Igorots Love Simple Living

Simple living is what the Igorots like. You may find an Igorot who is considered rich but he could be still wearing old denim jeans and walking barefoot around his mansion. To an Igorot, the true essence of life is in how much you have achieved in life and not on how much luxury you are able to accumulate. This is the reason why material things are not the most important things toIgorots.

Igorots put too much importance on education, a sturdy home and food on the table. Never mind branded clothes, shoes and other luxuries that the modern life offers. In the town where I was born, life there is as simple as waking up early in the morning; loading your gear to go to work in the farm and going home at sundown to enjoy a simple dinner with the family and a good night’s sleep. But therein lays the most ambitious dream of a father and a mother for their kids to go to school and finish a degree. Looking back when I was still a young girl, I remember how we lived. We weren’t very poor but we weren’t rich either. We never got hungry because we had land to till and planted with different crops that sustained us for a living. Honestly, we didn’t eat food just like other people in other parts of the Philippines. We ate food that was cooked the Igorot way. Sometimes there was not even a drop of oil to go with the vegetables. Yet, it was fine living for us because we had enough food on the table and we always had a lot of crops stacked in our store room.

Of course, the modern lifestyle has changed the Igorot lifestyle tremendously. Igorots are now living just like other Filipinos of the modern times. What is different is their way of looking at life. Igorots tend to deal more on education rather than getting rich. To the Igorots, it is enough to be able to send the children to school have a sturdy house and never go hungry. The beautiful clothes and the sumptuous dinner is not included in an Igorot’s planner.

In the town where I was born and with a population that is more or less 3000, there are already several CPAs, lawyers, police officers who are graduates of the Philippine National Police Academy, engineers of different types, teachers, midwives, doctors, veterinarians, commerce graduates, computer science graduates, agriculturists, etc. This is one of the reasons why at present several of these igorots are now enjoying a new lifestyle in the cities and several men and women who are degree holders are now working in different parts of the world. The Igorots have gone global in the hope of finding a greener pasture. But beyond the modern life that they are enjoying, they still prefer a simple life that is free from all the embellishments that the modern life could offer. When Igorots go home, they still enjoy eating the Igorot simple food without all those food enhancers and they love walking up the mountains.