Philippine Independence Day in 2010: A personal look

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Philippine Independence Day:A personal look


 Today we are commemorating our day of independence. 112 years ago, the Philippines broke away with the colonial power, physically.Yes, we drove them out of the country and we tried our best to be defined apart from them. Until today, we, as a nation, are struggling to be identified apart and grow apart from the Americans the last nation to colonize us.

I say struggling because pyschologically and politically we are still the tail of America, and we seem to love and hate this reality altogether. Aside from that,we also hop from Spanish, Chinese and Malay influences.

Mostly, we don't like it but reality strikes us hard: We still identify with these aliens. Wait a minute. There is no need to hark about preserving regional languages, respecting indigenous people, preserving traditions and many others, as if we are forgetting who Filipinos are, because evidently come what may, everyone returns to his roots. Instinctively, we want to get these historical artifacts back in our mainstream consciousness
today because we are battling the fear of being not singly identified as Filipinos.

But the hard truth is that our essence as Filipinos is not in our being distinctively Fililipinos just like our Malay, Indian and Chinese neighbors but in our being diverse.

Once acknowledged, i think we can find valuable ways to strengthen our strengths in diversity and remedy our faults because of diversity in our consciousness.

The continuing denial of this truth in our national consciousness as a nation only leads us to hark I AM PROUD TO BE FILIPINO in a meaningless voice and echo.

After 112 years, we still lack PATRIOTISM because we thought that the diversity we experience is alien to us Filipinos and are meant to make us un-Filipino because there are more than meets the eye than just being a Filipino. No, diversity defines us but it should not alienate our feelings towards our country. Diversity should define us in a manner that will not break our national self and identity. Diversity
should define us in a manner that will nurture us towards loving our self and our country. We will never be powerful as a nation if we still have no Patriotism, at this point in time.


N.B.
POSTED in 2010 in the Facebook NOTES while Photo taken from web & copyrights revert to owner

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