Two Women

I am a multi-tasker by nature, and even in reading my books I prefer to read more than one at a time. At present, I am reading the biographies of two women who seem to be polar opposites: Madeleine Körbel Albright, who was once Secretary of State of the United States—the highest any women has ever gone in American politics; and Paz Marquez-Benitez, the first author of a Filipino short story written in English—a woman who was also very much ahead of her time, as well as of her male contemporaries.

It is interesting to see that although both women were from different cultures and eras, and had altogether different realities, their lives share some themes and lessons that make us realize the value of any human life, no matter how insignificant it may seem at first. They are not my idols-apparent—I have always claimed to idolize the late Princess Diana and Audrey Hepburn for being women of style, substance, and strength—but they have lived lives that I now only dream of living (and fusing). Albright is a woman who has risen from humble Jewish-Czech beginnings to the savage, male-dominated world of (American) politics; while Benitez chose to live a more quiet and genteel life as a writer, educator, wife, and mother, but reflected a young nation’s dreams and visions of hope in her written work.

As a young woman whose heart is in both politics and art, social transformation and cultural consciousness, I find in both women lives lived well, and worth sharing.

* * * * *

I have not gone far in reading both biographies (Albright’s is entitled Seasons of her Life, written by Time correspondent Ann Blackman; Benitez’s is Paz Marquez Benitez: One Woman’s Life, Letters, and Writings, written by her daughter, Virginia Benitez Licuanan), but both women’s stories show how inextricably linked the seemingly mundane events of our lives can be with the history of young nations in turmoil. In reading their histories, and those of their ancestors, I have come to realize that no war, no crisis, no event of national significance is ever too far removed from the food on our table or the clothes on our back to be deemed inconsequential to daily living.

Madeleine (Madlenka) Körbelová’s father, Josef Körbel (I have learned that females add an “ová” to their surnames), was a diplomat in the young democratic Czechoslovakia at the time Madeleine was born, in 1937. He was popular and well-liked, and sat in the good graces of Beneš administration. He and his wife, Mandula—who was a very good chronicler—lived an almost-enviable life of political sorties, parties, and friends in high places, until the day Hitler decided that Czechoslovakia was his for the taking. Because Körbel was too closely identified with then-president Beneš and was Jewish—although the family did not really practice the religion—he and his young family had to be exiled to Britain.

Paz Marquez, on the other hand, was born in 1894, years before the Revolution which jostled us from Spain’s clutches onto the hands of the Americans. The place which their family called home was Tayabas (now Quezon), then a “hot bed” of the revolution, where serenity was unheard of, and where families had to master the games of habulan and taguan in order to survive. In her memoirs, she writes of moments of anticipation and dread at the thought of being caught by the Spaniards, and of friends and loved ones lost either because of the war itself, or as a side-effect of all the upheaval and illness that are frequently associated with such events.

Both Madeleine and Paz’s families were caught in the midst of wars that rocked their fragile nations, their intimate, personal tragedies and diary entries the reflections of cold and faceless accounts in our news archives and history textbooks.

* * * * *

In a sense, and to echo a lesson I learned in Philosophy class, what is personal is universal, and what is universal is personal. What were then private scribblings in notebooks and loose sheets of paper by then private individuals of no national consequence are now peepholes into a different culture, a different era, a different world. The Czechoslovakia of Madlenka Körbelová’s youth has now been dissolved, and the Quezons and Osmeñas who once graced the Benitez dining hall are now only imprints on almost-worthless currency. And yet, for a time, they were real, they were held dear.

Even Albright and Benitez seem far removed from us now, until we read their stories and find ourselves transported to their world, to the core of their day-to-day existence, understanding (for a brief moment) what it was like to have lived in their worlds.

* * * * *

It makes me wonder about the true weight and value of seemingly insignificant decisions that I have made, or have yet to make. What will my high-slitted, tight-skirted presence at EDSA Dos mean 20 years from now, when my children are in high school, and when they would have read about the second People Power that once again installed a woman president? How will life be for my family in 2020, and how will I explain to them the choices that I would have made with each election from now until then? Will I be able to afford to send my children to my beloved Ateneo? Or will the desire for true social involvement and change tear me from this comfortable life, to pursue other goals on another path? What will my diary entries and Spoonful issues mean for another generation who may (or may not) read them?

How will my thoughts, beliefs, decisions, and actions shape my little world, and how will little life this fit into the grander—universal—scheme of things?

How will yours?

(Written: March 11, 2004)