Genuine Filipino

People from other countries usually appreciate how we Filipino’s welcome our visitors. We Filipinos are known for being hospitable and warm. Besides, we too are generous. No wonder even in the countryside we can see foreigners come to the Philippines and are enjoying their stay and having the best time of their lives. They even prefer to live in our country than to saty in their own homelands for they easily find a home with us. Others get married to our beautiful; women while others do business in our country.

Foreign products are brought into our country – automobiles, appliances, textiles, luxury goods and many more goods, as some economists would say. Dollars are high in value compared to our peso. More taxes will be added to our national coffers. Besides, Filipinos would be able to taste “stateside” goods, as some materially-oriented people would say, “Taste it and you’ll see the difference”.

These are just few of the few things we can notice in our country. But if it is a reality that we Filipinos have a “unique” lifestyle. After all we are a unique mixture of the East and West. The danger is that as we are carried along by our Western standards, we lose our footing; our “being Filipinos”. There’s aneed for us to visit again our past to reappropriate the genuine values and heritage of our people so as not to lose them forever. WE must treasure them and transmit them to the next generation.

People and products are the primary cultural carrier in a society. It is a fact that as people interact there is always something they share among themselves and that is their cultural mind-set. The same phenomenon also happens with the use of products. People and products could become doors of entry to cultural loss if we remain dreaming of the nice things our senses are enjoying. WE must don’t notice the negative effect of foreign influence on us, as it slowly crawls and smothers our values, especially in the family – which we have long considered the source of strength and solace. For the family is God’s temple where everyone is nurtured in love. This particular issue seems insignificant to most of us but it would become a major problem for us in the near future if we do not do something about it. It is a fact that we are already living under the influence of a foreign mind-set but how could we go out of it and uplift our own culture.

Being Filipinos, we are proud of our nation and our people. It’s an asset on our part that we are socially gifted people. We are a people who know how to extend our gift even tio those people outside the family. Most probably because we are all Christians. It already took roots in our history as a people and as a nation.

But how far have we come as Filipinos? Where are we know as a Christian nation?