Bahala Na

🇵🇭 Filipiniana: Writings about my own culture

This Filipiniana Series is an exploratory writing about the Philippine culture from the perspectives of a Philippine-born and raised Filipina. My goal is to explain commonly misunderstood mindsets and aspects of my culture.

During the Spanish colonization, our National Hero, Jose Rizal, wrote Sobre la indolencia de los filipinos in defense of the Spanish characterization of Filipinos as lazy ("On the Indolence of the Filipinos", La Solidaridad, 1890, Madrid, Spain).

Consider this my attempt to do the same.

Despite that commonality, I do not claim to be as good of a writer as Rizal himself.

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“Bahala na” /bah-hala ‘na/ is a phrase that can be translated into “come what may” or “whatever happens, happens”.

The earlier analysis of this socio-cultural value was written from the perspectives of an American psychologist named Lynn Bostrom (1968) wherein she equated “bahala na” to fatalism. Bostrom's Western interpretation, unfortunately, continues to influence the perspectives towards this uniquely Filipino value. Even among Filipinos, one would hear the “bahala na” attitude explained as the Filipinos’ tendency towards apathy and over-reliance on “the will of God” or “their destiny or fate”.

While the term itself being fatalistic may not be entirely false, allow me to explain to you what “bahala na” means from my own perspectives. After all, I should know it better than an American psychologist writing from a Western mindset half a century ago.

Allow me to reclaim “bahala na” through this piece.

Photo by Josephus Bajo on Unsplash

Here are some instances when I uttered the words “bahala na” in my life:

• I said “bahala na” when I decided to leave Philippines at 23 years old to pursue higher studies in America with two suitcases in tow and nothing but dreams in my pockets.

• I said “bahala na” when I accepted my doctoral internship up North where I knew no one and had to learn how to drive in the snow.

• I said “bahala na” when I left a job that treated me unfairly and landed my first leadership role somewhere else.

• I said “bahala na” when, as a struggling graduate student, I spent most of my savings to be at my grandmother’s funeral so I get to say goodbye to the person who helped raise me.

• I said “bahala na” when I took the next flight as soon as I learned that my grandfather was on his deathbed allowing me to care for him for ten days before he passed away peacefully.

For millions of Filipinos who say the words “bahala na” as they leave their loved ones back home to earn a decent living overseas and charter a better future for their family, the phrase does not mean surrender but a loud illustration of bravery and their sense of adventure.

On all of those examples, the words were uttered not in surrender to fate, but as a leap of faith and a demonstration of taking control of our own destiny. We say “bahala na” in defiance of what is easy and what is offered within our comfort zone to take the roads that are more difficult but that would eventually offer us better rewards, not just for ourselves, but for the collective unit - our family.

🔥 In what aspects of your life right now would you benefit from the “bahala na” way of life of the Filipino people?

References:

• Menguito and Teng-Calleja, Bahala Na as an Expression of the Filipino's Courage, Hope, Optimism, Self-efficacy and Search for the Sacred (PDF)

• Bostrom, Lynn (1968). "Filipino Bahala na and American fatalism". Silliman Journal. 3rd quarter, 1968: 399–413.