Kapwa

The core value of Filipino personhood is Kapwa. It bridges the deepest individual recess of a person with anyone outside him or herself, even total strangers. Here, it is not important if you are rich or poor or what your status in society is. It is shared identity, an inner self shared with others. It implies a moral and normative aspect that obliges a person to treat another as fellow human being and therefore as equal. People are just people in spite of their age, clothes, diplomas, color or affiliations. Kapwa is the unity of the one of us and the other, the concept as a Filipino core value. Most people who hear the word Kapwa think of their neighbors also as fellow being.

For me Kapwa means to help someone that needs a helping hand. Even though he or she is outside my race, it does not matter what color he or she is, because deep inside we are one.  Sometimes Kapwa really gets me into trouble because people will just take advantage of my kind heart. For a while, I thought Kapwa is the meaning of Kapwang Pinoy, and it is to help my own race. As I grew up, I got to see and experience different types of races and they are not different than I am.

The Debut

 I watched this movie a while back but did not pay attention to the movie. When I watched this movie on Friday Feb. 8th, my reaction to the movie was different because I got emotional to the scene. I think maybe because I could somewhat relate to Ben, how he wanted to send himself to college without the help of his parents. For me, I had no choice but to send myself to college because my mother did not talk to me about going to college, and with Ben, his parents was always on him about going to college. His parents wanted him to be a doctor, but Ben did not want to be a doctor despite having the scholarship funds. Ben wanted to be an artist because that is what he loves to do. For me I wanted to work on cars because it’s my passion.

This movie got me teary eyed for the first time even though I have watched this movie before. I guess this time around I put myself into the scene and the situation of how I wanted to grow up, and some scene I have leaved it with my grandparents, having both Filipino parents and taking care of family and supporting each other.  The performance with the bamboo called tinikling dance. This tinikling dance reminded me of my junior high school because I used to dance at school performances.

 I did not grow up having both of my parents with me, but I did grow up with both of my grandparents and thought for a while they were my parents. Having that family together was very pleasing to my eyes. Having that party and the way it was set up was very familiar and the location of the party and how everyone gathered around talking and playing basketball with friends and family I could relate to. Whenever a friend is getting married, friends and family members would gather around at the parking lot having fun, drinking, talking about the past and talk about future plans.