What are you bringing to the Revolution? Me, I’ve got brownies.

Philippines Martial Law 50th Anniversary

I was baking brownies the other day. It was a Sunday. An ordinary day, except it wasn’t, not quite. It was an empty Sunday after a delicious Saturday after an aching Friday after a screaming Thursday after a lost Wednesday. This Sunday carved a space for me in the wood, and I took that sacred time for rest, joy, and creation. The holy act of making something out of multiple nothings. It is a sort of magic to create, even if it’s something so seemingly mundane as food. 

The (seemingly) simpler forms of creation like baking or cooking are delightful when I have the time to do it. I don’t want to be rushed. No, I am not an efficient baker. But I am a curious one. I like to experiment. This time, I modified my usual recipe to add toasted sugar-coated pecans on top. 

While I sifted cocoa powder, I reflected. The previous days I had felt lost and aching, these feelings exactly the kinds we want to heal when we organize for freedom and revolution. We are tired of feeling these things. I was tired, especially, of feeling it vicariously. Collective grief weighs down on us as disasters occur, one after the other. For peasant farmers who are exploited and robbed of their land. For those in Pakistan displaced by the floods, made more extreme by climate change. For each person who has to claw their way out of poverty just to be pushed back down by the system. Then when we feel disconnected from community, these feelings are made ten times worse. 

And yet. I could still take flour, cocoa powder, and eggs and create something utterly delicious. When I make brownies, just like when I write, something shifts. The looming despair is shrunk small, buried in the heart, and allowed to grow into something different. It is enough to be able to create because that’s where healing and hope begins. 

A few months ago, after the Philippine elections, I watched one of the first interviews of the new President. The dictator’s son, the kleptocrat, the Martial Law denier who bought his way into office. I watched, sick to my stomach, that he was being interviewed as if Filipinos should care about what he has to say. As if he has a grain of truth to share.

I don’t remember what he said. But I drove home that night, stopping at an intersection on Marcos Highway. A man knocked on my window to ask for change, and I reached over to give him a few coins. The light had already turned green, and I took just a second too long. The car behind me honked heavily. Hurry up. They seemed to say, There is no time to help. 

After that, I started to view all of the Philippines differently. Instead of selfless volunteers, I saw selfishness in people who just wanted to stick to the script, make money and get by. Instead of the revolutionary change I had felt building just months prior, I saw time yawning and history echoing out of its mouth. I was afraid, too. What if one day, I disappeared? Arrested and locked away or killed without anyone knowing what happened, simply for doing what I do. Everything was uncertain. 

In the process of dealing with the new reality after May, I asked myself, should I just get by? Should I help less and preserve my energy? For a while, I couldn’t answer. 

Subconsciously, for that’s where creativity begins, I took bits and pieces from experience and allowed them to converge. There was no recipe to follow. It was messy. Chaotic. Just like when baking, you can smell the air, feel the thing, and know just about when it’s done. Ding!

I dream of radical change, still. Whether it’s possible or when exactly it might come? Unanswerable, but not the most important question to me. What I can say about when, however, is that political instability peaks every 50 years (Turchin, 2013). Every 50 years or so, movements gain enough momentum to force tangible change. In other words, there is a rhythm to revolution. 

It has been 50 years since the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. This week, countless organizations in the Philippines will hold some sort of action – to protest, to commemorate, to remember. I wonder what lies in the future. What change will be brought about in the next few years? In our social ecosystem, all of us contribute something to the movement. 

So what are you bringing to the Revolution?