Youth enlightenment is key to a prosperous New Year

As the nation marks today the 129th anniversary of the martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal, it is worth returning to the ideas he left behind - not as relics of the past, but as guideposts for the future.

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It is important to ponder anew Rizal's insights as our country faces the coming new year because, as he wrote in his four-part essay The Philippines a Century Hence, "in order to read the destiny of a people, it is necessary to open the book of its past."

First published in La Solidaridad on Sept. 30, 1889, the essay offers a searing diagnosis of a people weakened by centuries of colonial domination. It portrays Filipinos as "broken" after centuries of Spain's rule over our country.

"They gradually lost their ancient traditions, their recollections - they forgot their writings, their songs, their poetry, their laws," Rizal wrote, forced instead to absorb "other doctrines which they did not understand." In the process, Filipinos learned to admire what was foreign and dismiss what was their own. Their spirit, Rizal said, was broken — and they acquiesced.

But although broken, the spirit of the people was not destroyed altogether. In fact, the "lethargic spirit woke to life" when the people realized their misfortune amid the abuses and mistakes of the colonizers, Rizal said.

Yet Rizal was no defeatist. He believed that while the Filipino spirit had been bent, it had not been destroyed. Beneath the surface, a dormant fire waited to be lit. That awakening, he argued, came precisely because of oppression.