You know how a lot of Pinoys are so proud of Pacquiao whenever he wins a match - I don’t get that. I don’t relate to him just because we happened to be born on adjacent chunks of land. I had no hand in his upbringing or victories. He and I are around roughly the same age, but I doubt we had very similar experiences in life
It’s probably different in a country like the US where they have some notion of what it means to “be an American”. Here in the Philippines, I don’t think there is any such notion. I don’t know what it means to “be a Filipino”. We aren’t really that united in terms of culture and we don’t have a strong national identity that all of us can rally around.
Maybe in the end our own diversity can be good for us too, as it means we aren’t constrained or tied to a single point of view but are able to work with a veritable melting pot of different cultures and dialects and what-not. Maybe this is what it means to be a Filipino. Maybe this is what it means to be human
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