The year of the “dragon” is here!. 2012, the dreaded year! As sooth-sayers say, it is the end of the world!, because the Mayans “stopped” their Mayan calendar reading precisely on 21 December 2012. It was foresighted that a new era will commence as the world enters the period of transition. We will never know what will happen on that day until that day comes. We can only hope and pray and keep our fingers-crossed that that day breezes through with all of us “still alive and kicking”. There is a huge BUT though, “But are we not the ones responsible for our own annihilation?” – that is my question. Meanwhile, we could just wait and see what happens next. My mission as a “blogger” has yet to end and I wish to continue blogging, not to stop as of yet! No way…!! Well, so much for this off-beat opening and I better return to the main topic of this article – about Filipino proverbs.
Filipinos are quite familiar with “salawikaing pilipino (Filipino proverb)”. What does the title mean? – “Nasa tao ang gawa, nasa Diyos ang awa”, literally it could be translated as “A man has to work to gain mercy from God”. True enough, one has to exert a lot of effort to get compensated – at work, at school, in business, etc. To succeed, one has to “sweat it out”. – “No guts, no glory” – as an athletic proverb puts it. Hard-work “pays”. A person cannot definitely survive by just sitting around like the Filipino legend Juan Tamad (Lazy John) who waited for the guava fruit to fall in his open mouth. Filipinos were portrayed as Juan Tamad and were led to believe that they were lazy. It took years upon years to change them to become hardworkers. Many Filipinos were “awakened” by this saying. Unfortunately though, majority of those “awoke” Filipinos are not in the Philippines, but somewhere else around the world where they could have greater chances on being compensated, appropriately compensated, for the hardwork.
FilipinosAround 