Hero

I have read an article from a blog a couple of weeks ago which in a way annoyed me.  Here it is:

http://definitelyfilipino.com/blog/2011/08/23/pinoys-who-think-ninoy-aquino-would-have-made-the-country-better-are-fooling-themselves/

Ninoy Aquino was assassinated a year before I was born.  I haven't heard of the guy except that he was the husband of Cory Aquino, one of the world's most iconic women of the 20th century.  I also knew he's the guy on the five hundred peso bill and considered the martyr who brought down the despot Ferdinand Marcos' regime.  Ninoy Aquino is considered a national hero and is revered by those who fight for justice and freedom.

True, we will never know if he would've become the greatest President everybody thought or wished he could've been.  Perhaps his stay in Congress was lackluster having passed very few laws.  Arguably though, few bills passed by the opposition during those times were approved by both House and Senate which lapped  from Marcos' hands and the country's coffers.  Ninoy was a very outspoken critic who fearlessly spoke of what the hoi polio are afraid to say, fearing summary execution or baseless and unjust persecution.  He was jailed, exiled and eventually assassinated to keep the people from rising against the despot.  The opposite happened and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

It always saddens me when you get people so cynical of how they view the world, it pulls you down into a vacuum of hopelessness.  I, too, sometimes grow tired of hoping, hoping for the best, hoping for change, hoping to see my country rise and be recognized as one of the promised lands of the 21st century.  The writer wrote well and quite passionately but passion alone leaves a lot more wanting.  He said Heroes are the Opium of the Pinoy, rephrasing Mao Zedong's famous line: religion is the opium of the people.  It is sad that he tried to downplay Ninoy's contribution to the restoration of democracy in our country.  It is infuriating that he considers people who believed in Ninoy nincompoops.  Ninoy, he said, has never built anything and people are just too dependent on hero-worship that they would just be swept by the grandeur of what one man did instead of moving themselves to elevate the country from the muck we are in.  True, in almost all aspects involving our motherland we are in the crapper and true, we need to get a hold of reality, see what's really goin' on so we can move forward.  Articles like this, however beautifully written, do not motivate they demoralize and instead of opening people's minds to the spirit of volunteerism, change and hope, you further deaden them.

Believe what you want to believe.  But I know that everyday, everybody hurts.  Some hurt more than others but everybody hurts nonetheless.  Some would take refuge in prayer, in charity, drugs, alcohol, sex, work and many more.  And whatever way that would help my people's pain go away is not something I shutdown.  I will not take away from someone whatever it is that helps him get through the pain of everyday, so long as what he's doing is right.  If, my friends, for one day every year, people will look towards Ninoy's picture and beam with hope and pride, it is not their fault and it is not naivety.  Rather, it is commendable, a sure sign that my people haven't lost their will, that my people have a spirit unbroken despite all odds.  And when one day all of us think that way, there will no longer be "regular Filipinos", we will all be heroes.