Greatness, sort of

Theres The Rub
by Conrado de Quiros
from Philippine Daily Inquirer

ONE is tempted to say Manny Pacquiao can do without any additional pressure put on his shoulders. And to say that landing on the cover of Time is a pressure is like saying Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a minor irritation. It is huge. It makes winning his fight against Miguel Cotto this Sunday an absolute must. But I don’t know that Pacquiao’s shoulders aren’t up to it. That in fact is one of the reasons he deserves to be on that magazine’s cover. He’s one of those amazing sports personalities who actually thrive on pressure, who court pressure as a chance to show the stuff he’s made of. He’s awed by the honor the magazine has just conferred on him, but he is not cowed by it. Look at the way he’s looking forward to the fight against Cotto. Without lapsing into trash talk—his culture frowns on it—indeed while completely respecting his opponent—he seems in little doubt about its outcome. He is going to win. It’s not just that losing is not an option, it’s that it’s simply not on his horizon.

Heaven forbid he does. That too is not just not an option for the country, it simply doesn’t loom on our horizon.

I myself am a little ambivalent about Time’s accolade.

On one side, it is of course a signal honor, a deep source of pride, for us. Only Corazon Aquino has done it before, and doubly so, a feat unlikely to be duplicated in the near future. Being put on Time’s cover thrusts Pacquiao into the ranks of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, sports figures whose impact on the games they play has been vast. Pacquiao himself has done the unprecedented feat of winning in several weight classes. Sugar Ray Leonard is right to say people do not seem to fully appreciate it when it is nothing short of spectacular. He himself, Leonard says, hasn’t done it. No boxer has done it. Pacquiao isn’t just demolishing adversaries, he is demolishing boundaries.

More than Jordan and Woods, Pacquiao has impacted not just on the game he plays but on the games other people play. That is to say, his impact has gone beyond sports. He isn’t just the hero of this country, he is the savior of this country. This country reposes its hope, its future, its destiny on him every time he fights. As news reports have pointed out, the crime rate in this country drops to near-zero when he fights as no respectable bank robber would be found plying his trade at that sacred hour. Less reported is that he unites Filipinos in more ways than one. When he fights, Filipinos forget that he has sung the praises of Malacañang and that his victories are likely to redound to the benefit of its occupants and root for him anyway, man and woman, young and old, two-legged and four.

But Pacquiao’s landing in Time is not without its disquieting aspects too. He himself says that he wants to prove that he represents a small but mighty country. That’s probably the last thing he will. All that his successes have highlighted in fact is that his country is a puny one. All they have done is etch in stark relief the epic contrast between the heights he has reached and the depths his country has sunk to.

There’s always something disquieting when a country pins its hopes, its future and its destiny on the outcome of a sports event. I know other countries do that with football. A player from Argentina was gunned down by underworld thugs for the unforgivable crime of accidentally kicking the ball into his own goal, thereby kicking Argentina out of the World Cup. And as everyone knows football is not a game in Brazil, it is a religion.

But it goes well beyond even that in this country. Pacquiao rose to fame by unmitigated grit at the very time his country fell into infamy by unmitigated gall. Pacquiao attained his glory at the very time Gloria attained her ingloriousness. The heaven the country felt with Pacquiao’s ascent to boxing Valhalla came alongside the hell it experienced with its government’s descent to political depravity. The Philippines came to be known the world over as the home of the best pound-for-pound fighter living today. But it also came to be known as the home of the worst peso-for-peso thieves living today. Pacquiao went on to become the most fearsome fighter in the ring, the Philippines went on to become the most corrupt country in the globe.

The reason this country worships Pacquiao the way humankind’s ancestors worshipped the sun is out of sheer need. The reason this country grinds to a halt every time Pacquiao fights is out of sheer hope. Having nothing to be proud of, having indeed everything to be ashamed of, we look up to Pacquiao’s fights as something to prop us up, as a source of replenishment. His victories aren’t just our victories, they are our very survival. Man does not live by bread alone, he lives by circuses too. Lacking the one, we make do with the other.

Truly, heaven forbid Pacquiao loses.

I am proud of Pacquiao being on the Time cover. But I am also bothered by the thought that it represents a decline in the national stature, driven home by the fact that not too long ago a Filipino did so as well for a far more epic achievement. That was Corazon Aquino who made it there twice for having fashioned stouter wings than Icarus in the form of People Power. It’s not just that boxing is a lesser achievement compared to the liberation of a country. Tiger Woods will never be Martin Luther King. It’s also that Cory’s achievement enriches the people rather than pauperizes them by contrast. It is Cory’s achievement that shows the country to be a small but mighty one, a country whose people are capable of breaking their chains, not least inside themselves, not least their penchant for mediocrity, and rise to breathtaking heights.

That is greatness. The other is just, well, sort of.