[Reflections] Just how pliant is the bamboo today?

Once in our classroom days, we heard of a teacher or two echoing (sometimes without proper attribution) Filipino writer Ismael V. Mallari’s understanding of the true Filipino character, that the Filipino is as pliant as the bamboo, that he bends gracefully yet noisily to the superior external forces without losing his roots. If we think of the foreign occupations down history lane, the comparison sounds like an apt one. Now, though, as a Filipino who, in a few years, will be technically edging her way out of the youth’s age limit, I wonder how much of my generation and those younger than me understood what a true Filipino is. 

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Are we as a people still as gracefully and as noisily pliant as ever, welcoming any kind of life that nature offers? Or have we become disillusioned as many of us seek better comforts in other places outside our territory? Do we still by heart know our mother tongue and revel in its beauty and glory while we master other languages? Or do we bend too much to current alternative forms of occupations without as much as an appreciative glance at our history books? Do we together take care of our land and sea, our primary riches since the beginning? Or do we fear losing and sharing our possessions, even hurting our neighbors because of these things? Are the Filipino women still considered the “(most) respected, so adulated, and so pampered” members in the Orient? Or have they become abused, disrespected, and exploited?

Just how pliant is the Filipino today? Or is the bamboo still an apt comparison?


- Nancy -