QUEZON City, Philippines (December 30) – Ask someone on the street who’s our national hero and he’ll be commonly mentioned. Yes, Dr. Jose Rizal represented the cliché hero of our country. Almost everyone knows his life story; as a patriot, martyr and a romantic. Different personas, and yet still one. He was none like other, for he fought with his intelligence, not with a gun or sword.
It’s so rare to find someone who chose to fight for his country rather than himself. He could have lived as an ordinary bourgeoisie, enjoying all the knowledge, wealth and power bestowed upon him. But he didn’t. Despite of all his comforts, he decided to study to prepare for the fight of his lifetime.
I wonder if there is someone living the same life as that of Rizal. Not content with the bare necessities, he decided to live with freedom and sovereignty. He left those that he loved just for the sake of the masses. I guess there are, they are many, but not enough. Not enough to influence us hard-headed citizens of the Pearl of the Orient.
If Rizal is alive in this era, I think he’ll be sorely disappointed. I’ll not blame the government okay, for the blame is on us. We don’t think of nationalism anymore. We only think of ourselves. We support and welcome foreigners more than our own countrymen. We think of foreign languages highly, while we think of our own as plain and ordinary. No appreciation to local products, always preferring something that is imported and branded. We always boo changes, be it good and bad.
The patriotic Filipinos are now extinct. As what the famous quote on the movie Heneral Luna said: “Ang tunay na kaaway bukod sa ating mga kaaway ay ating mga sarili”. Rizal died young because of many reasons, and maybe, one of this is not to make him exert any effort anymore, for what the future will bring is hopeless. Fate really is good, for it knows how to act for a reason.
(written by Rex Felix C. Salvador I, edited by Jay Paul Carlos, additional research by Lovely Ann Cruz)
