The Telos of Life According to Lagumbay

My friend Lagumbay was relaxing with some buddies over a few bottles of Gold Eagle Beer Mucho in a hut by the Jal-o. Thereupon, a local politician noticed their presence and approached them in an animated fashion. As the custom of the place, the bystanders hurriedly offered the caller a glass of beer. They were not turned down and as the candidate held the bottle, he went on with his animated maneuvering. Soon, he managed to grab the attention of everyone and was already dominating the conversation.

The politician was in his element. He took out some bills from his pocket and was ready to order for more beers when Lagumbay interjected. "No sir," he declared. "The beer is on me."

This remark of Lagumbay earned him the ridicule of his peers. In rural Balete, politicians are perceived as patrons who call on the bills—be it a hospital bill or a bar chit. Thus, calling onto himself the burden of paying for the beer when there is a politician present is bordering on ridiculous. Lagumbay appears the fool, but he has the last laugh. He asserted his conviction that in a democratic society such as ours, the citizen is not a supplicant before the politician, nor is the politician a benefactor dispensing favors from his own pocket. The politician is, in the end, a public servant, and the citizen remains a citizen—with a dignity that does not have to be purchased by another man's generosity.

Perhaps this is what Lagumbay's life has been quietly witnessing: that the telos of life is not simply to survive, to prosper, or even to be remembered. It is to become, however imperfectly, what one believes a human being ought to be. Sometimes that conviction reveals itself in no grander gesture than refusing to let another man pay for one's beer.

And perhaps that is why I remember Lagumbay.