take it from the pacman

since the early 20’s boxing has been a popular sport in the philippines which makes me wonder if it has something to do with the filipinos’ collective psyche of passiveness.

generally, filipinos would only act and react if they were directly hurt or somebody close to them was hit offensively by any outside force.
of course, the filipino thinking of passiveness could be attributed to various factors that involve socio-psychological studies, but i believe that the general public’s gusto on boxing has something to do with it.

there is always a guilty pleasure watching the jabs, the punches, the hooks, the cross, and the uppercuts of the boxers.
my grandmother, for instance, likes to watch the slamming and the hitting action on wwf. she was in her 60’s, yet she raves every time her bet batista would smack down an opponent. ironically, after each show, she would rant about the violence of the game and end up feeling sorry for the losers.

as an audience we empathize with our favorite players, thinking that somehow, the boxer within us could help us ease our way through the tuition fee increases, through beating deadlines, through the traffic jam, through the air pollution, through the dengue outbreak, trough poverty, and through the philippine life. the sad thing about that, we empathize so much that we forget to act. we forget to respond to the immediate needs of our society, of ourselves. we can never beat the deadlines, the tuition fee increase, the political killings, the poverty and the injustice by mere sitting down and imagining things to happen right before us.

one trait inherent in most of us filipinos is that we are evasive when it comes to facing our problems. no wonder we could easily divert our attention by delving into telenovelas, engaging in computer games, and laughing at daily jokes. of course there is nothing wrong with diverting our attentions from our problems every once in a while. in fact, it has become our survival mechanism over the years of living in poverty and social instability.
being evasive only turns out wrong when it makes a person apathetic over him/herself and the society.

the fight of pacquiao (aka pacman) and morales (aka el terible) was not just historical, but also monumental. it’s the battle of domination between the colonizer and the colonized.
the colonized indio knocked down the español colonizer in 3 rounds.
300 years of colonization over 3 rounds of boxing fight is one victory to boost the filipino race’s ego.

boxing has caught our interests for the longest time but it appeared as if we haven’t learned from it.
the sport requires the player to subject himself/herself under planning, studying, training, and discipline to step in the pedestal of victory. jabs, hooks, punches and uppercuts without planning and practice were useless. aggression alone does not promise total victory.
say for example the philippine revolution way back in 1896, though it has succeeded in various levels, does not totally free the nation from colonizers. rizal has warned the revolutionaries, take their time and study the situation, but they allowed their aggression to took over, and voila! a not-so-sweet-victory was achieved.

change will only happen if we will and if we act to make it happen.
having a common goal is not enough. we have to examine our motives and our ways in achieving our goals. unity is essential.
it’s funny that we have an un-united opposition in the government. they may have the common goal of doing checks and balances in the government, but the people behind had their own ulterior motives.

i salute the pacman for bringing ounces, even tons of pride to the filipino people. as a boxer, he reminds us to act and respond to the situation, to calculate and plan every move, and to aim for victory.

despite tons of hate messages over pacquiao’s pre-victory, in hope that his advertisers would back out on him, he still won. manny have delivered us a knockout jab that told us to move and act if we wanted to achieve our goals.
thousands of detractors or tons of hate mails could not hinder us from getting what we wanted if we only work for it.

we don’t have to wait to be hit straight in the face in order to deliver a blow.

if we wanted change in this country, we have to take immediate actions to the needs of our society.

manny has nailed it in his song.
“laban mo, laban ko, laban natin ‘to…”

it’s not just your fight; it’s my fight, our fight.

*****************************
digress

a blasphemy:
ipaghihiganti ko si erik morales!




-vina morales
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