The streets have cleared out, the purple ink has faded, and #halalan is no longer a trending topic in Twitter.

Indeed, it’s not hard to forget how, just a few weeks ago, Filipinos from all walks of life came together as one to choose our destiny as a people. It’s really quite easy to get overwhelmed by all the events that sheer act of choosing would set off, so much so that we sometimes forgot why we even did so in the first place.

Before the nation gets on with its forgetting, though, perhaps credit must be given first to where it is due. The success of the May 10 polls is, in no small part, out of the participation of the youth. We young voters have good reason to celebrate, then; if anything, the elections proved that we know full well how the future is of our own making, certainly not something we can just depend on our elders for. After all, it’s the mistakes of the generation in power that we have to remedy and correct.

Being a Filipino, however, does not begin and end on Election Day. The polling stations aren’t mere ticketing booths where we get to choose what show we want to watch for the next six years. As such, there is definitely no time for us to get too absorbed with patting ourselves on the back. There is still too much to be done.

To start things of, it’s about time that we unite as one country, whatever the outcome of the elections was. Our Ateneo education always taught us the value of magnanimity in defeat, but unfortunately, that seems to have been lost on many of us. Consider, for example, the incredibly low blows against President-elect Noynoy Aquino, to the point of baseless and malicious accusations of psychosis against him and his supporters.

In a democracy, political maturity entails the deference of individuals to the choice of the majority. We must therefore remember that while the winners of the past polls may not have been our choices, they are now just as much as our leaders as they are every other Filipino’s. It is a decision that the people have made, and it’s only proper that we respect and honor it.

But that’s only the beginning. We have been the noisiest group in the elections, but whether that wasn’t all just useless noise remains to be seen. Sure, our participation has made it to our blogs, to our windshields, even to our fashion choices, but we have yet to make that activism manifest in ways that truly matter. We’ve had enough of pageantry; we want active involvement, real cooperation with the community, and taking the government to task if necessary.

Now more than ever, we are all called to go down the hill, into the real world where we are most needed. The previous two administrations have led the country to near ruin, and whether a new Atenean president can do any better is still a hanging question. But as always has been since our independence, only the Filipino people can truly determine their eventual collective fate. It is a struggle that we must all participate in fully, if we sincerely desire to remain relevant to our country.

At the end of the day, we didn’t go out and vote just to feel good about ourselves; we did so because we genuinely believed that our people deserve something so much better than what it has right now.