I couldn’t help but wonder, from time to time, when this country made a turn for the worse.
This is a threadbare topic that has always attracted open, participatory discussions at any gathering. It sprouts from conversations about corruption and the failure of the government to take the country into the 21st century at the same pace as the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia.
How did our country, that used to be the envy of other countries in the region, become damn near among the poorest of them today?
Even countries totally ravaged by their wars have long since rebounded and are now progressive economies, their people proud and fulfilled, endowed with a great sense of achievement, earning their dignified places on the world stage ahead now of the Philippines.
Our country, in contrast, seem to have retrogressed. Our poor are as plentiful as ever–as if there is not an effort to alleviate poverty. Is this a true and undiluted reflection of ourselves today?
The painful thing is that Filipinos know of endless reasons why, even knowing to blame themselves for the country’s ills. It is blaming one’s self when a Filipino says, “What’s wrong with the Filipino is…,” isn’t it? But that’s the starting sentence by everyone who puts his two cents into the conversation.
So, if the Filipino knows exactly the reasons for his country’s poverty, why isn’t he able to do something, anything, about it?
If little things are indicative of bigger things, then we have a jump-off point. Just go around the entire community you live in and make sure that you see every little thing.
By that I mean every house, every foot path, every fence, every road edge, every ditch, every vacant patch of land, every person and their activities.
I do this all the time in every neighborhood I go into. I have made this a hobby I indulge in not only in our country, but in other countries I’ve traveled to as well. I do this to make comparisons and then ask why there is a big difference between our country and those other ones. This keeps me always aware of the one and only motherland, I suppose.
You may wonder what I have seen so far. I found that little things are indeed indicative of bigger things.
Here in our City, for starters, you see a lot of places that are unkempt, a lot of structures that are in disrepair, garbage that is uncollected on the sides of the road, diseased animals astray, people displaying unsafe acts, vendors everywhere in complete disregard of sanitary practices, even public buildings that have seen better days with their paint long faded and peeling off, and a public that largely turns a blind eye to all these things.
Indeed, you will hardly hear anyone talk about these things with any amount of fervor. It’s as if people have learned to live in harmony with disparaging sights and deplorable conditions. You may ask why, yes, why indeed?
People in our country do not, in the slightest, seem to be concerned about things that may embarrass them as a people.
They seem to have not been taught to believe that not only broken things need to be repaired; that the things they have built are showcases of what they are as a people and that their repair or disrepair reflects strongly upon them.
It takes them a very long time to wallow in filth before realizing that they are in filth. They always let things decay before they do something about it and most of the time, they don’t even bother to.
Why the cold, uncaring attitude? If truth be told, I can’t begin to even guess the answer to that.
I am a Filipino, but I don’t harbor such callousness. For myself, I try, always, to put ourselves, as Filipinos, in the best light possible so that we can own some pride in who we are and what it means to be us. I believe that our efforts to educate ourselves are for naught if we don’t act the part.
Have we forgotten, or did we ever learn, that being educated should also include the responsibility to better our living conditions so in so doing we, collectively, can make a better country?
Big things start with little, individual things, right?
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In my wanderings, I have seen a total lack of interest in the very places we live in, starting from the streets, to the alleyways, to the narrow foot paths that meander through the overcrowded shanties, to the empty lots that have become community garbage dumps, to the ditches that are clogged with refuse, to the people spitting everywhere, and the more-than-occasional pisser who does it against a wall, a tree, or against nothing.
More shocking than that is the lack of concern you’ll see in government.
One would be led to imagine that once the government knew about this, it would spring into action to salvage the pride of the city that it governs because, truly, these are embarrassing things to behold.
If that’s what you thought, you couldn’t be more wrong! And they’ve always known about it!
These “little things” are telling enough of what we are as a people, at least to outsiders looking in. If we don’t care about our surroundings, I guess that should be reason enough why we do not care about things that are out of our sight.
We still have rampant corruption and we bitch about it but do nothing to get rid of it. Why? Because it is out of sight. We only hear about it in the news. We never directly feel the result of it in our daily lives. We never think of the long-term negative effects it brings upon our nation.
Those who do notice and complain about it have clean and beautiful homes, but even that couldn’t be a rule of thumb.
It is also in our nature to complain about the government, forgetting that government is of the people.
We make our government. We elect the politicians who run it and how well they run it, solely depends on us. If we let them ruin our country, they will oblige us without the slightest hesitation or delay.
So why do we let them? Because we can’t feel it being ruined.
Again, we only read or hear about it from economists and other experts interviewed on TV. We are so detached from our own reality that it is scary.
This detachment is borne out of the intense fear of change. We like the comfort of our well-worn beds because we’re afraid a new one may be uncomfortable. We never think that it, like the old bed, would need to be worn in. We want everything already broken in for us. We just want the fruits, not the labor. We so don’t know that it has to get worse before it gets better.
So many things I’ve thought of to put blame on for the state of our country today. But when something starts to make sense, it suddenly becomes trivial compared to the next suspect reason. And when chased one after the other, reason after reason, each one becomes as inconsequential as the one before.
So, what then leads people to lose concern for something? Could it be something so simple and all-encompassing as LOVE?
It has to be! All of us love someone or something. Whatever it is we love; we love without reservations. We don’t require a person we love to prove their worthiness first. We simply love them for who and what they are.
It becomes all-too-apparent that FILIPINOS DO NOT LOVE THEIR COUNTRY. They do not care about their image even when they know they are a reflection of their country. They do not seem to care what their country looks like to the rest of the world or that how they make it look is indicative of how they want to make it serve them.
Loving one’s country is not just about the willingness to die for it, but also the enthusiasm to improve its image. If the Filipino can just start there, the rest would follow.
I have so far written 1,392 words at this point, and I could write more (or less) if this weren’t an opinion column for a newspaper. Still, I have not covered many things here but when I started, I thought there could have been a way to share my thoughts in 21 words, if I just borrowed this:
he loves her best who seeks to bestow
on her the highest good.”
— Felix Adler
I think nothing describes love of country better than this quotation.
In a country so religious, it is hoped that its people can find a niche for their country in their hearts, right after God.
So, with the way it is now, can we say we have bestowed the highest good on our beloved Philippines? That is a hard question to answer, but at least now we know what our country needs.
And so, in the end, it took 1,552 words to say our country needs our LOVE.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
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