“Kuya Marck,” some of my younger friends observe, “How come we haven’t seen you smile?”

That’s a pretty good question.  The last time I smiled was during the yearbook pictorial a couple of years back, when the photographer coaxed me for five minutes to break out into what passes for a smile.  I find it very, very difficult to smile, even if they say you use 17 less facial muscles when you do so.  I could, if I wanted to, do my looks a favor and relax 17 muscles in my face.  I could, if I wanted to, break out in a smile for digital cameras and cellphone cameras and webcams all over the world, and post them in every social network site out there.

I could, if I wanted to, smile.  Why should I?

There are those who smile out of impulse, as if the lens of a camera – real or imagined – is the stimulus that triggers the curling of the lips, and the glow in one’s eyes.  There are those who smile out of happiness, that there is something out there that brings a bit of joy to their hearts.  Then there are those who, like me, find it hard to smile at all, because there is nothing to smile about.

When you’re faced with the apprehension of living paycheck to paycheck, you don’t smile.  When you’re faced with medicines to cure whatever ails you to get to work bright and early, you don’t smile.  When you’re faced with the slow-but-sure feeling of frustration every day until you reach your breaking point, you don’t smile.  When you realize that there’s no difference between your passion and what you do for a living, you don’t smile.  When you finally reach your breaking point and realize that there’s nothing else you can do but live for whatever dim glimmer of hope there is in the far future, you don’t smile.

When you’re faced with the reality that a lot of people are worse off than you, you don’t smile.  When you’re faced with the sight of street children sleeping on cardboard boxes at night under overpasses and the shade of office buildings, you don’t smile.  When you realize how many people you pass by on that long commute to and from work, and how many of them would give their left arm to have the job you all-too-often complain about, you don’t smile.  When you realize that there is no abating a crisis that affects everyone, you don’t smile.  When you realize that everyone’s broken and they all live for whatever dim glimmer of hope that there is in the far future, you don’t smile.

There are those who smile out of choice, as if a smile – genuine or feigned – is a way to cope with problems and frustrations and just about everything wrong in the world these days.  There are those who smile because there really isn’t anything else you can do but look at the positives, never mind that people call you a naïve idiot for doing so.  Then there are those who, like me, don’t smile because their eyes betray them; you can’t break out into a grin when your eyes show the world something else.

I could, if I wanted to, smile.  Why should I?

That’s a pretty good question.  I think it was the late great music legend Johnny Cash who vowed never to wear a suit of white until things get brighter.  I suppose I could follow in the same vein, knowing that only until things do get brighter will I ever break out into the happy smile that almost everyone goes about doing these days.  I will only smile when this reality becomes better for all of us to live in; when I can stand on my own two feet, and when no child or old woman will be ignored at busy sidewalks just because they desperately tug at sleeves or stretch their arms for alms’ sake.

And so I reply, “It’s not that I don’t smile… I just need a reason to.”

I guess I have the habit of depressing myself from things that have absolutely nothing to do with me.  This is just another one of them.

There’s a difference between a “career” and a “job.”  “Careers” are for the educated sort; they are for people who think they are entitled to a place in the corporate world, no matter how small or irrelevant it is.  “Jobs” are of the menial sort; they are for people who offer hard work in exchange for a shot at survival.  Career-seekers venture off to the Internet shop and prostitute themselves through verbose resumés in JobStreet.  Job seekers knock on the door, ring on the bell, tap on the window to get their place in the world.

“Pakikipagsapalaran” is a cliché in the Filipino language: the irony of it is that yes, it is dehumanizing.  It is often translated as “taking a risk,” but I think the irony is captured by the fact that most pakikipagsapalaran takes place when you give up your free will and judgment, throw everything out the window, and leave everything to the Fates that come your way.

I was hanging around Ayala Station last night to meet up with my brother, when a man tugged me at the sleeve and asked, “Ser, san po pwedeng mag-apply dito?  Encoder po sana, kung pwede lang po.”  I’ve been working for The Man long enough to know that you don’t look for jobs at six in the evening.  I can sense the desperation – and the determination – in the man.  He’s not the kind of snooty hotshot walking around Makati’s malls, pretending to be employed.  I sense that he was one of those promising graduates of his province’s community vocational college, finished the secretarial course at the expense of the family carabao, risked it all like Dick Whittington, and realized that Ayala Avenue is paved with asphalt and chumps who walked in, and were immediately shown the door.

I had to say sorry that I can’t help the man, but then again, my eyes darted to the file of people making their way to the train station.  I realized that Ayala is such a busy place not because of people looking to buy something at Glorietta, but because of people carrying brown envelopes to somewhere.  It is a place where hope is cruel, where there’s no such thing as a place for anyone looking for a chance to prove one’s self.  Every business district in Manila – Eastwood City, Bonifacio Global City, Ortigas Center, Makati – revolves around the “what is” and the “what isn’t.”  “What is” is to be employed here, to be a cog in the wheel, to be an unwitting beneficiary and victim of a capitalist order that will swallow you whole, no matter how much you profess to your ideals.  “What isn’t” is to be not employed here, to be rejected, to be like that man who is a nothing more and nothing short of a victim.

Unfair?  In all senses of the word, yes.  This man should not have been roaming the streets of Ayala had there been a fair chance for him to earn his keep to be at least part of what is a hallmark of “success” in this place: to work in a glass-paned skyscraper where you don’t know – or could care less for – what suffering and pretentiousness lies on what floor.  This man should not have been tugging at sleeves asking for work had there been a fair chance for him to improve without even thinking of evil corporate empires, where development all over the country is a level playing field, that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.  This man should have not clung his hopes to a faded brown envelope had there been something better out there.

Goddammit, but nothing in life is fair.  I guess I’m depressed because whether I like it or not, as a cog in the wheel of this abyss of office buildings and cubicles, this has everything to do with me.