Yesterday, I was passing through EDSA while on my way to go back home from a trip to Palawan. My head was aching, the fish-bite on my left leg stinging, and my body calling for rest. I have been traveling the whole day, coming from Palawan and then back to Laguna.
But when the car finally reached EDSA, flashes of what seems like the EDSA Revolution came to mind. Although I wasn’t there, although I haven’t been born yet during that time, I still feel it in my bones like the call of Bonifacio to his Katipuneros.
The Philippines celebrated it’s Independence Day yesterday, but I couldn’t help but feel as though we aren’t truly free from the reigns of colonization. That we truly aren’t free with our own culture and values, for our culture was lost in centuries of torment and loss brought upon by the bloody hands of our colonizers.
We are not free for we live in a country where a madman rules and presents our very own country to another, saying that the Philippines could be their province if they wanted. We are not free for we live in fear of what would come next; if this madman would turn into a dictator or if the people would still blindly support him despite millions of sins he had done to our motherland.
I didn’t celebrate Independence Day yesterday because we are not quite there yet. As long as we are within the shackles of foreign men who think they can manipulate us into thinking they mean well, or as long as we are living under the rule of a politician whose regime does more harm than good, we are never truly free.
As long as we treat Western qualities far more superior than our own, as long as we feel like we need to whiten our skin in favor of looking more like them than what we truly look like, then we are not free. We will never be free while our very own people devalue our true qualities in favour of our colonizers.
I think it’s time we embrace what truly is ours and shut down all ideologies than conform to Western Standards. I think it’s time we embrace our right to speak out and voice out the problems that causes our country to fall. I think it’s time we utilize our voices and shun all the public officials that serve only themselves and not the people.
I think it’s time we revolt to change the system. The Philippines, as beautiful as it is, is never truly free and it is up to us to reclaim our rightful Independence from tyranny and colonization.
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