When Do We Stop Weeping?

By Vincent R. Pozon

She sang it with solemnity, devoid of the usual performer’s hint of a smile, and soon the song owned me. 

The mood began at the base of my neck, where the hairs stood on end, as if they detected a wraith standing behind me. It then radiated all over my head, and it affected the few straggling strands that I have on my arms, and soon my eyes were moist. By the 2:40 mark of the song, I was weeping profusely. 

Maybe I am just a sap for songs about love for country, or just a pushover for this particular song. Maybe I cry because of how José Corazón de Jesús's words, writ in 1929 for a different struggle, sound even more precious and delicate in the mouth of the lady with the perfect pitch, Disney Legend, Tony and Laurence Olivier Awardee Lea Salonga. Or perhaps it is because of a tiredness, a heart fatigued by a lifetime of wanting more, of weeping too often, whispering prayers for a tomorrow that seems perpetually out of reach.

So, when do we stop weeping?

A collective weariness

We mourn what has been lost and what might have been. But I find solace in the awareness that countless others, millions even, have similarly moistened eyes. That I am not alone, now there lies the glimmer of a future where this song will merely be a reminder of a dark age and of our trials as a people.