Minding Mabini



"When the people launched the war, I believed it was my duty to be by their side and help them in their struggle to the end; now that they feel they have lost the strength to continue fighting for their rights, I believe I ought to be by their side, to tell them that they should not despair but that they should have confidence in themselves, injustice, and in the future." ~ Apolinario Mabini



One sure thing can be said about Mabini: he indeed had a hard life. Born poor, his family struggled to secure him a good education. His biographer vividly describes this as a "chronic lack of financial means." Paralyzed by adult polio at the age of 32, he had to live with the 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 entertained the idea of a greater Malayan confederacy and the emancipation of colonized people. He was a man 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 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 suffering. 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 allegiance 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 from everyone lies in what Mabini himself termed and truly lived: that "the noble purpose of life" is to serve your country without expecting a reward in return.

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