Anthem of Nations

I’m not all that fluent in the vernacular. It takes every strand of my humility to say that. I do not say this with my forehead held high, as some would; rather, I say this with my head bowed down. I blame this on my parent’s and our country’s (seemingly) ultimate goal of globalization. I grew up in a world of Barbie dolls and imported race cars, English-speaking cousins and a no-Tagalog-policy home. I was deprived of the usual dose of childhood patintero and tumbang preso, in fact, I grew up alone. I grew up in the comfort of only my toys and my parents, seeing as my neighbors were either too old or too young.

Globalization.

It has been one of the visions of our country. We dream of belonging to the booming economies of the first world countries. The notion that the universal language is the all-around remedy for globalization is so rampant that it makes our minds think that this is our only way. It becomes, what we think, the only solution. But why do we choose globalization when the answer to all our problems is right under our flat noses?

It’s sad that we choose to ignore the equally crucial; we choose to ignore the hundreds of dialects that have sewn the Filipinos into one majestic culture. The diversity in our country is a blessing and not a curse. We should not find the gift of tongues as a hindrance towards our country’s development; rather, we should be able to utilize our prosperity in culture as a way towards unity. We’re too preoccupied picking on everyone’s differences that we miss the fact that these differences can be the road to the Philippies’ success, the road to our success. We miss the fact that no matter which dialect we know, what lies beneath us is the raw, pounding heart that makes Filipinos, Filipinos. That will never change.

Our hearts sing an anthem. It speaks in different voices, although it us but a melody of a single yearning soul. It used to sing of an anthem that spoke of repression. Then, as the story unfolded, it sang of a story of a phoenix that rose from its ashes – a country that learned from its mistakes and progressed into freedom. Now it’s threatening to sing an anthem of shame – of falling back into the worst kind of oppression, the oppression from our own country. We must fight through our differences and venture beyond a cause that is beyond us, to prove to the world and ourselves the Filipino’s worth.

The anthem that our Filipino hearts sing is not of a foreign language, but that of a native story that withholds the very epitome of who we are. Our hearts beat to the rhythm of 170 dialects that give life to Juan dela Cruz, that give life to the Filipinos.

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