Text by: Jonix Vinci P. Amoroso

Close your eyes and imagine the future. Tell me, what is it that you see? More often than not, the answer will always be something better than today. But that vision will remain a picture in the mind if we fail to act on it and chase it. 

The most crucial ingredient for tomorrow is the present. Without the hustle of the now, the future will only unfold worse than it is today. 

Despite the onslaught of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the country is still looking forward to the 2022 elections set to take place next May 9th. Most of us are hopeful that the light at the end of the tunnel is well within reach. And we hold on to that hope, regardless of how cruel the present is. 

Yet, hope can only take us so far. Hope is mere motivation to inspire us to keep chasing, to keep working, to keep fighting, and to keep on believing that something great is bound to happen. 

Today, we are called upon to act on that hope. The future of the country is relying on the youth to step up and choose where the trajectory of the coming years is headed. Will it be better or worse? The answer rests on the palm of yours and mine. 

The youth may have surpassed the expected number of first-time voter registrants, but overall, we are still 2million shy from achieving the 62million voter turnout. 

Until all of us involve ourselves in building the community we so dream of raising, the future we so proclaim of achieving, we still place the death of our heroes in vain. Dr. Jose Rizal believed that the youth is the key to manifest the imagined picture on the canvas and to realize the eutopia written between pages. He was right. He is right. We just have to prove it. 

The only sacrifice asked of us is to spend a couple of hours of one of our days to register for the upcoming elections. A couple of hours for the ushering of years of smiles, of better days, and brighter dreams. 

Imagine in the years to come, when things have gone finer than today, we can tap each other on the shoulder and say, “We did it, we made it happen.” And when it’s time to pass the torch to make what we did better even better, we’d be confident to say, “It’s up to the kids, they’ll do way more.”

Voter registration ends on September 30th. Register and be part of the change. Let’s all exercise our civic duty of voting – all for the community, the culture, the future.