PALABRA de Honor, a beautiful thing that gives special feature to Filipinos, used to be part of our culture but it was gone for many, many years. Where is it now nobody knows as it just disappeared almost unnoticed.
Actually it was a sort of simple gesture, a habit, trademark, an important feature or whatever it was - - the thing was beautiful. It gives dignity to Filipinos. It is sort of keeping your words and you stand for it whatever happens. It was a symbol of honor for all of us to keep sacred what we say and die for it.
Many, many years ago, Filipinos enjoy the prestige of manhood for his nice gesture of keeping his word. Written contracts were almost not necessary during those days because we stand for what we say. It is a sort of pride to keep ourselves standing on principle.
There was a time when Filipinos love honor, integrity and dignity. We used to be extra honest and straightforward. We were highly trustworthy people and everyone looks straight through the eyes. We do not appear ashamed or embarrassed of something because from our hearts we were honest and clean.
Those were moments of long ago when we all are proud of ourselves because of an emblem of honesty. There was no doubt about our race, we all keep our words of honor and in the eyes of the universal community, Filipinos are plain clean and deserving of trust and confidence.
Shortly after World War II, however, that monument on our faces slowly went down and disappeared. We have changed our good habit and many of us became liars and people of distrust. We no longer were believers of truth and instead we promote lies and other ugly behaviors.
Life of politics and elections has deteriorated badly and dirty tactics surfaced little by little. Political campaigns became jokes and ugly stage drama and nothing comes out good for the people.
So it followed that our system of government dwindled too and poor leadership and many of our leaders were lost in the wilderness of corruption and they hardly could recognize the bad and the good.
Every man on the street could not speak with sincerity and pride because to them, what is important is winning anything even if you stand for lies. We no longer die for integrity and honor and we prefer to forget the right thing to do. Filipinos have become people of different stature.
To get back to those beautiful moments, we must involve the schoolchildren who should be taught more on culture and principle in life. Truthfulness should be hammered in their minds to make us all lovers of honesty and pride. Palabra de Honor was a simple feature among us and should be kept and exercised once more to make a race of dignity.