Is your identity a myth?
Is who you are based on what you "really" know?
Image by Romeo Mariano. “Upon hearing news that Ferdinand Marcos left the country, people stormed the gates of the Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the Filipino president, on February 25, 1986. Anger was replaced by joy and renewed hope for a better life.” (Source: Rappler)
Today, in the Philippines, is a national holiday: the 35th anniversary of The People’s Power Revolution. Otherwise known as the EDSA Revolution, it was a four-day demonstration in 1986 that brought two million people to the long stretch of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), overthrowing the country’s dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
It is amazing how blips in history can continue to be told for generations, influencing the lives of those who weren’t there to experience its significance. I was born after the Revolution. Yet, my understanding of it is fully informed by the grapevine: through teachings in school, scholarly opinion, or secondhand accounts from people who were there – whether online or offline. A similar pattern can be felt for other major historical events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or Man’s first walk on the moon. Like the Revolution, these were fleeting moments defined by serendipity, profoundly changing the course of people’s lives.
Recently, I discovered there were a group of Gen Z TikTok users who believe that martial law under Marcos looked “aesthetically” peaceful. Of course, to me, this is preposterous. The millions of lives lost and the corrupt atrocities made under his rule is impossible to question.
Translation: “JN MoonMoon: I just meant AESTHETICALLY! Just admit it that it is aesthetically pleasing and it looks peaceful.”
Translation, #2: JN MoonMoon: “I am just talking about aesthetics. Yes, there were lives lost and it was a ‘gruesome’ time. At least we had growth then, unlike now.” / joem, replied to JN MoonMoon: “you cannot separate things like that whenever youre talking about martial law!! Will I benefit from aesthetics when I’m dead? huh?????” … “also you as a member of the lgbt community should know better of the atrocities that happened in the marcos era!!! we will die otherwise, bestie.”
Yet, the fact that people out there hold such beliefs come as no surprise. Yes, what we need to know is out there for us to seek. But as long as what there is to know is endlessly proliferating, we will always just skim whatever is not worth our finite time to know.
Our entire identities are built on this type of storytelling, operating at the level of both fact and fiction.
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that our identities are myths – a narrative that connects our imaginary inner world with our external environment of reason. It was Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist, who suggested that myths provide “a ready-made means of externalising human plight by embodying and representing them in storied plot and characters.” We make sense of our lives as if they were realistic dramas, telling us about our origins and destinies.
Below is an essay I wrote for MERCADO VICENTE where I explore this very topic. It is about the struggles of grappling with my Filipino "identity" – namely, the conflict between honuoring one’s roots and seeking a "better life" elsewhere. This piece now is behind a paywall, but I’m making it available on Cultural Learnings for your reading pleasures.
I’d love to hear what you think about this essay. Please do write to me if you have any food for thought.
The Mythology of Filipino Identity
Words and photos by yours truly, for MERCADO VICENTE.
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“Though we speak, so to say, ‘in our own name,’ of ourselves and from our own experience, nevertheless who speaks, and the subject who is spoken of, are never identical, never exactly in the same place.” – Stuart Hall
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It was ingrained in me early on that I must live a “better life outside.” This was not just about going to the playground and enjoying the sunshine, although that is an appropriate metaphor. If Americans aspired to a white picket fence, the “Filipino Dream” was being a galleon in the Pacific Ocean. Once I ziplined through Manila’s clogged turnpikes, there was a world out there waiting for me; not just a dusty swing, but a technicoloured jungle gym.
I arrived in the United Kingdom in August 2012. Between living in London and Oxford as a student, my day-to-day consisted of subconsciously sticking to a certain script. I wrote in British English. I stood on the right side of the escalator. I frequented a neighborhood café. Heck, I worked in one myself. I made friends in Hackney. Friends became colleagues. Colleagues mailed my payslips. Spent my money in Soho. Partied in Manchester. Got a new job. Met someone there. In this process of “doing as the Romans do,” I started thinking, perhaps, I am a Roman, too.
But by November 2019, I could no longer stall my return to Manila, the city where I was born.
The UK Home Office gives foreign graduates only four months to find a job that can sponsor a work visa before forcing them to leave the country — a requirement that appeared to be reserved for the most corporate and exclusive employers. My lease ended shortly after I graduated, so I had no permanent place to live. During those four months, I was a nomad, staying in one place for no longer than five days — a situation born out of an uncertain future rather than wanderlust. Between catching the Tube in London, the peak train to Oxford and the night bus to Chipping Norton, I moved seven years’ worth of my things between these three cities — things I eventually fit in a costly storage unit about the size of a toilet cubicle.
During this period, I was also recovering from the worst burnout of my life. I suffered the knife’s edge of my master’s degree in a cutthroat university before living out of my backpack. While I hopped from one place to another, I frantically applied for jobs, going from interview to interview, receiving rejection after rejection. Even if someone wanted to hire me, employers must, by law, give precedence to British or European applicants. Not only was this demoralizing, knowing I was not enough even if I was good enough; the life I was actively building for seven years — the amount of time it took to send Apollo 8 to the Moon — was summed up to nothing but a “points-based” checklist. Within no time, I bid farewell to my loved ones and flew across eight time zones from Heathrow to Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
This is not merely a case of resentment. For many Filipinos, there exists a tug-of-war between the search for quality of life and knowing where one is “really” from. Often, this tension manifests into a way of living many Filipinos are attempting to escape — an identity built on complacency, injustice and generational trauma. “Better opportunities” motivated me out of the Philippines, but tropes about bad government, colonial mentality and the death of the individual certainly made it easier to leave.
This identity, and my interpretation of it, always risked being read in a convoluted way. When I spoke Taglish, the combination of Tagalog and English, I was not Filipino enough. When I spoke Tagalog instead of English, I was lowly. My Spanish surname made me enemy number one in the eyes of “real” Filipinos. Behind closed doors, “God was watching” and I was harassed for going against my “Filipino upbringing.” Filipinos in the Philippines mistook me for being American. A Brit thought I was Chinese, heckling “ching chang chong” from across a bus stop.
No matter what the assumption was, therein lies a universal truth: To be truly Filipino was to be estranged, like a galleon without an anchor, drifting away with the ebb and flow of the ocean.
Nevertheless, this condition of not belonging anywhere has an allure — a nostalgia for a place never traversed; a depth in one’s self so rich and nuanced, it is waiting to be excavated.
Shortly after I moved to England, I began my career as a freelance journalist for numerous British publications. It took me no time to adapt — a tendency brought on by the need to fit into a new culture. However, I always circled back to the same stories of Filipinos grappling with their own culture, which said more about me than the stories themselves. I felt a peculiar comfort, too, inside the dark intensity of a nightclub, entranced by the music amongst sweaty dancers. It reminded me of staying out late at night as a teenager, savoring the taste of my forbidden freedom, exposed to the innards of Metro Manila. I finally had this “better life outside,” yet this search for what was out there, of who I could be, was unwavering.
And herein lies the crux of Filipino identity and its mythology. Who we are is a matter of both the past and the future. Being Filipino is just one of the things I am, albeit a large one, and not one ancestor, personality trait or experience can ever capture all its ruptures. Our bodies constitute a story and, like all stories, the Filipino one shifts in shape, cuts across space and changes over time. To realize this entropy is to seize opportunity in chaos.
One day, I will cycle through Regent’s Canal again and slurp oysters at Broadway Market. My friends and I will reunite on the dancefloor and take the train of shame from Bristol. I will long for those cold winter evenings by the Cornish seaside, like how I longed for this tropical heat in the Pacific Ring of Fire.
But until then, I can find solace in my own skin — being and becoming.
Reader’s Digest
Jia Tolentino’s book review of Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection explores the exciting new possibilities of the Asian-American identity.
“Is virtue signalling a perversion of morality?” asks Neil Levy for Aeon.
This summary of Jerome Bruner’s work on Brain Pickings explores how our capacity to create is often conflated with who we are, preventing us from reaching happiness.
This zine published by The Creative Independent gives some practical advice on creative anxiety. Topics covered include fear, overcoming failure, how to ask for help, notes on rejection, and more.
I love this memoir by Howard Cunnell on Granta about how we never stay the same person. Here’s my favourite excerpt:
I can almost believe in the permanence of these warm days, this unchanging child whose hand fits mine. But I can feel the cold and the darkness coming, and I can’t help noticing how the streets and the faces around me are changing all the time. New people with more money are moving in. Once familiar places and people are gone before you miss them, but you do miss them. Soon this will no longer be the place I know.
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