We Filipinos are well known all over the world for our extremes. We have in our culture things with no match around the world. We are a people of uniqueness that other nationalities consider to be a blessing and even viewed with envy. From our geographical point of setting which produced our rich floras and faunas to our unique culture produced from a mixture of other different great cultures of the Chinese, Malay and Indo, with that of the west, the Spaniards, Germans and the Americans which contributed to this unique culture of ours and produced great people as Dr. Jose Rizal and Manny Pacquiao. All made it possible for this people being jealous by the world.
Our geographical setting is situated just above the equator of the earth making our archipelago a tropical biome. With this setting in the ecological point of view would produce a biodiversity which will have no match from other biomes. And we can actually verify this fact. We have in our country archipelago the highest statistics of floras and faunas. We have 52 species of Nepenthes, also known as pitcher plants. This is the highest record of species of Nepenthes all over the world present in a single country. This is just one example of the many great facts about the Philippines’ faunas and faunas which makes our country really unique. Scientists would estimate that only about 10% of these unique floras and faunas are known and given name by the scientific world.
From the point of view of sociology, the Filipino culture is also unique. It is a product of different cultures possessing qualities with no match from the world. It is a culture of ‘bayanihan’ or team-work-coupled-with-kindness-and-love-of-neighbour. It is a term that cannot be anglicized because it is a value which has no match.
Of course, it would be bias if we only state the positive qualities that we possess. For we also have those negative which only makes us humans and help in testing the authenticity of our values and the goodness of being Filipinos.
We are a country archipelago situated beside the Pacific which makes us susceptible to typhoons and extreme weathers. The La Niña and El Niño made it almost a common sound of words for our ears as Filipinos. Just recently is the example of the super-typhoon Yolanda which devastated the Tacloban and almost of Visayas. But, what matters in this negative that we have is that test of value it gives. Amidst these, especially the typhoon Yolanda, Filipinos still smiled and expressed their Bayanihan. Helping the fellowmen, even if, they too needed help. They shared, even if, they have their very least.
These are just but a fraction of the best and even worst of Filipinos. There are a lot more for us to be proud of. But, a question still bugs my mind: “Why many of my fellow youth ambitions to be part of other countries’ culture, considering it better than our own?” But, do I really have the right to question this? By questioning this am I not boxing up a being into my own and only perspective? Yes, it is good to care for my culture because it is my identity, it forms my being. But, at the expense of suppressing the reality of that being, I realized it is a no. By suppressing and ending the possibility of being into the context of another culture is to make that being static and we fall into that trap very easily. I tend to realize that everything that I do is a product of that desire to put everything in order with what I am. It is like making mini-me’s in another person’s person and to do so is to suppress that being’s being.
There was once a TV show where kids are encouraged to dress up as their idols – artists, Filipinos or Foreign. In the hope of parents that their children be like this people someday they, famous, they would enlist their kid to that show and make them perform. It is like suppressing these kids’ possibilities and making them live a life already fixed. Why not let the child live in his own ways and develop in his own ways?
Let everything flow, like flowing water in the course of the rivers. Without form, forever changing, forever flowing. Like in the words of the Tao Te Ching: “It is easier to carry an empty cup than one that is filled to the brim.” Let being flow. Let not hinder the uniqueness of it. Let it flow. Do not conceive being. Let it flow.
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