EDSA

My generation isn't old enough to remember EDSA. I was just seven months old when People Power happened; my parents named me after President Marcos and President Reagan. My mom says that they never expected Marcos to be ousted by popular revolution. I grew up after EDSA: part of a generation trying to search for the meaning of perhaps the most important event in modern Philippine history.

Growing up, I was taught that EDSA was a failure. There were many reasons for the revolution failing: the old oligarchs returned to go by their old ways after the new dawn for the Filipino people. To some, the revolution failed because of the bad decisions made by Marcos' successors to the Presidency. Still to others, the revolution failed because the bad habits of the Filipino people didn't change, as if EDSA was also to wipe out the stereotypes of crab mentality, colonial thinking, and Filipino time.

Every time the obligatory dissection of EDSA I comes up on the last two weeks of February for the past 24 years, there's that tendency to treat EDSA as a one-off: a one-time-big-time deal, a sudden phenomenon. EDSA I is seen by many as that failed opportunity to make things right, instead of seeing revolution as a continuous process. EDSA I is seen as a failure, instead of a continuing opportunity for us to realize the dreams we had, as a people, 25 years ago.

Every time we try to recapture the spirit of EDSA, it slips our grasp. Twenty-five years ago, we were united by common goals, common dreams, and common hopes, with the realization that we can only depose the dictator and forge our way to progress if we worked together. Twenty-five years later, we have different goals, different dreams, and different hopes, trying to start revolutions on our own. Twenty-five years later, we have yet to figure out a way to recapture that one unique thing instead of creating something new. We're still locked in that mindset that it takes a dictatorship to start a revolution.

Everyone – from the intellectuals to the generals, the rich and the poor, the spotless and the dirty that joined hands against the tanks that were ready to mow them all down from Camp Aguinaldo – united for a common purpose, cleaned up the place afterward, and started dreaming together in the afterglow of that moment when they were moving as one. The more we drifted apart, the more we drifted from the sense of community that made the EDSA Revolution possible.

My generation isn't old enough to remember EDSA, but what I do know is that togetherness and unity made that revolution possible. EDSA did not fail: it still takes place. All we have to do is to find common ground to revolution, and it can happen again.