Minding Mabini
One sure thing can be said about Mabini -- That he had indeed a hard life. Born poor, his family struggled to secure him a good education. His biographer vividly describes this "chronic lack of financial means." Paralyzed due to adult polio at the age of 32, he had to live all throughout his life accompanied by this constant stigma that disability brings. But his brilliant mind was his true gift and he gave the new republic not only its legal foundations but also its moral and intellectual direction.
Mabini also had entertained the idea of a greater Malayan confederacy and the emancipation of colonized people. He was a man way ahead of his time. Exiled to Guam for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the US, his letters from exile showed a man not only longing for home but also somebody fighting depression. His last letters were filled with a premonition of death and talks of death wishes. He wrote; "After two long years I am returning, so to speak, completely disoriented and, what is worse, almost overcome by disease and sufferings. Nevertheless, I hope, after some time of rest and study, still to be of some use, unless I have returned to the Islands for the sole purpose of dying".
In 1903, after two years of exile, he was allowed to go back to the Philippines and took his oath of alliance to the US. He died two months later due to cholera which was raging that year in Manila. As he said; he went home and as he hauntingly wrote, for the purpose of dying. Born poor, he also died poor.
Minding Mabini, the ordinary Filipino. But his difference to everyone lies in what Mabini himself termed and truly a life he lived -- that "the noble purpose of life" is to serve your country without expecting a reward in return.
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