IF there is one thing that keeps me hopeful about this pandemic, it’s the feeling that Filipinos will learn to live with it and eventually recover. Our race is gifted with the virtue of resilience. One definition of resilience is “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.” Elasticity connotes pliability, flexibility and fluidity.
The Filipino has a very fluid nature. If one were to choose which of the five Chinese elements best represents the Filipino personality, it has to be water. Like water, he has that inherent cultural ability to adjust to the contours of whatever challenge is before him. “Kung maliit and kumot, matutong mamaluktot,” is a native maxim inculcated into the mind of every Filipino child.
Water is part of his cultural DNA. After all, he is born surrounded by water. His country is an archipelago of over 7,000 islands, floating like a strewn pearl necklace on vast waters. It is not only surrounded by seas, its inlands are penetrated by rivers and streams and lakes.
From the beginning, water becomes part of the life of the Filipino. Down south in the islands of Sulu and Zamboanga Sea, the ethnic Badjao infant is thrown into the sea the moment he is born and will spend the rest of his life in the sea. The Christian Filipino is baptized in water.
In childhood, he grows up to the ebb and flow of a fluid world. The Filipino male undergoes the rites of manhood called tuli or circumcision beside a stream. A folk surgeon lets him chew guava leaves, which serve as disinfectant after the cutting of his foreskin. Then he plunges into the water together with the other binyagan. Immersing himself in the water after the cutting of the skin is the highlight of the ritual.
Water is the element that breaks the dry hardened parched soil of his fields marking the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season, which brings forth abundance. From the waters around him he harvests his daily sustenance and the treasures of the deep.
His ancestors were river-based people, who branched out by groups into the various river mouths and established several communities on the deltas and their environs—baybay ilog and baybay dagat. Early coastal settlements were called balanghay meaning boat, suggesting a highly elaborate water-borne culture.
This is why the Filipino language is full of words that denote a water culture. The syllable “ig” is the Maguindanaoan word for water. In other Filipino words, the inclusion of the syllable “ig” connects it with water as in tub-ig. Taguig means taga-ig. Pasig might have originally meant the fast flow of the waters or to the fast-flowing river (paspas-ig) Bambang is a generic name for places standing beside a sea, a lake or river.
A product of water-borne culture, the Filipino by nature has a yielding disposition to the point of appearing to be submissive and obsequious.
When the Spanish colonizers came to claim their islands in the name of the Spanish king, most of the natives welcomed them with open arms and even acquiesced to being baptized as Catholics even if they probably did not even understand what the religion of the white men was all about. From the Americans, the Filipino accepted American education, democracy, English, Hollywood movies. He easily adopted and adapted to American ways of dressing, eating, and entertaining.
He easily mixes with other cultures. He never stands out in a foreign country. He becomes absorbed. Come to think of it, there are no Filipino equivalents of China Town or Korea Town or Vietnam Town or Little Italy in other countries.
Another trait of the Filipino that shows his yielding nature is his predisposition to beat around the bush. When faced with a hard choice or a problem, obstacle, or sensitive issue, he would go around it rather than meet it head-on. He will find ways to go around the law just to get what he wants. He shuns confrontation. Talking in your face is not the Filipino way. He will never say frankly what he thinks about you or your offer. He will not directly contradict you especially if you are a grade higher, status wise. As a friend or your subordinate, he will never directly say no to you. He will say maybe or even yes to avoid displeasing you. He will never ask a favor directly, he will always use a tulay(bridge), a “padron” or a go-between to convey a request.
He is never stubborn in his opinion or steadfast in his beliefs. He is very flexible and pliant. In politics, he will never stick to one party. He can and will change party if and when it suits him. There are no permanent friends only permanent interests. He is quick to forgive or forget slights or offenses, even if the offender is world-class tyrant or plunderer.
When confronted by insurmountable rock, water seeks a new path or will flow down to any hollow or empty space. Faced with a legal hurdle, he will instinctively look for a technicality or a loophole to go around the law, or even offer a bribe as a last resort. The Filipino driver caught in heavy traffic will go out of his lane and on to the opposite lane in counterflow fashion, seeking the shortest path to enable him to move faster toward the front end of the traffic. Never mind if his action will obstruct the vehicles coming from the opposite lane.
Again due to his fluidity, the Filipino is never at home in a hard, squarish, mechanistic world. For one, he does not think in linear way. He thinks in round terms. He is more holistic, not dualistic. He prefers the arts to science because he is innately an imagist. He grew up on bugtongs, riddles that juxtapose two images in his mind. This taught him a different way of seeing the world. That’s why the Filipino is pictorial rather than logical or rational. The fluidity of his world is reflected in his dancing and in his florid art and poetry and in his songs.
But just as water is life, the Filipino also accepts that water is also a destroyer and bringer of death. He is resigned to the annual floods that destroy lives, crops and property during the rainy season. For hundreds of years, he knows that after the dry season, stormy rains will come to fill the rivers and inundate the surrounding lands, sending thousands to watery graves. Annual floods and large-scale water calamities and disasters–Yoling, Ondoy, Yolanda—they are all just part of the cycle of his life.
At the beginning we said that the Filipino’s most distinctive trait is his fluid nature and yielding disposition. But like water, the Filipino conquers by yielding. Water never attacks but always triumphs in the end. Embracing a spirit of life-giving purpose, like water, the Filipino will yield to the Covid-19 pandemic but he will never be vanquished by it. Because of his fluid nature, he will accept it, adjust to it, live with it and eventually emerge out of this plague alive and kicking, the way he has always done in the past.