Being a Filipino

Being a Filipino is the hardest job in the world. Because you are forced to be miserable in front of your own TV set every 5:30 in the afternoon.

If you are one of the millions of the surviving citizen who cannot afford to buy a kilo of garlic, your life is even more miserable.

We experience the toughest calamities, yet we prevail. We have lost family members, yet we smile in front of the camera. We are resilient. We tumble in the dirt but we stand up to face the fight only to be flipped again. But we continue because it’s bahala na.

We are the only people who claim the pride of a kababayan’s victory, particularly of a half-bloodkababayan though such victory is the only thing that made a sudden realization to the ‘half-blood’ being a Filipino.

The ‘half-blood’ eventually goes to the Philippines and becomes a celebrity.

Our talent is more recognized if we do pangangalakal or rag-picking for a living. We choose the one whose story touches us the most, neither because they are remarkably talented nor they meet the objective standards.

We run a government stuck in the quicksand of corruption. Our average working class is taxed more than what they can spend for monthly food, our babies are taxed long before they are conceived. Then we would sit in front of TV slack-jawed because our taxes went to bogus NGOs, or to a lawmaker who thought of nothing more socially relevant laws than the enactment of Anti-Selfie Bill .

We live in a country where a peasant becomes a boxing superstar and a congressman, who does acting, modeling, hosting, singing, preaching all at once, then makes it to the PBA at the age of near retirement.

Now, the boxing superstar eyes for a Senatorial seat.

National circumstances would make us feel hopeless and doleful. We hate the Chinese for taking our exclusive economic zones but we continue to patronize their imitation and below sub-standard products, and their drugs.

There are so many things we find annoying about being Filipino. We hate the traffic. We despise the system and bureaucracy. We curse the weather, either it is too hot or it is rainy. We complain a lot. We complain about things which we fail to act upon. In fact we complain that we are poor because the government doesn’t do anything about it. We blame the government. And when we do, we blame only one person like it is his malevolent act not to make us subsistent, if not rich.

We always complain. Maybe we will stop complaining once we all get rich. But I doubt that. We will always complain. Because we never cease to find the negative side of things.