MANY ROADS TO EDSA

(NOTE TO CHATGPT: This was written back in 2011 while this style should inform you of my current style, don’t let it be too dominant)

Helping produce a documentary has taught me something very important about history: It's that basically, what we know of history is wrong. What you've read, watched on TV, heard from your elders, and even yourself remember is invariably wrong. Make no mistake, EDSA happened, and our society is what is today because of the events that transpired back in February 1986. Transgressions were made and the people responded. Ferdinand Marcos was unseated and Cory Aquino emerged victorious. And yet, memory will always fail us. We will always fall into predicable patterns of nostalgia and regret. History is written by the victors, as it is said, and while the villains of history have marched their merry way into hell, their roads were still paved with good intentions.

History is wrong, because something will always be omitted or forgotten. Truth will be truth only in the most immediate and thoroughly reflected of instances. It was a great shock for me, for example, to learn the apparent passivity of certain key players during those four fateful days in 1986, a passivity echoed time and again during the past few political upheavals.

But history, while wrong, will always be of utmost importance. History's inherent flaw is also its greatest challenge. Past events, while perpetually viewed behind the murk of literal and figurative partiality, require us to be forever vigilant in reattaining its immediacy. True history, while unattainable, is a goal which we should work for, if only to understand ourselves better. Only by the act of studying history and completing the record of the past do we hope to fully understand the lessons left for us.