My thoughts on the
Suicide of UP Student Kristel Tejada
While some are beating
their breasts or pointing fingers over Kristel's death, or talking of clearer
and more pro-poor policies on UP enrollment, my concern is not for what is
perceived to be the immediate cause of her suicide, but its roots.
Indeed, suicide is a
complex issue, and only one thing appears to be clear. There is an increase of
reported suicides among the young, due to reasons that would not normally drive
them to kill themselves: lost love, poor grades, a bad interview, and in
Kristel's case, an LOA that would have enabled her to re-enroll next semester.
It happens. UP
students don't have money, they drop out, they come back. They fail, they get
an LOA, they come back. Some get kicked out, get some really nice work
experience in the field, and come back. Or not. But they don't kill themselves.
They get another life, and often succeed with or without UP. At least that was
how it was when life was harder, when we had to wait a long, long line to make
a phone call, when we had to actually PHYSICALLY search for and read books and
journals to write a term paper, when we had to wait for a week or two to get a
(love) letter through the mail, now known as snail mail, from a loved one who
had to travel home for 2 days by sea because he couldn't afford airfare.
Life was hard then.
When people were poor, like I was made to believe I was, they had apples or
cheese once a year if they could get any at all, and they got their allowances
in coins, not bills. They had to survive on rice and sabaw, or rice and free
sauce if they got lucky when the coins ran out. They walked, didn't ride --
sayang ang P0.25.
Back then, a wrong
political move could send one missing, only to be found wounded, in jail, or
worse, dead. No, we didn't commit suicide then. Life was hard but precious. We
were harder. We would prevail.
Yet the experience may
have driven many of us to do everything so things would be easy for our
children. We love them dearly and don't want them to suffer the pains we had.
We have made material
things, manipulatively put within our reach by quickly developing technology
that obsolesces as fast, easily accessible to our children who might have
little experience with postponing gratification. We have protected them
heavily, because of our justified fear of their getting hurt by an increasingly
cruel world, without a transition to independence that would have strengthened
their will and capacity to survive the downs of life. We cave so fast even to
trivial demands, so they wouldn't hold their breath while crying a ruckus and
die (they can't do that). We have made things easy for our children. Probably
too easy.
Quite possibly,
there's the rub. Cesar Montano once remarked in a speech that he had such a
difficult childhood yet believed that such difficulty made him successful later
in life. Now that he was rich, he was worried for his children who had a
comfortable life. He said "kung pwede ko lang bilhin ang kahirapan para
magkaroon ng pagkakataon na tumibay ang mga anak ko". He didn't know then
the speech would be prophetic of his son's suicide.
I read somewhere about
someone who saw a butterfly struggling to emerge from a pupa. It was displaying
much difficulty and valiant effort in the process of breaking the constrictive
covering. That person was moved with pity and so "helped" the
butterfly by taking off small pieces of the covering. The butterfly did emerge,
but fell and died later. The vessels of its wings did not fill with enough
blood to nourish the wings and make them strong. That, apparently, was the whole
point of having to struggle to come out of the pupa.
Which brings me to my
question: Are we helping our children too much that they are not developing the
emotional strength needed to face life's challenges? Are we unwittingly putting
some of them on the path that Kristel took? What do we do? What don't we?
Let UP restudy its
admission and tuition fee policy. Let the faculty and students express their
outrage. Let the politicians rant if they wish. But let us, parents, take a
long look at how we are raising our children. How do we stand by and watch them
struggle because like the butterfly, the struggle will make them stronger? How
do we prevent another Kristel?
