Kinutil
More than 400 years of colonialism cannot help but leave a mark. Our politics has become one of self-loathing and self-flagellation. The Filipino is this and that.
And that is why we must do to us now what our old colonial leaders tried to do to us. Allege and attack our ignorance. Keep the populace in line even if violently. Be afraid of being free.
Discipline is what is needed above everything else — your discipline, not of the one who speaks. And of all the disciplines — the discipline of silence. Listen well! By no means speak when one more powerful than you is speaking. This is not a partisan thing. It encompasses the political, the cultural, even the age divides.
What the post-colonial Narcisa/o needs to do now is this: Every morning, look in the mirror and try to understand why you are the most beautiful person you know. Tell yourself this loudly so others can hear.
But how do you do that after coming home at three in the morning? And it is only seven thirty. The skin hangs loosely from your face. You have bags. Loose hair lost forever to the brush; And yesterday’s make-up still on your face. How do you say that to yourself just like the Narcissus of ancient myth? And you have to. More than 400 years of slavery is wired into your genes; 100 years of them comparing yourself to your Hollywood idols. Mine is Robert Redford. How do I convince myself I am better looking than him?
The answer is forgiveness.
Every morning, when I look at myself in the mirror, I ask myself if I can forgive myself for last night. And after that, to forgive myself for every shortcoming I have. Am I not a perfect father? Have I done all I can do? If not, then I must resolve to do more. I must forgive myself. For if I do not forgive, if I tell myself I am doing all that can be done, then my next thought will be that nothing else can be done about my imperfect fatherhood. It is therefore an inescapable fact. The problem with this
thought is that it can only lead me to ask: So what is there about me that is beautiful and worthy of love?
And the same may be said for every human fault, especially violence and greed. If a man looks into the mirror and says violence and greed; especially, the greed for power, is just how things are, if he finds there nothing that needs forgiving, then what about one’s self can be beautiful and worthy of love?
If I tell myself in the mirror that I must have to be accepting of violence and murder in order to survive in the world; or accepting of greed, especially the greed of power, because that is simply how things are, then I must look beyond the man in the mirror and look at the world behind me. What one sees there is not only a monster but a monster living inside a monstrous world. And what about this man and his world would be beautiful and worthy of love?
And then we see how the self-flagellation and self-loathing we see now makes perfect sense and why. It has been more than 400 years since our revolutionary fathers and mothers declared colonial independence from our colonizers at great cost and risk of their lives.
They must have looked into the mirror themselves. They must have seen there many things needing forgiving. But how they must have loved themselves and their people to have been able to do what they did. So why would we, sans our old colonizers, still hate ourselves the way we do?
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