Searching for a Hero (Happy Father's Day)

“Only the leader’s own involvement in reality, within a historical situation, led them to criticize this situation and to wish to change it.” – Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Jose Rizal, are we still in search of a hero?

Coincidentally, on the same day, we celebrate Father’s Day.

Oftentimes we are asked, whom do you consider your hero? And usually we enumerate names we just read from history books. We are told by their exploits and heroism during the times when we could not even relive their lives except the trying words of our historians, documentary shoots, and life-imitating films. Almost, yet persistent in their larger-than-life attempt to capture history, our scholars have provided us a near-to-life panorama of our academic past. We owe it to them if we see Rizal as repository of almost supernatural talents, Bonifacio as a brave man without fear of death, Aguinaldo as a revolutionary who waged his own revolution inside the Philippine revolution. These are the most known heroes and widely read about personalities in the history of our country.

Why Rizal or Bonifacio or Aguinaldo then? What about Bicolano heroes like Jose Ma. Panganiban or Tomas Arejola? Why not our fathers?

For one, our history-book heroes exemplified a life destined to be great, and willingly faced a death by sacrificing their lives. Of course, their deaths were their heroic acts that defined their heroism. To the idealist, they have done in an extraordinary way what any ordinary man could not. To the realist, they simply fulfilled the task assigned by the call of times. To the gestaltist, they completed the missing part of our aspiration for freedom and totality as a nation. To most of us, they responded to the challenge of self-determination. To the rest, they were merely the stories of men printed in the paper, or depicted in a monument, imaged in a bill, or painted in a card.

More than the epic life and death they led, their heroism was highlighted by the classic struggle to free our country from the bondage of colonization of Spain, to liberate from the oppressive imperialism of America, and to save the nation from the inclusive expansion of Japan.

Today the war waged by our heroes continues. It is not yet won but little victories were gained. Although our country does not confront armies of the imperious foreigners, it faces enemies in various forms. The most formidable of these is the prevalent poverty of its own people. Slowly, poverty is eating up what has been gained by our heroes, including the very foundation of our nationhood – our dignity as a people. In times like this, our country needs a hero. Soon, our new hero will certainly rise. I don’t know where I get my hope for this prayer but I am sure somewhere, someone will answer the signs of times.

Our Philippines definitely is in dire search of a hero who will empower its people to perfect its being and fate. Someone who while in power and given the responsibility will yield the same to the people. Have the Ramon Magsaysay Awards helped us find our modern hero? Has the Nobel Prizes eluded us for some reasons?

Your guess is as good as the whole nation who practically begs for everyone to share a piece of this responsibility and power for her/his own people. Our heroes responded to the signs.

And there are other nameless and faceless individuals who do their own share of heroism in our struggle to regain what we had in the beginning of history.

There is certainly one with a name and face that is familiar to us. He may even come with several names (Tatay, Ama, Papa, Father) - but there is only one that endears him to us. Call him, and a hero is with us.