We Don't Need Heroes

We Filipinos are good with grand gestures. People power revolutions - count us there. Street protests with burning effigies. Sure, why not? Sweeping change elections – you got our vote. Devastation from a once in a lifetime storm. Take our groceries and old clothes too. Another movement for clean and good governance? Hand us the bumper sticker and we’ll gladly slap it on the back of our cars. But once history is achieved and the heroics are demonstrated, we head back to the comfort of our routine and find that nothing really changed much.

Great nations and just societies, however, aren’t built with broad strokes. Rome – kill me now for saying this – wasn’t built in a day. They grew their empire, not on the backs of majestic undertakings like the Colosseum, but through the vast road network they quietly laid down, one stone at a time.

All of us Filipinos can choose to be part of all the momentous occasions that will alter the flow our country’s history, but we can also choose to see that each ordinary day is an opportunity to do so, and that there is also longevity and power in incremental change.

It’s a choice that confronts us every time we dutifully hold on to that piece of trash until a bin becomes available, or when we resist the urge to cut through a traffic jam by counter flowing. It’s a choice that is validated every time a persevering office worker earns a raise and brings home more to his family, or whenever a driven entrepreneur expands and creates more job opportunities in her business, or when a head honcho decides to declare his taxes in full. We don’t have to work in the government or an NGO, nor do we have to perform some extraordinary act of personal sacrifice to be part of moving this country forward.

We are Filipinos – we’ve already proven we can be heroes. Now is the time we each lay a stone and be nation-builders.

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Just in case you missed it, half of the reason we all enjoyed a long break last week was to commemorate National Heroes' Day. So here’s a belated salute to those who were in Pugad Lawin, and to the rest of those who came before and after them and rose to the challenge of their generation. May we have the courage to do the same.