Formally, we recite the pledge of allegiance: It is a solemn pledge of love for our country. But in everyday life, we hardly think of what we have pledged to do. We carry on often as though only our personal interests counted and the country’s broader and wider interest hardly mattered. The former, i.e. our personal interests, are of course our affairs, and we try our best to take good care of them. The latter, i.e. the public interest, is almost always for someone else to worry about. It hardly enters into our personal equation. Very rarely does it figure in our personal radar screen.

It is this disconnect that we need to bridge. We have to bring our solemn pledge of love for country down to the manner in which we go about our everyday duties. It must figure prominently in the way we carry out our duties, both ordinary and extraordinary. Somehow, we should be able to say this to our country too: "Loving you — this is what my life is going to be about." Patriots say that, and they actually prove it through the loving and careful fulfillment of their everyday duties, preferably (although not necessarily exclusively) right here in the Philippines.

We can and should be such patriots by ensuring that we carry out our everyday duties as best as we possibly can. We know most of those duties are small and run-of-the mill. Occasionally, they can be big and perhaps even earth-shaking. In either case, what counts is that we go about them with verve, care, competence, commitment to excellence, and with a genuine spirit of service. The key, therefore, is to serve our country through both the small and big tasks we try to accomplish every day. Our patriotic resolve should therefore be: "To serve in little things (so as to be) able to serve (also) in great things."

To make such a resolve is critical because "our heart is made for love." It is necessary then that we also give our love to God and to our country. We would then fill our heart with noble loves; and we would end up becoming personally nobler, uplifted as we would surely be by such pure, unselfish love. For as long as such love is expressed not only in words, but also in our actions and decisions every day, as we go about carrying out our ordinary duties, then it would truly and greatly ennoble us.

Only then would we be able to truly say: We love "with our whole heart, and in spite of our wretchedness (and many shortcomings, we nonetheless prove that we are) madly in Love." That love is in capital letters, because it extends vertically to God and horizontally to our country. It is a love in big, capital letters since it is expressed both in big things as well as in small things, connected with our ordinary, everyday duties and with our extraordinary, albeit only occasional duties as well. It is a love that pervades baby steps as well as giant strides.