Filipino apple by Christian daile louis rodriguez

            Who is the Filipino? We have a lot of impressions on who we are as a people in general, as a person, as a citizen and as a member of this globalized society. But who are we really? The Filipino has changed brought by many factors, the Filipino is no longer who he was, from a not so very long time ago. In this essay, I will be comparing the Filipino to an apple; fresh at first yet after bitten, would gradually spoil, go dark and dry-up. This is the people we are now.

            The Filipino is a good-natured bunch, we are so much caring and hospitable, it is said that no-one is turned away from a Filipino household whether it be home or abroad. No-one was turned a blind eye to, no-one was left hungry, everyone shared; the Filipino was what it was, a National Utopia which foreigners envied off for their generosity and resilience. There was a time when Filipinos were Morally indefatigable; morals were, and always were, a part of the daily culture. Sex outside marriage was unthinkable, a couple or two may fall from grace but they’d own up to it, raising the child no matter what is at stake. It wouldn’t be imaginable to curse in public; those who do so are either drunkards or maleducated people or “un-churched”. But where have we gone to now? We have bitten too much of a piece of the apple of what it is to be a Filipino, we got to chew it all the way but haven’t finished it up, we ate only a bit and began to turn away and saw different apples of colonialism and modernist-hedonistic attitudes, we have spoiled the Filipino “apple” and let it rot in the wind, exposed to all the air, rotting we turned away from it and let it spoil out, those who dare to bite into the apple are either rebuked by our society who continuously chew on the “new and fresh” apples of hedonism and foreign mentalities, constantly forgetting on who we are, on what we are as a nation, as a people.

            The other side of the apple has rot away, but we can still salvage this apple, we can still salvage the other side, unbit and fresh. We can still start a new. We can still be the Filipino who we are, not the Filipino the rest of the world wants us to be.