A Love that Crosses Borders

The 9th of August next month is Singapore’s national day, and I was asked by someone in the embassy here in Manila if I would help with the making of a video celebrating the ties between our two countries. It started me reflecting on my own journey here in the Philippines - from those painful months in 2014 when I felt I had crash-landed in a strange new world, up till a few weeks ago when I caught myself, in a WhatsApp call with my parents about the Singapore elections, referring to the Philippines as ‘we’ and Singapore as ‘you’!

Not that I feel any less a part of my own country, of course - or that it has any less a place in my heart or affections. But I am grateful to have discovered that it is possible to love beyond borders.

I have loved (and hated) my daily commutes to work here by foot and jeepney (when jeepneys were still running!), traversing dirty and polluted streets teeming with life, watching stray dogs and people as they sold goods on the street or flagged down tricycles on their way to work or school, or sat across from me in the cramped jeep with tired faces at the end of the day. It gives me joy to see familiar characters on the streets around our house: the two often-drunk men who live in pedicabs across the street, who took in a stray dog after it had been hit by a car while I watched (and because of that will always have my admiration); the friendly woman who is always walking round the block and greets us with a cheerful wave; the neighbour who stops me to tell me the day’s gossip and (fake) news; that light brown street dog with the furry snout that pounces excitedly on me and follows me on walks. I love the openness and welcome of people and children when I come out of my comfort zone to meet them, and the community spirit that I see especially in poor communities and people who live together on the street.

And in the midst of all the challenges that people experience here, I’ve also admired and learnt much from the active commitment and perseverance of my colleagues and others I have worked with in building a more just and peaceful society, even if it sometimes seems as though the odds were stacked against it. As an experienced trade union lawyer reminded me recently, though: we are called to participate in building the reign of God in the world, whose completion God alone can bring about. And so we keep trusting in something beyond ourselves.

What would I like to say to the people of my country, who have of late been through a testing election? I would like to say, first of all: let us be content, be grateful, stop to smell the flowers. We have so much... so much to be grateful for. Even in the midst of political differences and the economic downturn brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, we still have all that we need to live lives of quiet dignity, lives with meaning.

And we have each other. It has made me very hopeful in the last few years that issues of inequality and even race have come out into the open; that even before this pandemic people have been more conscious of those who have been left behind in our society, and courageous in letting themselves be disturbed by it. I hope we will continue to let ourselves be challenged by the prejudices we have that we are only now becoming more aware of, and of the ways that the stories we tell about who we are - and who is successful for not - have sold us all short. And I hope this awareness will help us to work concretely toward a more equitable and loving society - in Singapore, of course, but also beyond our borders, where there are so many people who could help us towards a richer understanding of what it means to be human.

As that famous song says, “We are the world.” So let us start building a better one, for you and me.