In my desire to clinically understand my own people, I'm afraid I sometimes have ended up doing some wrong diagnoses. It's a damaged culture, some say, and I find myself making a tentative concurrence (nodding in agreement like a jerk). We have a heritage of smallness, some say, and I give in to providing even more evidence. One of the things I somewhat regret having written in the past is this, where I argued that a large part of being Filipino is a kind of fatalism that can be either good or bad, depending on who's looking. I am not sure whether that point was clear, but the editor seemed to like what I said.

I've been arguing for and against the Filipino since then, like it's my own preternatural right. I'm no sociologist, but, armed with relative youth, I've been brash enough to lay claim to the armchair variety. There was a time I explained the Filipino to be a paradox, a kind of euphemistic way of saying how weird we are as a people.

There was also a time when I noted that Filipinos are neither damaged nor demented, neither damned nor disgraced, but are, in fact, proud and secure; they will ape whoever/whatever they want to ape and reject whoever/whatever they want to reject. Instead of being guilty of colonial mentality, Filipinos are in fact just being cosmopolitan and non-xenophobic; Filipinos are just being open-minded. Look at other people and compare the glaring difference. In the sin of ethnocentrism, we're certainly not the worst.

Today, in our people's __th anniversary, I hereby make this, uh, momentous speech of forgiveness because I'm afraid I have misunderstood my people. I forgot that my people are a young nation comprised of different warring tribes. I forgot that they have been (mis)treated as subjects by colonialists and supremacists, all seemingly ambitious and supercilious and presumptuous and greedy for power and mammon, although that was the name of game in all of parts of the world at the time.

I forgot that my people have been historically victimized and oppressed. I forgot that they have been wronged, and too unjustly so. It has occurred to me lately that they still haven't recovered from all that trauma. I forgot that they are still facing a lot of stupid injustices until now, even until now when constitutionalism is supposed to have been reinstalled, but democratic principles remain at best theoretical, even until now when corrupt politicians continue to betray our trust when we have given our due by doing what we are supposed to do in our own little respective capacities in the honest and best way we can.

Filipino, for all your perceived faults and failures, I forgive you. I am still proud that you've never been so ambitious to the point of being blind to your own arrogance. I am still proud that you've never been imperialistic to the point of being so inhumanely murderous. I am still proud that you've never been so envious as to gas an entire people to extinction. I am still proud that you are secure enough not to care about being tagged a copycat. I am still proud of you of so many things I can easily lose count.

I love you and I am proud of you, my little, humble, and gentle, but brave and gallant people. No one deserves to inherit the earth and its bounty better than you do.

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*Reposted with permission from Resty
*Happy Independence Day, Filipinos!