Relevance

published March 8, 2008 - MST

Living at the northernmost tip of the metro, I was a stranger to the now-thriving cluster of seafood restaurants that had sprouted along Macapagal Avenue, a road leading to that mammoth of a mall that is now known as MoA. (You’re hopelessly out of it if you think I am talking about a memorandum of agreement.)

Admittedly, last Friday, 29 February, was not the best time to explore the place. After all, at about 8:30 pm, the thousands who had converged at Ayala Avenue for the inter-faith rally were starting to disperse. It was no surprise then that the taxi that agreed to bring me from Port Area to the dinner venue was the 12th I had flagged down.

But a little inconvenience was nothing. My former boss, Roque Fortu, was on a rare visit to the Philippines. I, fresh out of college, was one of Tong’s (he scoffed at anybody who addressed him more formally) two analysts when he headed the planning and research unit of a local investment house 11 years ago. In 2002, however, he moved to Australia and started working at the state treasury department of Sydney. Eventually he obtained dual citizenship. This was only his second vacation, and I was intent on going. I had missed the first reunion they organized three years ago and it would be another three years until Tong came home again.

The minute I entered the restaurant and saw my friends’ faces, I knew it was going to be a great evening. Of course some of us have stayed in touch—two of them in fact became my kumares—and had lunch or dinner once or twice a year, but a reunion was different. It was a long table we occupied. There were about seven of us who showed up, and all, except the secretaries, were with other offices already.

The food was great—but the company was even better. We did not notice the passing of the hours because we were taken up with remembering old times. Those who were still with the company lamented that the office ambience was now more sober, almost clinical, whereas during our time, it was very much alive. According to them, the office was making more money now but it isn’t as much fun. Oh well.

Then, we were indefatigable twentysomethings with energy levels that could not be dampened by the workload nor the tempers of our executives. We worked hard but after 5:30, we always found time to discover quaint restaurants, exchange gossip (of course!) and organize summer outings that outdid the previous ones.

But the recollections comprised only half the reunion’s agenda. The rest of the time, we caught up with developments in each other’s lives. We described our present jobs, marveled at how our children had grown and dissected relationships that had worked —and failed.

And then, maybe because I had told him I was now working for a newspaper, Tong asked me how the Philippines was doing. Believe it or not, I had trouble coming up with a concise yet fairly accurate answer. I ended up saying “magulo pa rin” which I now think is a dull and uninspiring description. I also wondered whether my answer was relevant. It was not much comfort that Tong seemed to understand perfectly what I meant and then moved on to juicer questions about our former officemates.

***

“Relevant,” of course, was last week’s buzzword. The anti-administration group, Black and White Movement, said that by refusing to call for the resignation of President Arroyo, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines had “chosen to be irrelevant.”

But I read the pastoral letter, heard interviews of CBCP officials and read a firsthand account of the meeting through the Bishop Ted Bacani’s column that came out on this paper last Saturday. And I thought that the bishops’ opinion, especially in the matter of Executive Order 464, was relevant enough.

So what does it mean to be relevant?

Probably one of the worst things that can be said about somebody whose life work has a social ring to it is that he or she is irrelevant. For instance, in this column, I sometimes agonize over the topics I take up, always careful not to alienate readers with topics that may be perceived as too “out of it.”

But then relevance always has something to do with the essence of one’s job and the objectives one wishes to achieve. So even if you write about the most personal things or deal with issues that are rarely brought up, as long as you keep your readers reading until your last punctuation and evoke in them emotions, reactions, reflections or more importantly, action, then you are, by all means, relevant.

If you are a man of the cloth, or more specifically, a group of bishops, your objective is not to determine the people who will or will not run the government. That’s not your job. Your responsibility is to your flock. The faithful must be conscious of their role in determining their nation’s affairs and guide them in their actions, which would hopefully be those that would bring out the full potential of their humanity.

If you are a businessman, you would be relevant if you take into consideration the concerns of your stakeholders – your principals, your creditors, clients and employees. You would want to make sure that the environment in which your business operates is as predictable, stable and promising as possible.

If you are an educator, you would be relevant if you inspire your students enough to study more and more of the subject you are teaching even without the pain of a failing grade in their class cards. You would be relevant if the children look up to you and regard you as a second parent, open up to you and consult you on their dilemmas of whatever nature. You would be relevant if you encourage them not to take in all that is fed them – yes, even what you or the books say — at face value and instead process the input before arriving at their own conclusions.

If you are a student, you would be relevant if you recognize that it does not serve you or your country if you remain in your comfort zone of music, fashion, technological developments and your conflicting feelings while growing up. There is a bigger world, and it needs you—your energy, your idealism, your perspective and your slate that is, as yet, clean.

And yet there is something more important than branding people as irrelevant or calling them names just because they don’t share our views or aren’t as passionate about certain issues as we are. It’s called respect.

Relevance is relative. Perhaps. But the need to respect other people’s views is basic. It paves the way for a healthy exchange of ideas. It enables us to be constructive instead of degenerative. It’s mature. And it’s absolute.