'Confession of a convict': A beautifully written piece that will surely move your heart

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CONFESSION OF A CONVICT
by Mark Lopez

Before things get out of hand, please indulge me with some introspection....

I am not perfect. I will be the first to admit that. And I would not claim any intellectual superiority with everybody. As what is poignantly conveyed in Desiderata -

"If you compare yourselves with others,
You may become vain and bitter,
For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself"

Mark Lopez and President Duterte, photo from Facebook

Again, am not perfect. In fact, am so imperfect that I do not deserve any accolade or praise. I can tell you right now that am in a mess, and with perhaps insurmountable problems and on the verge of a breakdown.

And this is not even something new. I have had my share of shameful behavior that came to a point where I almost ruined my own family. When I was in corporate, even as I was one of the youngest to become an executive, it does not take away the fact that I engaged in inappropriate behavior every now and then.

Am never a beacon of righteous conduct though in terms of actual management, I believe I was fair, just and most of all passionate in pursuing that commitment to excellence. I may have even been savage at times, putting down or confronting other departments when they seem like giving my group a hard time. But that's all in a day's work.

Right now, am very active in social media. Active to the point that I have become part of an amazing group of patriots and warriors whose love of country stands above everything else.

 
Now let us all disabuse ourselves of the notion that I am a popular socmed personality with a significant number of "followers."

I beg your pardon, but the last thing that I will call or describe my fellow citizens will be to call you my "followers." No way!

Yes, you may be following my page or posts, but you are not my followers. You are my fellow Filipinos - friends, colleagues, brothers/sisters, associates, partners, co-workers and comrades.

And what binds us together, what unites us, and sometimes, what breaks us apart or divide us, is our uncompromising but most often unrequited love for our Motherland.

Putting it simply, this is what it is all about - our country.

Thanks to social media, ordinary folks like us became extra ordinary because now we have a voice. Now we can freely and genuinely express our sentiments, our dreams, our aspirations, our frustrations, our disappointments, our despair and our innermost thoughts.

And like I said earlier, there are those who can express better and there are those lesser. But the most important is that we can express.

 
Exactly why when I opened my FB page, I eventually made it public, and I never ever blocked anyone. Not for anything else, but this socmed phenomenon is the quintessence of freedom and democracy that so many shout and cry but fail to deeply understand. I don't even abhor fake news as much as I should, as I believe it has its place and use in this mad mad world we live in. And it's not as if it only existed yesterday.

Tomorrow, Sept 1 Friday, am going into a supposed debate with 2 dilawans, although I can't imagine how we are going to debate in a place like McDonalds.

They actually posed a challenge of discourse to their perceived enemies, and I simply took on the challenge. Am not sure what to make of this event, or how it will turn out. I do hope that after tomorrow, we should all realize that we have a very short time in making up for what we have lost in the past.

What I am sure of is this - I will go there tomorrow with only 2 armaments, and only these two and nothing else -

My authenticity and my conviction.

So help me God.
#ForTheMotherland 👊🏼🇵🇭👊🏼
PS ... Thank you all for the show and expression of support.

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