Rizal 111 – I am Tao!

2008, because of the number 8, is said to be a year of new beginnings and resurrections; it is also the ‘Year of Grace’ for Catholics. But by the way things are in our country, we seem to face another year of the same: for most of us – crisis, corruption and poverty with entertainment from politico-military theatrics; for the very few – the good life. The whys and wherefores of this national situation rattle our consciousness as we try, once more, to recall and make sense of the martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal 111 years ago.

Was his death at the hands of a Filipino firing squad who themselves were at the mercy of a Spanish firing squad behind them, worth all his hope: Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora y al fin anuncia el dia tras lobrego capuz (I am to die when I see the heavens go vivid, announcing the day at last behind the dead night) that he could one day behold his beloved joya del Mar de Oriente secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente, sin ceno, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor (Jewel of eastern waters: griefless the dusky eyes: lifted the upright brow: unclouded, unfurrowed, unblemished and unashamed!)?

One hundred and eleven years have passed and still Inang Bayan’s dusky eyes are full of grief, her brows are still neither lifted nor upright – still clouded, still furrowed, still blemished, still ashamed! Paradoxically, the problems are different yet the same: nor more foreign colonizers, only the Filipino elite; no more struggle for independence, just the daily struggle for freedom from want and freedom from fear.

As generation Y would ask: what’s up with that?

Could we perhaps be approaching our national problems with the same mind sets that created the problems in the first place?

If we are, could we be bound to go round and round till we die of exhaustion, like the caterpillar that follows its own tail? Albert Einstein is known to have observed: “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it”.

Gawad Kalinga stalwart Tony Meloto, in his ‘Spirituality in Nation Building’ speech, said: “My choices define who I am, influence those around me and affect the state of my country and my world.” No one can disagree with such a statement. But one could add: My choices are marked and circumscribed by my own definitions, perceptions, beliefs and understandings of myself, my family my nation. In other words, my own definitions (beliefs) delimit my choices.

Examples of the distortive effects of such beliefs and internal definitions are provided by the classic stories of humans raised by wolves/gorrillas, or those of swans raised by ducks, or of eagles raised by chicken, or pigs raised by dogs, dogs raised by cats or lions raised by sheep. For humans exploited by other humans and made to believe their supposed inferior nature, there is no end to possible citations on the abominations of slavery and of the oppressive conditions starkly expressed in Edwin Markham’s poem “The Man With the Hoe”, which we can very well relate to our own “Men, Women and Children with Scavenger Hooks” in Tondo and other garbage dumps.

Is it possible we truly are of a higher, nobler nature yet have come [or made by others - more appropriately, allowed others to pressure us] to believe we are only good for a little corner of this downtrodden world (as in the song: DITO BA [sa sulok na ito])?

For we could ask, like Rizal in ‘Cervantes in Argamasilla de Alba’: “Miguel,Miguel [Filipino, Filipino], why does your courage surrender to the blows of fate? If the cedar of Lebanon [molave of the Philippines] defies the horrid roaring of the hurricane; if the hard rock, when the violent sea rages against it to the clamor of wrathful tritons, can stand firm: why do you, invincible genius, despair?”

Other articles by Edwin D Bael

• The Life and Love of Dr Jose Rizal - December 10, 2008
• Quezon was right - December 10, 2008

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