Trinkets of Hope

These missed trains and late calls just so you could enter the college you once only dreamt of. You chased this one down, crossed it out from the long list of goals we keep on adding to. And after it? No more tracking days till summer breaks. No more shifting gears and wiping tears from academic heartaches. Because here, after you’re done being called a student, it feels like you’re expected to know everything already—as if learning stops once school ends. But it doesn’t. It never will.

So while you can, for as long as you can, grip tightly onto that pole of hope and innocence. You’re a kid. Enjoy the joy of not knowing everything, and the privilege of having gaps where you can fail, stumble, and succeed.

I know. I know you say you hate this university. So did we. Everybody does. But that’s only because we expect something from it. We love it, in some twisted way, because we pay so much attention to things we love. Sometimes, we even do it to ourselves.

We hate the heat inside the room filled with laughter and catching up with friends you haven’t seen in weeks. We hate the lectures that someday will guide us in the professions we chose. We hate the field we’ve jumped and run through, even though they held the concerts, events, and community fests that made us feel alive and part of the diverse and accepting society of this school. We hate the hallways where your blue-dyed hair bleeds down your neck, like ink from the papers you’re rushing to pass. We hate it, yes we do. We even hate ourselves for choosing this path—only because we’re tired, only because we’re full of hope, and full of wanting things we think we deserve. And that is both beautiful and valid.

This is your coming-of-age, while for us, this is the end of our beginning. Collect these little moments like trinkets. Clip and pin them to your heart. Let it be heavy, because heaviness means you carry countless memories that will stay with you for life. And when you step out of this system, you can take them out one by one whenever the world feels too much. Those trinkets of happiness will remind you of the years you dreamed and hustled just to be here.

But here is the part we can’t soften. 

We will leave. You have to stay. Stay a little longer, enduring the tales of failures, not of you nor from you, but of the system itself. This university we embraced as it must recognize the challenges of the young, but too often it listens instead to the music of graft, to the rhythm of compromises that pull the youth back from the endings they deserve. These leaders we trusted, the same fellow students we vouched for to bring change—what happened? How did we end up here, where expectations remain unmet, and the voices meant to rise for us now falter? You were supposed to speak, but your throat grew sore—strained by the weight of pressure, disguised control, and the false attention that silenced you before you could even begin. The anatomy of this tragedy has become my allegory, standing in place of the rousing speech you could not deliver. And so the truth must be said: they failed us. And it is left to us, now, to make sure we do not fail ourselves.

And how funny and ironic, that even in the last moment, we still have less. We never imagined that we’d walk, cry, and end our college years inside the very venue of mishaps and broken promises. At a court. At the court where we stayed when the rain poured down. Where we stayed when the sun was too much to bear. The court of our lonesome rendezvous. The court where we practiced the dance to the struggles of this “fun” college life. That court. That’s where we’ll end.

So for the last time, just like how we first entered this new chapter of our lives, we hope.

This time, we hope for you. We hope you continue to fight the war we once fought just to get here—or better yet, that you won’t have to fight at all. We hope you make the change that miracles didn’t give us. We hope you will be lucky this time around. We hope you don’t have to hope the way we do, because you will have it.

And remember, never forget why you are where you are now. Never forget what you fought for just to take up space. And always take space. Don’t deprive yourself of opportunities just because of the cruelty of insecurity and doubts. You didn’t wake up before sunrise, drag yourself home at midnight smelling of city smoke and passengers’ sweat, battle through crowded trains and jeepneys alongside other tired Filipinos—just to stay quiet and shrink. You deserve your dream. You deserve bigger things. You deserve to take up space.

So every time you can, go to the table. Grab a seat. Be heard. We are built to be there, so be there.

Iskolar ka ng Bayan. Tandaan mo ‘yan.

To all of you fellow Isko and Iska, we’ll have to leave behind our hope. Don't miss out on present times worrying about the future. You’re gonna get there anyway.

Article: Renz Gerald

Illustration: Vincent Gabriel Lacerna