One Love, One Heart, One Destiny

After completing our mural, we have to wait five more days for the results of the competition. We were asked to write an interpretation of our mural which will be passed during the day of judgement. But to our surprise, there were no judges on the location and the written interpretation will not be considered in the judging anymore.

I was not there since I have an event that day. My team waited for an additional hour after the call time. Filipino time! tsk! When the head organizer came, she already had the results in hand. Another surprise! After a few walk around the location and some writing, she announced the results. Unfortunately, we didn't win. : (

Honestly, i'm not surprised that we didn't win but there are more issues we want to address to the organizers concerning the rules and mechanics, which is unclear. :P We also didn't like the treatment to the participants during the awarding ceremony. Nonetheless, to keep my teammates' spirits high, we used our consolation prize to have fun that night. For those who are still puzzled with our artwork, here's our write up.

















Rotary International’s theme “Reach Within to Embrace Humanity” urges us to harness our inner resolve and strength to accomplish great things in our communities and around the world. In order to achieve anything in this world, we have to use all the resources we can draw on. And the only place to start is with ourselves and within ourselves. This mural is our interpretation of Humanity executed in a modern, hip and fun way yet remaining subliminal in order to arouse one’s curiosity, allowing space for one’s analysis and understanding. Nonetheless, the essential theme of this artwork is embedded in our slogan “One Love, One Heart, One Destiny”.

One Love. The two virtues of Humanity are Love and Care. The left panel represents Love which one must possess and “reach within”. It starts with the love of oneself. We must be aware of inner strengths, capabilities, values and morals in order to accept our being. Eventually, we extend this love to our family, then community, culture, country and, ultimately, the humanity. There is also love for a greater being which called Faith. Love could also be in a form of romance, devotion, loyalty, or patriotism. With love we achieve equality, peace and happiness in our community and the world.

One Heart. The right panel represents the second virtue of Humanity – Care. When we care not only for ourselves, we are starting to serve others. Like our mothers, we start this virtue with our very own family. The communities we live in are not built of individual people but of families – families living in homes together, sharing their lives and their resources and their common destinies. Good families lead to good neighborhoods, and good neighborhoods build good communities. Care should also be given to Mother Nature, our environment, heritage and culture. Care is what we have in our heart.

One Destiny. With all these virtues and values we harness, we all are destined for a greater goal – Peace and Harmony. The entire artwork will be incomplete without the other half, just like harmony which will be unattainable with love or care alone. If we wish for peace, we start by living in peace ourselves, in our homes and in our communities. With this artwork, our team hopes to show interplay of symbols and elements leading you from one side to the other. It’s a continuous flow of vibrant colours and figures encapsulated in the circle of life representing the harmonious humanity we want to achieve.

We must be the instrument of that change and recognize that it must start within us, with each of us. We should be the change we wish to see in the world. Discover yourself, develop the strengths within you, and then unhesitatingly, unflinchingly, go forth and encircle the world, to embrace humanity.