Amen

Dare You To Fly
By Anna Bueno

It is terrifying to hear news of extra-judicial killings. It is more terrifying when you hear that the number of these killings increase each day, and when you discover that a big part of these killings involves journalists. This is especially disheartening when you are studying in college and hoping to become a journalist someday.

For sure, there will always be optimism—the hope that things will somehow turn out better when you step into the real world. There’s always idealism—you believe that through you and your noble efforts, the world will change. You hope for the best; you believe you will be part of that change.

Yet sometimes, the statistics can really slap you in the face, and can lay to doubt all that you have hoped for, all that you have built up your life for.

We should all know this by now. The Philippines is the second most dangerous place for journalists in the world. Journalists have been killed, harassed, kidnapped, and maltreated in every way, in their pursuit of news and truthful information.

In addition, it is not easy to chase interviewees for an article. It is not easy to piece together a seemingly seamless write-up for a newspaper, or for a news broadcast. It is not easy to live in a world that follows its own time, that chooses its own pace for events, that surprises you with its catastrophes and disasters. The journalist must always be on his feet.

Surely, this is not the ideal way to live—you don’t even get paid much for that 3,000-word article that you’ve labored over for a month. You do it for the love of it—if any trace of that even remotely exists.

So why be a journalist?

In a sophomore student’s very limited view, the answer is simple: the “love for it” still exists. And maybe, just maybe, aspiring journalists do tend to be a little bit idealistic.

It always starts with a love affair with writing. You get amazed by the flow of words, you get carried away when you express yourself in paper and ink.

As you get older, and consequently, experience more of the world, there is a point when you ask yourself: what is the sense of what you are writing? What is the bigger picture? Who are you writing for? Why do you write?

There should always be a sense of purpose. And what nobler purpose than for that of society?

Journalism is a vocation, yet different from what a vocation is conceived to be. A member of a religious order, for example, stays in his house, and prays. A journalist, in stark contrast, goes out into the world in pursuit of something that is not for himself, but for others.

Sure, a person has dreams for himself. Everybody wants to fall and stay in love. Everybody wants a family. Everybody wants to live in peace, away from the irregularities of the world we are living in. Is this even possible when you feel a call to write, to expose, to bring some kind of change?

Is it possible to be idealistic in a world that has become jaded? Is it possible to write more for others, than the self? Is it possible to rouse people, who have almost given up, to act for what they’re fighting for?

In the point of view of an idealistic, optimistic, and hopeful eighteen year old, I say yes.