funny encounters with jose rizal
no. i didn't had the privilege to meet him face to face due to time constraints. :-)
because it's his birthday, i decided to make a list of some of the few things about encounters with jose rizal.
1. spending 16 years in laguna, rizal's hometown, celebration of his birthdays were always a blast. there were reenactments, special programs and of course, a holiday! people spend for costumes and props to relive the heydays of our national hero.
2. calamba field trip. yes, we had a field trip in his home in calamba where he grew up. i love studying history so while my classmates are whining about the tour in his house, i could spend a day staying there, examining all the details i could get.
3. books. there was a time in my elementary years when heroes play a big part in my studies ( i had no choice because i am competing for a HISTORY quiz bee which i know doesn't sound like Janie.) Rizal would always be the first hero i would look for and read about.
4. mrs. pailan. she was my trigonometry, statistics, algebra, speech, english teacher in one and she's from calamba. her great grandfather's father was rizal's family cook and according to him, rizal was an adopted child. he was left in their doorsteps one rainy evening (like how it is in movies) and no wonder, he was the brightest and exceptionally different among the rizal siblings.
5. rizal course in college. i was a bit disappointed that my teacher didn't gave justice with the way she thought rizal. hmpf!
6. bayaning 3rd world. so did rizal really retracted? we don't know and will probably not know. but the movie was brave enough to challenge what the common knowledge most people have of rizal.
7. piso. remember that old joke, "buti pa si rizal nasa piso, buti pa si rizal, nasa posporo, kawawang rizal......" censored.
8. every town has a monument of rizal in black suit and a book. that i always look for when i'm new to the place.
9. noli me tangere and el filibusterismo. a chapter a day keeps failing grades away. i love these novels. it was beautifully crafted without compromising its real cause, that is to awaken the Filipinos about the abuse of then, conquistadores, España.
10. his being the national hero despite endless debates that he was an American hero (i am not sure but i believed because he was declared a national hero by the Americans during their time).
ok.
well, whatever the reason they have, whether or not should he be the national hero or others consider him GOD, Jose Rizal, I believed was a wise and good man. He was sentenced to death because the Spaniards believed he ignited the revolution, when in fact, he never wanted it to be bloody. My pen is mightier than my sword. He was both a creative and a genius, a fan of both Science and Arts.
I wonder what he'll say about how his beloved Motherland had turned to 100 years after his heroic acts. Will he write another sequel to El Fili against little bumblebee? Will he make a mock out of the Maguindanao Elections? Or better yet, whom will he endorse for 2010?
It's a bit disappointing that I never saw the time when MOST PEOPLE are willing to die for this country, and maybe, I can only live that, in another lifetime.
happy birthday joe!
2 comments:
Was Rizal willing to die for his country? Of course, every “true” revolutionary is. Even a lowly paid soldier don’t hesitate to march to the front and take the bullet, even to die in anonymity of it all. But most would rather live, only that during Rizal’s time, justice was Swift and Final against those deemed “traitor” by the Regime, the same could be said to the soldier who by the during the past Great War, especially during the First, they either die facing the enemy fire, or their own troops firing squad for cowardice or desertion.
There was no Question the Genius of Rizal, and was reflected in his writings of his in Depth Dramatization of the Abuses and Degradation of his people under the Colonizers and to their Own Kind, not very different from Today. But today most of the people who sees the abuses of their Own Kind (Pilipino on their own for sometimes now) would rather be the abusers as the power and wealth reside to that side. And those who had the opportunity or were given the opportunity through the process introduced by now the “much-maligned liberators” we have known as Election, to become another Jose Rizal, instead made it their own way to be Rizal’s Executioners...More than 100 years after his death, it has not moved a step towards the dreams and hopes of Jose Rizal...one extra-ordinary Pilipino, who may had died in Vain...
Rizal is an amazing person, I took my classes on Rizal just last semester. We learned about his life, works and his philosophy. A brilliant man he is :D
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