HOMEWORK: Personal Reflection of an Unknown Citizen

HOMEWORK: Personal Reflection of an Unknown Citizen

Dr Abe V Rotor

Former professor, University of Santo Tomas, 

De La Salle University-D, St Paul University-QC 

"Little do we know of the unknown great man,

the Unknown Soldier -

unknown doctor, unknown teacher

farmer, worker, entrepreneur,

old man, father, housewife, child." avr

Assignment in Humanities and Communication Arts,  Make your own personal reflection handwritten on a regular bond paper of 500 words more or less. Reflection brings out the inner person in you, like the inner eye of Heller Keller, The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupery', idealism of Longfellow's A Psalm of Life  and Alexander Pope, meditation in Michalangelo's Pieta, the mysticism of Venus de Milo, enigma of wildlife in Rousseau's painting, inner ear of Beethoven, waning light in Claude Monet's Waterlily, nature-man treatise in Thoreau's Walden Pond.  

I invite our viewers to this exercise. You may find this useful in retreats and seminars, specially in leadership, and in the fields of theology,  philosophy, and humanities.

One man fought a nation, and save a nation, abhorring violence.
His greatest weapon: peaceful protest and civil disobedience
in asceticism that swept the land;
people revering him as father and almost god.
His name is Gandhi. (photo, left)

His likes are the greatest specimens of mankind; they too, changed
the world forever, making it a better place to live in.
His name is Mao Tse Tung.
His name is Ho Chi Minh.
His name is Jose Rizal.
His name is Ramon Magsaysay
Her name is Princess Diana.
His name is Jose Burgos.
He is Maximilian Kolby


Nelson Mandela, Jose Rizal,  

She is Mother Teresa.
He is Nelson Mandela
He is Pope John Paul II, et al

They are people for all seasons, for all ages, for all waves of change.

But little do we know of the unknown great man,
The Unknown Soldier -
unknown doctor, unknown teacher
farmer, worker, entrepreneur,
old man, father, housewife, child;
The Unknowns in other fields of life, regardless.

They are whose deeds are also those of great men and women we revere today.
They are us – each one of us
in our own little way to make the world go round and around –
or make it slower, that we may taste better the true Good Life,
the sweet waters of the Pierian Spring, the cool breeze on the hill.

All of us - we have the capacity to be great.
Bringing up our children to become good citizens,
being Samaritan on a lonely road,
embracing a returning Prodigal Son, 
plugging a hole in the dike like the boy who saved Holland from the sea,
or living life the best way we can that makes other lives better.

These and countless deeds make us great,
and if in this or that little way we may fall short of it,
then each and everyone of us putting each small deed together,
makes the greatest deed ever,
for the greatest thing humans can do is collective goodness –
the key to true unity and harmony,
and peace on earth. ~