One Awful Monday

In lieu of everything that has happened the past week, I am reblogging this from Miss Gang Badoy's blog.

A letter to China from a Filipina:

We differ, we share, we own and regret. We serve & order, others and ourselves. We share and we keep. We both know apology and anger. We both know pride & the beauty of bowing in respect. We know death and life. We have seen blood and race. We are sharp and compassionate. We both know pain. We honor our ancestors and love our children. We have offended and we can ask for more. We are wise and we are not. We are vulgar and profound. We are petty and divine. We are ordinary and not so. We know hate and surrender. We know failure and we know victory. We are victims. We both grieve. Neither one less stunned than the other. We are sorry. We know shame. We remember, we do. We are none of us alike nor the same. We balm and pray that there is forgiveness somewhere.

We exist - and we are we.

My peace and my grief, my silence and my words - for I have nothing else to offer China today.

With all due respect,

Ms. Gang Tianco Badoy, Filipina

~~

A lot of words has been thrown at us - nasty, foul, kind, empathizing -as an individual, as a Filipino and most unpleasant of them all, as a nation. Every country has something to say, has their opinions to share whether accurate or hastily blurt.

With regards to Mr. Daniel Wagner's Huffington post, two reactions that sprang up my mind was 1) he has definitely hit that one spot when he said "...(Filipinos) needs to demand more of itself..." and 2) still, we can never let a white man nor any other foreigner for that matter to define us as a people, as a nation.

I'm addressing this particular issue that I find really, really annoying. With all the embarrassment and deep shit we're in, I would never, ever denounce my being Filipino just because the whole world's pointing their fingers at us, mocking, laughing, banning and condemning us for an incident that nobody wanted to happen.

It's like saying every freaking Arab-looking people are terrorist. Come on, we're better than that. You should be better than that especially if you've been educated and all. It's very infuriating to find a handful of your likes in comment sections of every news article that came out, spitting on this country just because everything's too chaotic.

You can very well leave. This country does not need you. You are the kind of people that pulls this country to deeper muck. You choose to become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution. We can never achieve progress if every time something tarnishes the name of this country you choose to mock and escape.

The trouble that ails this country are deeply rooted. We can blame the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Americans, political clans, dirty politics, corrupt officials, moral degradation, poverty, overpopulation, etc, all we can. But those are history that we can never get back. And these are issues that we can only address and remedy one slowly and agonizingly step at a time.

But it all boils down to this: ourselves. Individually, we need to have faith in ourselves. Faith that we are part of the solution. Faith that each and every one of us are catalyst of change. Something everyone seems to keep forgetting. Let's demand more of ourselves, let's not do things half-baked and let's never lose hope for this country.

We need not be anyone nor someone to make a difference.

My deepest condolences to the families of the victims of Monday's tragedy.