Wow, Robi's ligtas yo.

I'm sure you've had the chance to meet the kind of Filipino you would call coño. He's the type of person who usually speaks fluent, or almost-fluent English most of the time, but struggles with Filipino. Whenever he would speak Filipino, it would almost always sound like "Can you pass me th...the...lapis! There! lapis right?" Normally, they are associated with the upper class, or upper middle class. They're elitista to most of us, and to some, annoying. "Ba't naman kasi nag-Iingles pa 'yan eh Pinoy naman siya?!"would be normal comments from people who have recently met one of the coño type. That comment is pretty mild, considering the fact that they are even accused as not being in touch with Filipino sensibilities, despite living in the Philippines for most of their lives. A stigma exists that puts the 'richer' ones in a negative light, when there may be even more to these 'richer' people.

It's really easy to accuse the coño person as someone who does not want to embrace his own Filipino culture, but one recent conversation from a really close, supposedly coño friend of mine revealed otherwise:

"You know, [most] Filipinos don't really like elitists or rich people but they want to be rich, they want to go abroad for better jobs, they want to be more Americanized, they want showbiz and when they hit it, they want to fit in that crowd - and yet they look down on rich people and put value on the "real world" values on the street [so much]."

That was the first thought that went through his mind, based on his own observations. It was bothering him that coño people were less listened to by the supposedly purer Filipinos, for the simple reason that they did not know how to commute, nor were they familiar with balut and isaw. It bothers him that accusations about them are made just for being who they are. We may not know it but while there are really coño people to be loathed for their actions, we have to be able to separate hating from action from hating because we cannot relate. In the same way that the 'poor' want some understanding, I think that the rich also deserve some too.

It really is disturbing that there are lots of people who hate the rich so much, but when they end up getting rich themselves by some twist of fate, they end up embracing it. Why cannot we just accept the fact that even within the Philippines, different kinds of people exist? Sure, there are people who cannot even ride the MRT or jeepney to save their own lives, but they are Filipino too. Lots of these kinds of people actually try to embrace the Filipino culture, within their reach. On the other hand, why do some richer people embrace being rich so much that they look down on the poor? Why can't we all just accept that yes, were born in different settings, but we all struggle with life almost equally? God never gave us things we can't handle right? We just have to accept our differences and learn to live unbothered by these little differences in lifestyle. Kahit anong mangyari, Pilipino ka, basta gustuhin mo.