Doubts and Reservations on Rizal

Doubts and Reservations

Throughout the semester with the subject Ang Buhay at Mga Katha ni Rizal, I have learned so much more about the Philippine National hero, Jose Rizal. We have tackled many things about him—from his birth until his death. It was really like reading through his autobiography, although the lessons presented throughout the course also offered so many critics and comments about Rizal’s heroism. Anyway, I am glad that the lessons were not one-sided, what I mean is that in class, we looked at the different possible perspectives, there were no biases so to say. There were also lots of new things I’ve learned about him, things that I don’t know if it makes me like or dislike him. The subject is indeed one way of showing us what Rizal is really like, however we can never say that the lessons presented in class were enough for us to say that we really know Rizal. We can never say that. How did I say so? First is because Rizal was born in the earlier times—he is history. What we know about him now is his history, Rizal will never be here to tell us what he really was like, what was in his mind in those time and what really did he want to achieve in his writings. We can never say, as they say, the historians made it for us. But so as I believe, history is a story, it is consists of facts but it also have opinions embodied in it depending on who the historian is.

With that I can say that Rizal’s history presented to us in class made me feel that I should not totally like him, I should not totally dislike him either, rather it made me respect the concept that he is the national hero but I will never go as far as worshipping him as if he is a god because he was not, his death doesn’t make him a god either. He was just an ordinary person like us, his difference to the ordinary people were of course his intelligence, education, his writings, and his death, and his plight against the colonizers, other than that there was none, his human too, he feels, acts and reacts like common people do.

The course was intended to make us think and know more about Rizal, it gave us a challenge, in fact it made us really question Rizal’s heroism and some of us even question his personality. But isn’t it a bit unfair for him that we get to say what we would want to but he in fact will never be there to defend himself? That is the reason why I said earlier that the better thing to feel about Rizal is to just respect the fact that he is the hero, yes we have our own inquisitions within us but how can we ever answer it? Who will be there to prove something to us? Sometimes I really wish time machines were real sow can see the truth and mysteries of the past with our own eyes and so we can freely give judgment to what has happened then.

Just the same, we can never and we don’t have the right to question how Rizal acted then. He is also human, he had his own rights, he had his own choices, he can do whatever he wanted. I’m sure that if other Filipinos were in the same shoes as Rizal was then, there will always be someone who did exactly like what Rizal have done. He was also human, he is not perfect like us and besides, he was not the one who hailed himself as the national hero, a group of people hailed him as one. We can never blame him or even be very grateful for what he had done in the past because we also have our own doubts and reservations towards him. What we can only do is to respect him just the way we wanted to be respected if ever we were hailed to be in his place.