Killing Myself

Chelyn Torejas

Diverse people from diverse places have once come to colonize our country. Literatures
and pictures stand as a witness of how we endure, struggle and fight that yields forth of what we
regard today as history.

At the heart of our country carves an era that manifolds through the regimes of Spanish
occupation, Japanese conquistadors, American colonialism onwards to the Birth of World Wars.
And the fruit of these all is my unique individuality. I am the child of the west and east
combined.

I am a product of so many revolutions. For a time, I was blinded from what is real. For
centuries I was enslaved by people of different blood, color and race.

Spanish colonizers use religion as an excuse to earn the hearts of my race. They taught me to
embrace poverty as a virtue and exposed me to learn gambling and even cock-fighting.

The blond, tall Americans poisoned our way through education. The whites instilled in
me to follow “adversial” communication hitting my country badly. Their tactic of “dividing and
rule” has resulted to the regionalistic division we still have today.

The arrival of Japanese has even caused tremendous fears, hardships and pain.

For a time, I have seen the harsh realities filled with chaos, propaganda, hatred, vengeance, wars,
hidden agenda, corruption, greed, lust and every devilish deeds. But Lo and behold, a new one
has come.

I am killing myself. Killing the old Filipino. Within me, came rushing out the stinking blood of
every devilish deeds. My heart has stopped pumping the music of deception. My lungs has
totally exhaled every waste I have inside.

I am a new Filipino. I am bound to make a living history beyond a legend and a real
history in the making that will continue to unfold through time.

The new revolution has given me true victory, a victory by which I am longing for long and the
solution is not through war. This revolution has not been fought in the streets. It will be fought in
hearts of men.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided. Knowing the present would mean
understanding the past.
 I am a new Filipino gaining wisdom from the past. Gone is the Filipino Indolence,
beholding to erase the crab mentality, further eradicating my colonial mentality.

A new Filipino I am. In my blood runs the infitisimal seed of heroic deeds for the sake of
the heavenly and for the benefit of the majority. The seed that drive away the oppressors and the
seed that will further cleanse the filthiness of this country.

I will search the unkown. I will continue to dream my dreams wishing upon the stars and
will never say never. I will continue to move on, to rise up towards the direction of a glorious
tomorrow.

To look on the present onwards the future and to scale how my new country will develop
will serve as an inspiration that is worth and is bound to be followed.

What the people today endures, struggles, and fight towards progress will continually
mold a state of a new history –a bright history that is enough to urge individuals to continue to
endure, struggle and fight for action and be a winner in running the race that is set before us,
worthy to be repetitively told and retold. A transparent history free from thwarted truths.

Out of me are the voices of the unheard, the pictures of the unseen, the cries of the deaf and the
truth that is ignored. I am but a dream but will stand to prove that this dream is becoming a
reality.

I am killing myself. Killing the old Filipino. Killing the old me, building a new identity, erasing
the undesirable assimilation from my past, picking the best experience I have before. A new
Filipino I am, worthy to behold.

My eyes have been opened and I can see better now. I am a product of bloodshed, A new
Filipino --free indeed, dreamer and the inheritor of a fruitful tomorrow. To live is to die. Thus, I
am killing myself.

Posted by chelyn at 7:12 AM  

Labels: colonization, Killing myself, literature, Oration piece, oration sample, Philippine oration,
Philippines, pilipinas

Dirty Hands by John P. Delaney S.J.

I’m proud of my dirty hands. Yes, they are dirty. And they are rough and knobby and calloused.
And I’m proud of the dirt and the knobs and the callouses. I didn’t get them that way by playing
bridge or drinking afternoon tea out of dainty cups, or playing the well-advertised Good
Samaritan at charity balls.

I got them that way by working with them, and I’m proud of the work and the dirt. Why
shouldn’t I feel proud od the work they do – these dirty hands of mine?
My hands are the hands of plumbers, of truckdrivers and street cleaners; of carpenters; engineers,
machinists and workers in steel. They are not pretty hands, they are dirty and knobby and
calloused. But they are strong hands, hands that make so much that the world must have or die.

Someday, I think, the world should go down on its knees and kiss all the dirty hands of the
working world, as in the days long past, armored knights would kiss the hands of ladies fair. I’m
proud of my dirty hands. The world has kissed such hands. The world will always kiss such
hands. Men and women put reverent lips to the hands of Him who held the hammer and the saw
and the plane. His weren’t pretty hands either when they chopped trees, dragged rough lumber,
and wielded carpenter’s tools. They were workingman’s hands – strong, capable proud hands.
And weren’t pretty hands when the executioners got through them. They were torn right clean
through by ugly nails, and the blood was running from them, and the edges of the wounds were
raw and dirty and swollen; and the joints were crooked and the fingers were horribly bent in a
mute appeal for love.

They weren’t pretty hands then, but, O God, they were beautiful – those hands of the Savior. I’m
proud of those dirty hands, hands of my Savior, hands of God.

And I’m proud of my hands too, dirty hands, like the hands of my Savior, the Hands of my God!

Jewels of the Pauper by Horacio de la Costa, S.J.

There is a thought that comes to me sometimes as I sit by my window in the evening, listening to
the young men’s guitars, and watching the shadows deepen on the longs hills, the hills of my
native land.

You know, we are a remarkably poor people; poor not only in material goods, but even in the
riches of the spirit. I doubt we can claim to possess a truly national literature. No Shakespeare,
no Cervantes has yet been born among us to touch with immortality that which is in our
landscape, in our customs, in our story, that which is most original, most ourselves. If we must
give currency to our thoughts, we are focused to mint them in the coinage of a foreign tongue;
for we do not even have a common language.

But poor as we are, we yet have something. This pauper among the nations of the earth hides two
jewels in her rages. One of them is our music. We are sundered one from another by eighty-
seven dialects; we are one people when we sing. The kundimans of Bulacan awaken an
answering chord of lutes of Leyte. Somewhere in the rugged north, a peasant woman croons her
child to sleep; and the Visayan listening remembers the crane fields of his childhood, and his
mother singing the self-made song.

We are again one people when we pray. This is our other treasure; our Faith. It gives somehow,
to our little uneventful days, a kind of splendor; as though they had been touched by a king. And
did you ever notice how they are always mingling, our religion and our music? All the basic rite
of human life – the harvest and the seedtime, the wedding, birth and death – are among us
drenched with the fragrance and the coolness of music.

These are the bonds that bind us together; these are the souls that make us one. And as long as
there remains in these islands one mother to sing Nena’s lullaby, one boat to put out to sea with
the immemorial rowing song, one priest to stand at the altar and offer God to God, the nation
may be conquered, trampled upon, enslaved, but it cannot perish. Like the sun that dies every
evening it will rise again from the dead.

The Two Standards by Horacio de la Costa, S.J.

Life is a Warfare: a warfare between two standards: the Standard of Christ and the Standard of
Satan. It is a warfare older than the world, for it began with the revolt of the angels. It is a
warfare wide as the world; it rages in every nation, every city, in the heart of every man. Satan
desires all men to come under his Standard, and to this end lures them with riches, honors,
power, all that ministers to the lust and pride of man. Christ on the contrary, invites all to fight
under His Standard. But He offers no worldly allurement; only Himself. Only Jesus; only the
Son of Man; born an outcast, raised in poverty, rejected as a teacher, betrayed by His friend,
crucified as a criminal. And therefore His followers shall not be confounded forever; they are
certain of ultimate victory; against them, the gates of Hell cannot prevail. The powers of
darkness shall splinter before their splendid battalions. Battle-scarred but resplendent, they shall
enter into glory with Christ, their king. Two armies, two Standards, two generals… and to every
man there comes the imperious cry of command: Choose! Christ or Satan? Choose! Sanctity or
Sin? Choose! Heaven or Hell? And in the choice he makes, is summed up the life of every man.