Aliviado: The Hero in Us

TODAY we celebrate the National Heroes Day, yet just like any other days commemorating our heroic forefathers, it is generally ignored, the day passed largely unnoticed. Gone are the days when mini parades and crowd drawing wreath offerings over the heroes' tombs were observed and their lives remembered.

Even the Jose Rizal statue of Luneta Park is always by its lonesome, albeit with some guards doing their daily rotational duties. Most likely some statues of heroes have become somewhat a temporary shelter for a homeless person or worse with cluttered garbage around. Perhaps the most beautiful image of a hero's shrine is from a commemorative postcard, notwithstanding the use of Adobe Photoshop for editing purposes.

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What does this mean to all of us anyway? For a nation to go forward in the right direction towards peace and prosperity, the people must know who they really are, where they came from and learn from these. It is from these realizations that the people will know where to start plugging the holes, or say eradicate the deficiencies of the system today that has since plagued the ordinary Juan de la Cruz. History will always teach us the right and the wrong being done by the influence of some characters, and it is a must that we start our footing from the lessons learned from these events, or else we would be like a ship without a map, lost in the middle of the sea.

The big question of today is why people nowadays care less about the days of commemoration for our heroes. I don't have the answer for this kind of question, actually, but I can think of a few theories. In my own understanding, it seems that the priorities of the Filipino people nowadays have changed, and along with it their present mentality. In this age of global economy, people are more inclined to take care of the basic needs of their loved ones, tend to their jobs, enjoying the modern conveniences in life rather than giving time to reflect on the lives of the people who have contributed greatly to the freedom that we breathe now. This kind of mentality erodes the basic concept that the freedom that we experience now is due to the unselfishness of our heroes in giving up their lives for a cause greater than their own. We have forgotten sometimes that this kind of people always do things for the future of their countrymen, not like our present crop of politicians who tend to look only at how to fill their own pockets.

Even in the frailty of human existence, our heroes have two traits that most of us may have been found wanting: commitment and honor. For me, they were the proverbial men of action who talked less and worked more. They value the legacy that they will leave for the future generation. Often times this is our common mistake, that we only realize the person's lasting impression and goodness only when the latter is dead.

In as much as we value the deeds of our national heroes, we must not overlook also the contributions of the heroes in our midst. Just take notice of a mother who washes clothes in the morning and sells fish in the afternoon just to feed her family and send her children to school. Or an employee who finds an item and find ways to locate the rightful owner for it to be returned. Or a coworker who reports to the management of an anomaly in his work even at the cost of persecution. The list goes on and on. What is important is that we must realize and understand who we are and where we came from, as a line from the movie "The Last Samurai" says.

We can start by learning what our heroes fought and lived for. Then I hope that we will have a sure footing. (jaliviado2001@yahoo.com)