Ombion: Rise to greatness

EVERYTHING for Filipinos is small.

WHAT astonishes many foreigners in our country is our penchant for small things. For them who buy things in large volume, most Filipinos buy to the smallest degree of retail.

Most Filipino consumers buy a piece of garlic, one or two pieces of tomato, a small amount of salt, a small plastic of oil, half a kilo of fish or meat, a half kilo of rice, a single vegetable, two to three eggs, and so on. They repeat the same thing the next day, next week, a whole year round. It is “menu-menudo” in the local dialect, or “tingi tingi” among the Tagalog-speaking.

Most Filipinos are also small retailers. They buy and sell a pack of cigarettes, half a can of oil, a liter of gasoline, a few sachets of coffee, a few sachets of soap and shampoo, a small pack of candy, a few pieces of foil-wrapped junk food, a small amount of school supplies, a pair of socks or pants, a packet of e-load.

Most Filipino families have also the liking for eating in small amounts; small breakfast, small snack, small lunch, small dinner, evening snack, midnight snack, and so on. They end up eating several times a day, yet spending so much effort and money for it.

On the matter of health, most Filipinos are not only self-styled doctors; they also buy single pills from a nearby store also selling tingi-tingi medicines every time they think they are not feeling well.

In politics, the most exciting and stake-taking for most Filipinos, both the politically conscious and the spontaneous, are the petty politics in the barangay, where they or their kin are quite involved; they don’t care much what is in region or province.

It looks like we are an annexed territory of the mythical Lilliput, an island of small people with small ways and small dreams.

In agriculture, most Filipino farmers have small plots and engage in monocrop-farming for a cropping season, and repeat the same for next season. The well-off ones have a carabao or a cow; those who can take out loans have one small tractor, a small thresher, a small water pumping system.

In all this, the amount of effort most Filipinos spend seems out of proportion for the return they get.

If we cite more examples, we can simply say that in terms of labor and skills, Filipinos are probably the most skillful, creative, ingenious and laborious in the world.

Most Filipino retailers are open at six in the morning, operate till the wee hours of the day. The free weekend is something alien to most. In southern countries like Europe and North America, by six in the evening, the business sector is dead, and so the town or city. They have a shorter working day and practically go to long sleep on weekends.

This contradicts the Spanish colonial rulers who once charged that most Filipinos are indolent.

Certainly, Filipinos are not. They only work more but make less. Why? Is it in the mindset or the social condition? It is in the mindset.

Our social condition makes most of us live small: buy small, sell small; buy small, eat small; live in a small house; aim small and try small; think small and do small—but we work for more. With little resources, we can only do so much.

Millions of us are in this condition. We don’t like this but because we don’t have much of an option we are forced to be in this. In the process, we develop the liking and the thinking for it even if we hate it.

It is this mindset of smallness that makes us the slaves of the few and big: the monopolists.

If we want to rise from smallness and become big we must free the mindset that shackles us and makes use of our talents and great labor power to strive to become, not just big, but great.

If we take the lessons of the Lilliputians, when all small people living in their small way unite and cast away their mindset of smallness, they become big and defeat the mindset and practice.

There are bigness and greatness in smallness, so said the great English writer, philosopher and economist, E.F. Schumacher, the author of “Small is Beautiful.”

We must appreciate the Filipinos’ penchant for smallness because it is the world we know. But let it be the starting point in enabling us to know the bigger world by helping others think big, aspire big, do big, and change the world.

The great German scientist and social thinker Albert Einstein has this piece of affirmation, “when our circle of knowledge and mindset expand, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”

A parallel lesson in this regard can be taken no less from the Christian Bible, in the Parable of the Servants and the Talents: for him who has, more shall be given; but from him who has not, even the little he has shall be taken away.

Let us rise to greatness! (For feedback, email ombion.ph@outlook.com

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