We Filipinos are well known for our sweet smile, the smile we give to everybody despite of experiencing too much struggles in life, in fact many races are fascinated with this kind of personality. Aside from that, we are also known for our pride and beauty, just like Manny Pacquiao and Catriona Gray.
The characteristics mentioned above are just few of the overwhelming traits we have which other races are fascinated about but sometimes being so much inclined with this culture or traits shows negative effects. This article aims to discuss why Filipinos have an unjustified shyness and how this kind of mentality affects the rest of our traits. Is it good or not?
Maybe you’re wondering why or how does being shy affects our natural traits as a Filipino. Does these two really are connected? The answer is yes, because emotions are powerful enough to dictate a person’s reactions and behaviors, and the best way to explain their connection is to discuss the difference if shyness are added in a certain best Filipino trait.
Think about Hospitality, perhaps this is one of the most common traits we Filipinos are known of. Just to be clear, I don’t have any objection about this, however, thinking about it thoroughly, I think some of us are only showing hospitality for the sake of our pride. Say for example, I happen to have a visitor and because I want to accommodate my visitor’s needs then I will provide the best accommodation I can offer to her such as something good to eat, a fresh and cool bedroom with newest utensils and so on. Aside from that I will probably regularly check her so that she would not regret coming in my place. Now on the brighter side, its perfect and it seems to be good.
However, if the accommodation I provided was in fact greater than as compared to the average cost of the things I can really offer, then I’ll ended up with borrowings from someone. I’m telling you its wrong to treat your visitor with the things that are too much for you to give, it’s not hospitality but rather too much pride and overwhelming shyness. The common problem among us Filipinos is that we don’t want others to think negatively about us and in order to prevent them spreading bad things about us we treat them nicely even if we can no longer have enough budget for tomorrow. My point is just simple, be hospitable for today but with moderation, treat your visitor of the things you can give without sacrificing your needs for tomorrow. Be reasonable enough and be brave enough to admit our limits, after all being honest is not a bad idea and who knows? Maybe our visitor is matured enough to understand and accept the situation.
It’s true that Filipino people are one of the happiest and resilient races because we even manage to smile despite of hardship, in fact, we even smile after experiencing a devastating power of Yolanda. We lost our home, our job but still we smile, and I salute all of you for being such an optimistic people. However, we should also take into consideration to show our weaknesses so that the others might help us and lay their hands to lift us from the sorrow we are suffering. Now our only problem is we don’t want to show to other people that sometimes we feel weak and we feel hopeless and in order to conceal that weakness, we wear our smiling mask, well to tell you frankly not all Filipino are good at it, some of us has a bad smile whether it is fake or not, whereas most of us are really good at it, they can pretend happy by just smiling and since their smile are very convincing, we as the audience are convince that they are really happy. Honestly my only advice in this situation is to be honest with ourselves, we can’t solve our problems by concealing it with a smile and owning it, let the other help us in that way we can be truly happy.
In my own opinion, the best value we have is being family centered or family-oriented people. We believe that we can’t live or grow without our family. In Filipino setting, a complete family is not just having father, mother, brother, and sister. Filipino family is composed of all the people we love from our blood relatives up to our friends. As most of us are saying, “The more the merrier” so the bigger our family is the happier we are. It’s okay and great if you’re going to think about it but the only problem is that we are already forgetting to live our own life, take note, our love ones won’t stay forever so while they are still there love them, be with them all the time but make sure to practice yourself growing and pushing without them because there will come a time that they will be gone. Furthermore, some of us doesn’t even bother to find some jobs and earn their own money, because of laziness they only sits and wait for their parents to spoon feed them even if they are already in the right age and matured enough to earn for their own needs, and I’m sorry to say this but these kind of people really sucks.
Another Filipino value is “Utang na Loob”, it means inner debt of gratitude to someone else. We Filipinos are very fun of this value whether we meant to feel it or not. In my own point of view this value is the result of our shame, sense of pride, and our urge to repay the kindness of the others had given to us. Repaying someone despite of not demanding to do so is not bad at all, but what if that person help you in a wrong way? How will you going to repay him?
Say for example a homeless child was illegally adopted and raised by a killer. The killer provides the needs of the child using the money he earns from his dirty job. Later on, the authorities hunt the man and he got cornered. The child then helps him escape because he owes his life to that man even if he’s a criminal. If you were on the same situation, would you do the same? Will you choose to let him caught because it is the right thing to do? I’ll leave this question to you and let your own judgement decides.
Another example is at workplace, let’s say I am currently applying to a certain company and it happens that the manager of that company is a friend of mine and he have an inner debt of gratitude towards mine because I helped him a lot during his review in his board exam. To cut the long story short, he helps me to be hire in that company so that he could at least repay me. The point in these examples are simple, “Utang na Loob” can be bad or good depending on the situation or to the nature of the person who help you. In the end, it will always be you who will decide whether you’ll feel this value and continuously hold in to it and finally repay someone or just let it go because something wrong might happen.
These are just some of our undying values. With that I can only leave you one message;
For all of the values we practice, there is nothing perfect among all of that, each and every value has its own pros and cons, it is only us who decides whether these values will result in to something unethical or something that is truly accepted by everybody.
