Jose Rizal. Never took a class on him but I read "Touch Me Not" and several of his poems. Love at first sight.
Jose Rizal was a man who made the most of life. Throughout 35 years, he mastered 22 languages; these include Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Malayan, Portuguese, Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tagalog, and other native dialects. A versatile genius, a polymath, he is an architect, artists, businessman, cartoonists, educator, economist, ethnologist, scientific farmer, historian, inventor, journalist, linguist, musician, mythologist, nationalist, naturalist, novelist, ophthalmic surgeon, poet, propagandist, psychologist, scientist, sculptor, sociologist, and theologian. He was an expert swordsman and a good shot.
He also wrote 2 novels that helped sparked the national independence movement in the Philippines, as well as founding the political organization that would evolve into the secret society spearheading the war for independence. He received degrees in Philosophy, Arts and Letters, and Medicine, specializing in ophthalmology to operate on his mother who was going blind. He traveled all around Europe and China, and with his charm, intelligence, and grace he found friends and lovers wherever he went. People would save napkins of his doodles and quips. His prolific espousal of anti-colonial critiques warranted his arrest and exile to the southernmost regions of the Philippines, where he lead the construction of a hospital, dam, and a school. He continued to enrich the lives of those around him until his execution at the age of 35.
Jose Rizal inspires me to be a life-long learner, and not to let my degree limit what I can pursue in life. As a theatre major who is not crazy about being an actor, I fear I’ve gotten a degree which won’t help me fly. I will now complete two minors in Web Application and Technologies through Viterbi and Communication Design through Roski, not only to become “a more competitive commodity in the job market” but to reframe my studies under the Renaissance ideal. Like Rizal, I don’t want to be bound to any one discipline, like a modern American farm only raising corn or soy beans; rather, my life becomes a challenge of growing a diversity of plants in my garden.
And while Rizal could be called a “Jack of All Trades”, the breadth of his interests did not sacrifice the quality of his investment in them. To be fluent in all major European languages, form revolutionary societies, build and maintain a hospital and school, he must have cultivated a significant depth and practicum of many areas of knowledge. I wonder if he had penetrated the seat of knowledge; he discovered the way to and made his home in Grand Central Station, able to take trains to any realm of knowledge, gather materials and souvenirs from each exotic place, and return home to create a mosaic of learning?
If his life could be compared to a work of art, a mosaic describes it beautifully. I have cultivated the spiritual understanding that life becomes more and more beautiful as we accumulate experiential nuances in our picture of the world. Of course we have to start off at black and white, Heaven and Hell, but then we add Purgatory, Auschwitz, and Candyland. Rizal added color after color to his palette, not to drown himself in options, but in order to paint a rich tapestry of life. I am making such a colorfully diverse, eclectically sprinkled piece, forged with passion, chiseled with dedication, so when the Great Egg Timer in the Sky goes off, I can be proud of it, relinquish it to posterity as a testimony of my soul.
