Stop blaming history

By

WEEKS after our Independence Day, essays were still being written about how we got here from there. “There” in this context means our history.

Some writers go back in history and ask why we’ve not been able to be “better” Filipinos than we are. This is hard to answer because what is “better”?

Some of these writings lament why we’re not more like this and why we’re like that. And thus we pull our hair and gnash our teeth with the question why aren’t we better than who or what we are today?

Incidentally, many of these essays are beautifully written but often ponderous and looking for someone to blame.

Every year, every Independence Day, we ask the same questions. Are we truly independent? Who are we Filipinos? Are we a heroic people or just a common people afloat in the sea of history? And, again, why aren’t we better?

We can’t seem to be able to settle on who or what we are. All we do year after year is to lament that we’re not what we see in our minds as who we should be. And so, we bother ourselves no end by asking the same question every year. Who or what are we Filipinos?

We ask the question because we’re not happy with who or what we are. And then we blame those who colonized us.

The problem with that is we can’t change who or what we are as far as the past, as far as history, is concerned. The past is the past and it’s etched in stone.

That is who or what we are. Thus, we are who we are, we are what we are, shaped by the past, good or bad, like it or not.

But no, we want to be someone or something else. That’s why we keep asking the question. We keep bugging ourselves, nagging ourselves, who or what we are, continually asking as if that would change us.

What we should be doing, what we should accept, is that we are the product of our past, of our history. We can’t change that. We should accept that instead of wanting to change history year after year.

We do the same with the Edsa People Power Revolution. “Edsa” didn’t accomplish anything, we cry every year as we observe People Power in February. We refuse to accept that Edsa was a one-time event and that what came next depended on what we do with ourselves as Filipinos.

We can’t belabor the point that Edsa may not have changed our lives much, or the course of history. Such cathartic events are mere guideposts for where we want to go, they cannot change everything for us.

Our past, including events such as Edsa, happened for a reason. It’s up to us to draw lessons from that past. It’s up to us to benefit from such events. We have to shape our future.

We cannot accomplish that by harping on whether the past has betrayed us or let us down. We can’t forever be blaming foreigners who invaded us in waves.