Revisiting Rizal’s “The Indolence of the Filipino” in search of a modern answer.
By Kobe Bargo
If José Rizal were alive today, I wonder what he would see as he walked through the Philippines.
Would he notice the glow of phone screens on crowded trains, the endless traffic, the coffee shops filled with students and young professionals chasing deadlines? Would he see the quiet exhaustion behind every smile? And would he still speak of indolence? Or would he call it something else—burnout, distraction, or the quiet loss of purpose?
In The Indolence of the Filipino, Rizal argued that indolence was never the cause of our nation’s problems but their consequence. It was born out of oppression, injustice, and a society that robbed people of dignity.
More than a century later, I wonder if the question deserves to be asked again. Not because Filipinos have become lazy. But because the world around us has changed.
Today, indolence may no longer come from colonial rule. It may come from something far more ordinary: a life that never seems to slow down. We wake up tired. We scroll endlessly. Or chase deadlines. We measure our worth by productivity. We glorify being busy, yet many of us quietly admit that we feel stuck, disconnected, or uncertain about where all this effort is leading.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve mistaken motion for meaning.
If Rizal walked through the streets of Manila today, I don’t think he would find a nation unwilling to work. If he stood among us, he might instead ask: What happened to our sense of purpose?
He would see how colonial wounds have evolved into systemic fatigue and reopened by our fast-paced world. The struggle for dignity now takes the form of mental health battles, overwork, and the quiet surrender of dreams.
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But despite this, he would also see sparks of resilience: parents leaving home before sunrise to provide for their families, students pushing through sleepless nights because they believe education can change their lives. Healthcare workers, teachers, delivery riders, vendors, and countless ordinary Filipinos who continue showing up despite impossible circumstances and finding joy in small victories. Advocates fighting for justice, and people finding purpose in the little things they do.
That isn’t laziness. That is sacrifice. But sacrifice without purpose eventually becomes exhaustion. Maybe that is the real struggle of my generation. We are surrounded by information but searching for wisdom. We are connected to thousands of people online, yet loneliness has become strangely familiar. Yes, we know how to survive, but many of us are still learning how to live.
In Rizal’s time, indolence was a symptom of oppression; today, it’s often the result of exhaustion. We live in a world that glorifies hustle, yet forgets healing. We chase success so fiercely that we lose sight of joy, connection, and meaning, the very things that make life worth living.
So I ask myself, what if we’re not lazy, but indolence is a call to human flourishing? We’ve seen it ourselves that despite the troubles we tackle and the hardships we face, we still continue pushing forward, and all we need is a little breather to take in the people we value and the dreams we aspire to achieve.
Now I ask you, what is the Filipino cure to indolence? How can we look into ourselves to flourish? But how do we flourish? We must move not only our bodies but our hearts. When I think about what keeps Filipinos moving, I don’t think of productivity. I think of parents working overseas because they love their children. I think of communities rebuilding after typhoons. And I think of families who still gather every Sunday despite busy schedules. I think of children playing basketball in neighborhood courts, and grandparents patiently waiting outside schools to fetch their grandchildren.
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Movement, after all, is more than exercise. Movement can be a walk with a friend, a conversation that sparks hope, or a moment of stillness that reconnects us to our purpose. Buried deep within our Filipino culture is our strong sense of family. When we look at our local parks and malls on weekends, what do we see? We see families taking strolls, friends hanging out, and walking around. It’s the movement with the people close to our hearts, showing up for those who matter. It’s the courage to rest without guilt so we can rise stronger tomorrow, to create without fear, and to care without condition. Finally, it’s choosing to rise not because society demands it, but because our spirit calls us to. This is where our answer to indolence begins.
Perhaps the cure for indolence is not more pressure, but more compassion. Not more productivity, but more purpose. When we move with love, when we act with intention, we transform indolence into awakening a quiet revolution of the Filipino spirit that Rizal himself would have celebrated.
Maybe then, indolence would no longer be a plague but a mirror, showing us what happens when a society forgets to nurture its people. A reminder to nurture ourselves. Rizal would not find lazy Filipinos today. He would find tired ones. Distracted ones. Overworked ones. Sometimes, desperate ones. But he would also find hope in every act of kindness, every dream pursued, every Filipino who chooses to rise and move again.
We are not indolent; we are evolving. The cure for indolence is not punishment or shame, but slowing down, to cherish the people we value, the family we love, and to look within ourselves to push forward. It is in remembering our purpose, why our work matters. It has always been remembering who we are and choosing, every single day, to rise for something greater than ourselves.
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