How could you influence anyone with your activism when you live such a contradictory, decadent lifestyle?

Myles asked us this years ago, when I was still a student activist, albeit not a very good one. We were late for our meeting because we drank the previous night. When we arrived, Myles asked us calmly where we came from, what happened, and spoke softly about our error. She asked this almost as a rhetorical question, but I took it personally because it was true. I remember how the words rang in my head, but that could just have been the hangover.

We sat in shame the entire meeting, the culprits and I, lowering our voices and trying hard not to look Myles in the eye. But noticing the unusual silence, she sat beside me and genuinely smiled. Mayang, do you have any suggestions? She thoughtfully asked as if my opinion mattered the most, as if I did not just commit a regrettable mistake earlier.

I never really got used to how Myles is exactly that: steadfast in her principles but always warm and endearing in her conduct. She was unforgiving about our shortcomings, always urging us to be better activists—to have the discipline and commitment the urgent political crisis needed. Myles set a very high pedestal on how an activist should carry oneself. She was organized, disciplined, and composed. She celebrated with us all our victories, personal and political, albeit how small. She resolved subjectivities, straightened errors in judgment, and advised against actions unbecoming of a student leader.

Myles and I were not very close because she was so graceful and unwavering as a student activist; while I chose to be around likeminded people who would tolerate my indulgences. When I was around her, I felt like she could see through my hypocrisies, how I wasn’t the activist that I showcased in public. In retrospect, I now know that all of that was just a projection of my insecurities, the manifestations of a guilt forcefully suppressed every time I did not practice what I preached. Myles and I were not very close, but I wish we were. Because I would have wanted to be better equipped with the narratives that would elaborate on her selflessness, bravery, and humility, to counter the harmful rhetoric she is now latched upon.

Alleged communist rebel, imprisoned youth activist—these harmful accusations do not justify who Myles Albasin is as a person. Sometimes, I regret how impersonal we speak of her sacrifices. We know of its utter selflessness, but we fail to understand just what it takes for people to choose the path less taken.

We ask, how does something like this happen? How can an intelligent, able-bodied woman choose to abandon the comfortable life she can conveniently avail of, and go unlearn her middle-class sensibilities to toil the lands under the searing heat of the sun? Why would she exchange the expected chase for a high-paying career, in order to participate in the centuries-worth aggravation of our peasants against landlessness?

What many people don’t know is that it’s easy to resemble a national democratic activist, but it takes changing an entire way of life to be one. It’s fairly easy to muster terminologies like the masses, oppression, bourgeoisie, oust, but it takes deliberate, conscious actions to embody the character that the revolution demands. I know it because I failed at it. And my failure comes with a price. The freedom that I effortlessly enjoy today is paid for by someone like Myles.

This neoliberal society instills in us the instinct to look after our individual selves only—to create a life directed by personal, career and financial goals that will define our self-actualization. But in order to understand someone like Myles, we cannot hold her to these same standards.

Whereas our priorities lie in maximizing our individual potentials, Myles’ priority is ensuring that farmers have land to till.

The creation of a just society, if even possible, is built on the backs of the selflessness and tenacity of someone like Myles.

The least we can do for them is to disallow the normalcy of their arrest and resist the erasure of their stories to become just another statistic, another collateral damage under a fascist tyrant.

Myles, and Carlo, Joemar, Bernard, Randel, and Joey were arrested three years ago. All for fulfilling what many of us couldn’t—abandoning a comfortable, decadent lifestyle to practice the highest, most selfless form of activism.