The Distinguishing Qualities of every Filipinos
An entry inspired by President Manuel L. Quezon’s Speech.
Everyone has positive and negative personalities. Although our country have underwent colonization by others, some values and virtues are still remained and honored. As a Filipino, we firmly believe that Filipinos have the best qualities in the world.
The following are the positive and negative traits of a Filipino:
Positive Characteristics:
1) Hospitality – this is one of the most popular trait of the Filipinos. Tourists that visit our country always receive a warm hospitality by us. For example, when foreigners come to visit Filipino, we offer our guest rooms for them to stay. We also prepare special and great tasting meals.
2) Respect – Even young people as well as the elders, we used to say “po” and “opo” while talking to someone older than us. Young ones also bless or say “mano po” to elders as a sign of respect to someone older than them.
3) Strong Family Ties and Religions – As a Filipino, we value our family as much as we value ourselves. The traditions and culture of each generations remains and are cherished up to this time. One of the traditions is going to church every Sunday with our families, making God as the center of our lives that makes us strong.
4) Industrious and Diligent – Examples of hardworking people are the farmers, fishermen, and construction workers. They work hard and push all their efforts just to provide the necessities of their family. Even if they earn little, they persevere to make themselves happy. These men should be honored for their great service. Filipinos are also generous. Even if we only have little things, we share it. We are always there to help each other.
5) Devoted and Warmhearted – we have the sweetest traits in the world because we treat each other as a family. Men are romantic and sweet, they offer all their love to the woman they like and vice versa. Women are also lovable and caring, they tend to take care of their husbands. They prepare their foods when they come home. Both men and women are faithful. We love deeply and sincerely.
Negative Characteristics:
1) Crab mentality – is a widely used term in the Philippine given to Filipinos who always try to pull other Filipinos who are succeeding in life and getting ahead of them. This trait is not unusual to us, as it’s actually one of the common bad habits of many Filipinos. Instead were busy criticizing, we should appreciate the advertisement of Filipino. This attitude is also one of the cause why our country is not progressing. It doesn't promote solidarity, humility and responsibility. We should get rid of it four our personal and national development.
Signs that someone is having this unfavorable quality:
· They panic when their comrades are happy and improving, they also treat them as their competitors.
· Their motto in life is "If I can't have it, neither you can."
· They spend most of their time talking about people rather than discussing ideas and solutions.
2) Mañana Habit
Why do today what can be put off for tomorrow? And why do tomorrow something what might be done the day after? For many people, nothing is more exquisite national as procrastination. Much of the Filipino yields to an analysis assuming procrastination to be the dominant way of life in this country. This eventually become a habit, and became a culture Filipinos might ford as a normal thing. They tend to avoid doing a task that needs to be accomplished. They only forced to work on when their deadline is near. They put things off until the last minutes.
Signs that someone is having this unfavorable quality:
· Procrastinators tell lies to themselves. Such as, "I'll feel more like doing this tomorrow." Or "I work best under pressure." But in fact they do not get the urge the next day or work best under pressure.
· Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don't take a lot of commitment on their part.
· Procrastinators waking up when it comes to deadlines, because it never seems to be late.
3) Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy. It is a double faced person. We try to live in standard set. Nobody’s perfect. Some of us can’t able to do and sustain those standards set in our society. We are forced to live double standard life because of our fear I being an outcast. We tend to condemn people who committed a crime to hide our failure. Most of us in our country pretend that they care and have certain feelings on something which is not really true.
Example:
· People who value morality and make it a part of their identity are less likely to be hypocritical.
· People most affected by witnessing god acts will feel a stronger desire to act in a moral way.
· Someone who act that they care on our community but in reality they do not contribute anything.
4) Ningas Cogon
These are people who are good at first but as time passes by, they tend to leave their responsibilities. Most Filipinos are good at this. They set goals and excite on starting something but after a few hours, days, or weeks. They lost excitement and ending up going back to the way on what they used to be.
Example:
· When you are making a project and then after a few hours, you’ll lost excitement to finish what you’ve started.
· Those candidates for a position ho promise a good things but after being elected they are just doing nothing.
· When you are planning to buy new clothes, you are going to choose different clothes but you will end up buying nothing.
5) Inconsideration
These are the people that does not think about the other people because they think first about themselves. This happens because of the thinking on how the people will resolve their problems. Being selfish is one of the problems of Filipinos. This is happening everywhere, like for example the thefts. They steal things for their for their living but they don’t think about the people they steal things from and what will be the effect of it for them. It may be a payment for the tuition of their children and because of this their children will not be able to study. Another example are those people who slanders their fellow just to be above them. This mostly happens to the people that is around us. And the last example are those people are those people that uses pictures or identity of others to fool other people. They do not think what will be the effect of what they’re doing to the owner of the pictures or identity they used. This mostly happens in the social media because there are many posers that uses identity of other people.
Another characteristic explained by Manuel L. Quezon is Patriotism. He actually went to the deepest levels of a national character.
Back in ancient times, people in the past are more patriotic than the Filipinos of our time. They are willing to offer their lives to show that their love for our country is extreme. As what President Quezon said, Filipino of today is soft and easy-going. In spite of the patriotism of many Filipinos of today, I hope that this would not be the sign to stop fighting. Although we have some negative traits, we still find good things in ourselves. We tend to think little on ourselves sometimes but this won’t be the reason to easily overpower us and define our overall identity because we can adapt well in difficult situations. If one is willing to sacrifice and work hard for the country, then it would be the start of having a better country. We should start to change ourselves for the better too.
There are still many things to be proud of with our nationality. As a Filipino, we’ll continue to strive harder and aim higher to achieve the national strength that our country should have.
