Rummaging through my old college stuff led me to an old essay that I wrote two years ago for my ReEd class that my teacher eventually submitted to the World Essay Competition. The requirement was an essay about corruption and your views about it. My composition goes something like this...
I am now 19 years old.
When I was a child, I grew up in a safe and protected environment in the comfort of a loving and supportive family. The security of my surroundings shielded me from the harsh reality that was corruption. Either that or I was purposely ignoring the realities I did not want to see. As a young child who was ignorant of the ways of the world, I was an idealist who blithely and purposely made my own self blind to the growing problems the real world struggled to overcome.
But many years have passed since then. I have gone to school, met and talked to different people, and I have seen many things. I have found out that the once ideal world I believed to have existed is not so ideal after all. Knowing that, I felt like the kid who just found out that Santa Claus was nothing more than a myth.
Corruption need not be something very dramatic. It is not only those blown-up cases where politicians are found guilty to accuses of corruption and plunder. Rather, it exists even in small, almost unnoticeable, ways. And because we somehow manage to get away with these little misdeeds, we feel confident to do them again and again. When people start to compromise for convenience, when they do things expediently, when they start twisting the rules to their advantage and when they compromise their ideals and principles, this will be a good breeding ground for large-scale corruption.
In my Religious Education class, we learned that the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin. Corruption is gradually eroding our moral fiber. We start justifying our actions and convincing ourselves that there is nothing wrong about the things we do because everyone else is doing it too. We shun the things we don't want to hear and make ourselves believe that we are not doing anything wrong. Thus, through our continuous practice of corruption, it integrates itself into our culture and blurs our sense of what is right and what is wrong; it becomes a way of life.
Corruption will eventually reach me. I am young and idealistic, but I am also young and easily enticed. Corruption will not tempt us with the word "evil" written all over it. Instead, it will come in a wonderfully-wrapped package that promises of easy solutions to all our problems. It will taunt us until we can no longer resist what it has to offer, and eventually succumb to the temptation. What will happen then to young people like me who are dubbed as "the hope of the land" and the "leaders of the future", when we are introduced to the prospects of corruption at such an early age? Will we not be tempted to consider the perpetuation of this practice in the guise of an easy and good life?
Imagine a world ten years form now when corruption will be so rampant that it will no longer be considered taboo in society. People commit dishonest acts for personal gain, leaders abuse their power and use it to get the things they want, and depravity and perversity become the norm. How do we achieve the hope that we are supposed to bring, how can we stop ourselves from committing these acts that have become a part of our lives?
Our kids will someday grow up to be part of the society we love, in the same society we are currently corrupting. Even if every corrupt act starts out small, it will eventually blow up to become a grand-scale corruption which will involve more and more people. One child that comes to this world will soon be one more corrupt citizen in society.
Wouldn't we rather have uncorrupted minors who will someday lead the community?
What can I do then, as an average 19-year old student, that can help combat this prevalent problem that has adhered itself to the lifestyles of so many?
I start with myself, and let it begin in me.
It is a solution we've all been advised and heard of so many times. But as easy as it is to say, it is not that easy to do. Human as I am, I have my weaknesses and vulnerabilities. But I find comfort in the knowledge that I am not alone in this struggle. As what has been said in the Desiderata :
"For the world is full of trickery;
but let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism",
that many people of high ideals are still willing to do and die for a righteous cause, so that honor and justice may live.
As how Anne Frank aptly put it,
"Despite everything, I still believe in the inner goodness of man."
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