By Maria Georgina T. Silva
We now live in a world that is more connected than ever. Yet, there is this looming loneliness within these connections. We are born alongside other people, and it is through the presence of their familiar faces and voices that we come to truly know ourselves. Yet in the modern age, one must ask: do we still recognize the other, or only the reflections of ourselves on a glass screen?
The digital age we live in promises togetherness, but often at the cost of real presence. The French Philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, says that we live in a broken world, a world that has lost its meaning because human beings have become mere objects, reduced to functions and appearances. We scroll through people rather than sit with them. We “connect” but rarely encounter. The family, the basic unit of society and the most intimate circle of relations, is not immune to this fracture.
And yet, Marcel tells us that the family is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. A mystery involves participation; it demands that one be fully present. Within the Filipino household, this mystery is enacted daily, even in its simplicity: in shared meals, in laughter, and in quiet sacrifices. Here, love becomes the act of seeing and valuing another person beyond their function. To love is to say, “you matter,” giving another’s existence depth and meaning.
Florentino Hornedo’s “Pagmamahal at Pagmumura” beautifully expresses the language of value. “Mahal,” he notes, means both love and of high value or expensive, while “mura” means both cheap and to curse. To love or mahal is to recognize one’s worth, while mura or to curse is to demean their worth to nothing. When we love, we raise their value as human beings because pagmamahal moves vertically. When we demean or ignore, we participate in the world’s brokenness by pagmumura that descends, stripping others of value.
In our Filipino culture, close-family ties are not merely tradition; they are living expressions of pagmamahal. The phrases we grow up hearing from our parents, “anak, kumain ka na?”, “mag-iingat ka lagi”, “andito lang kami” are not just words said out of familial obligation; they are the recognition of presence and an acknowledgment of their worth as family members whom we deem highly.
But modernity has changed the texture of these ties. Families are now scattered, being separated by oceans, work, and even walls. Conversations that have once filled the living rooms are now replaced by message notifications. The child raised by a screen grows accustomed to absence; the parent abroad shows love through remittances and video calls. And yet, even within this distance, love still finds ways to exist, not perfectly, but persistently. Marcel would call this creative fidelity, the courage to remain loyal and open to others despite separation.
To be available, in Marcel’s sense, is to be truly present to another’s being. It means listening not just to words, but to the silences and offering oneself not out of obligation or pity, but as a person. In a culture where visibility often replaces intimacy, the challenge is to be available again, to look at another and say, “I see you.”
Thus, the mystery of the Filipino family persists: it is both fragile and enduring, wounded and healing. It teaches us that the self cannot exist in isolation. We are always formed in relation to our parents, siblings, friends, and even to the strangers we encounter. To recognize another’s worth is to recover our own.
In the end, Marcel’s philosophy and Hornedo’s reflection converge in one truth: to love is to value, and to value is to affirm the being of another. The world may be broken, but it is within the warmth of the family, in every act of care, forgiveness, and faithfulness that we see a glimpse of hope.
The Filipino family reminds us that even when life is lived for survival, love remains our quiet resistance. To say mahal kita is not merely to express affection but a recognition of the presence of others as a mystery. And in recognizing that mystery in others, can we find ourselves whole.
THE BARRISTER 