualify for wisdom in these times of fads and fashion.

Lewis again writes: “Anyone who studies the evolution of a civilization must, in the course of time, devote some thought to the broader and more general aspects of his topic…” From the specific we deduce generalities, a process admittedly prone to error nonetheless teaching us in the long run the fragile nature of truth. What is more vital than the truth of ourselves?