Heroes (3)

Indeed, great sacrifices were required of these heroes. Hardship and deprivation, fear and anxiety, were all unavoidable circumstances in their lofty aspirations to fight for what is right. Threats of execution were living realities for them, and which fructified in the cases of Rizal, Bonifacio, Aquino and many more. But these images of heroism were accompanied by an enduring spirit even in the face of death.

To embody courage under the most gruesome circumstance, and many of them were tortured, they had to repress their fears of pain and death. To embody toughness, they had to repress their feelings of vulnerability and sacrifice their time with, and emotions for, their families. To embody toughness, they had to repress their sensitivities. To fight the demons of the times, they had to repress compassion for their adversaries.

But the greed and megalomania of tyrants, whom these heroes have confronted, will keep on re-emerging as evil has a tenacious conduct that cannot be banished from the world. Even laws will not suffice to prohibit such conduct as even lawmakers become privy to the evil, the greed, and the contempt for the suffering masses of our people.

But the lessons of history are clear and the lives of our heroes are sufficiently tactile in making us aware of ourselves in the shaping of our destiny. Awareness reduces the chances of being manipulated by plunderers. When we finally take action on our awareness, it is when the hero within ourselves blossoms. And when collective action takes place, it is when the demons of greed, plunder, and corruption, start quaking in their steps. ericfmallonga@yahoo.com

Heros (1)

Good morning friends. Tooday is the big celebration of our Independence day. It is the time for our freedom. Freedom of our country.

INDEPENDENCE Day celebration filled me with past images of heroes struggling for the independence of this nation so that our people could be free. Clear images of heroism crystallize when their lives become tactile in the memories of people and families who continue their struggles today. History lessons are not just obscure pages from unread books that gather dust in school libraries. They are actual lessons from the lives of flesh-and-blood persons who made the ultimate sacrifice to unfetter the shackles of our people’s ignorance, apathy, and cowardice.

I remember accompanying my mother, Consolacion Florentino Mallonga, in visiting her homeland. She passed by the monument of her great grand-aunt Leona Florentino in Vigan, Ilocos Sur. As she reflected before the statue of the aged, noble lady who wrote award-winning poems of liberation against the Spaniards at a time of turmoil and national enslavement by Spain, I stumbled across the Florentino mansion just beside my ancestor’s monumental statue with a plaque that read: “Leona Florentino . . . distant aunt of Jose Rizal.”

Looking back with much perplexity at that precise moment of my mother’s visit to our ancestral homeland, I realized then that my mother wanted to share the simple message to elevate me from my normally seditious character—that our heroes were actually real people, who struggled in the time of their own lives when they walked the surface of this planet and that rebellion had its own causes and reasons for being. That woman straddled atop the monumental pedestal, the name of the man in the plaque at her mansion, and the woman reflecting before her monument—those people are my real-life heroes after whom I have patterned my life in a desire to emulate the values they have ingrained in their descendants. – Eric Mallonga