The Unbroken Reverie

Filipinos used to be like puppets on strings that were controlled by the Spanish rulers. They were obedient to each orders imposed to them without even knowing its actual purpose. They were ignorant and innocent to the injustices that were being done to them. Some even tried to be like the Spanish colonists in their thoughts, feelings, and approach in life, which sequentially ended in transforming their entire characters to new beings by acquiring even the culture and traditions of their exploiters. (This describes how colonial mentality works in the Philippines. Do you still remember Doña Victorina – the Filipina native in Noli Me Tangere who tried dreadfully to look like an Española?) To cut a long story short, the Filipinos were a depiction of a nation with a mesmerized and spellbound will.

These and more happened because we were deprived by our colonizers of our right to be educated in our own country, to be well-informed. They did that for the reason that they did not want us to see and realize the exploitation, oppression, and the abuse that they were doing in our country.

On the friar’s aim of obscuring Rizal’s message from the Filipinos, making them difficult to understand for the Filipinos (get how they’re making us idiots?), Jose Rizal cautiously instructed everyone who had received his novels, letters, and other compositions to preserve them so it could do its purpose and act as a sender of his message to the future generation. On Rizal’s manifesto written on December 15, 1896 (Manifesto to Certain Filipinos), he declared that education is important because through it and our supplementary effort, we may acquire a personality of our own, identity of our own, and this would make us worthy of the liberty that we are enjoying this day.

The youth as the fair hope of the motherland. This is Rizal’s vision for the youth.

The youth are advocates of idealism. Dreams, hopes, desires, and goals are more evidently expressed by the youth. That could be why Rizal depended very much on the youth. He believed that the youth is the key towards a great country. He also believed in education for the youth. In fact, a number of his letters, novels, poems, and even his manifesto mostly emphasize education. He believed that we can achieve unity and progress through education.

May the Philippines continue to bear heroic and daring youth, steadfast in eradicating the wrong ideas but opens himself to the steadfastness of his great mind, vigilant against deprivations of truth, justice and freedom. Belated Happy Independence Day!

P.S. Nevertheless, really, what is Colonial Mentality? – We have been hearing about it since we were young. It is the despised wicked mentality of Filipinos we have discussed in our HEKASI, along with Mañana Habit, Crab Mentality, and Ningas Cogon. Colonial Mentality, according to Wikipedia, is a concept that refers to the acceptance, by the colonized, of the culture of the colonizer.