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I live in a period where hope seems inexistent. The more I strive to search for equality, the more I am convinced that it does not exist. This is the period where the principled is threatened while the diabolic is glorified. Now, where lies the hope? No one knows for sure. It is a cyclic cruelty. Is there a chance for change? It is uncertain. This is the period of indifference. This is the period when the only permanent thing in the world, change, is proved to be temporary, faked.
I am on my last year of my teenage years, yet my emotions suit that of a kid. The society where I am in does not nurture any transitional emotion that would question its way of being. Can I still see the beauty of the sunrise through my own vision and describe it based on my own perception, and not define it via the words set forth as acceptable by the world I call my society?
I am starting to feel bitter of everything that is happening, that is why I write. Papers and pens serve as the remedy for my ailing passion for change. It is hard to face the fact that the battle for change, which I struggle for yesterday, is not sustained and not even respected by people who cannot accept the fact that the society where they move is distorted, and perhaps crazy.
I go crazy, I think. I say so because there are moments when I envy the situation of the psychotics, the schizophrenics, the labeled deviants. No one seems to see that their world is much more a better place than ours, because their area is something they can proudly call their own. They do not have to follow any law, any standard. Anything they do is done however way they wanted to act. I envy it. If I feel that the sun is heating me enough, can I walk naked? Of course, I can. But can I do it freely? I do not think so, because social monsters would always label it as something not suitable for this society. It is really not suitable for this society; this judgmental, distorted society.
I always thought that this is a happy place to dwell in, but as I age, I am thinking otherwise. I cannot accept that the happiness I am feeling is dictated. Dictated by the conventionally irrational society, happiness is really not happiness, but a pleasurable stimulus that comes from our cultural biology that is pleased to feel that it satisfies the desire of the orthodoxically cruel society.
I could say that this society hinders the existence of the true essence of happiness. If that is the reality people are talking about, I would love to live in dreams instead. It pains me to feel that I am judged by the society not by the value of my personality, but by the measure of its standards.
I would want to dream forever of a society that would not stop anyone from moving just to slap him and command of a proper behavior. But I have to wake up and continue my fight against the conventions of my world. Had it been easy, I would be grateful. Since it is not, I would have to start from myself and let judgments linger on my being just to say that I started the war against this society. Who knows, this society might finally grow tired of its authoritarianism after seeing that its slaves are tired of it too.

John Mychal A. Feraren, BS Forestry sophomore at CFNR-UPLB, is the current president of UPLB FORESTRY SOCIETY, an academic-environmental organization.