Independence

Independence Day is the best time to remember Leon Kilat and the heroes of the revolution. Not just the more famous of them but especially those who fell as ordinary combatants with hardly anything now that would remember them by their names, they who fell in the field of battle and then away from the attention of those for whom they died.

We remember them collectively as a general concept. At worst, they give us a stale account of the expected collateral consequences of war. At best, they remind us that they sacrifice the most who sacrifice away from the attention of history. Theirs is the pure act of sacrifice, the pure act of heroism. To them we ought to pay good homage. We do well to pay attention.

And especially because the memory of the revolution slowly fades from the minds of the young. The young remember the revolution with a quality less than most of their elders who might have been born soon after the Second World War or when martial law was declared in 1972 or at least before EDSA 1986. They at least know the reality of social upheavals which are always political precursors to change. Only in times of crisis do we pay attention to social relationships. They become real. They become relevant to survival.

Our own children may not even have experienced the wake of a major typhoon that closed down streets and cut off water and electric services for days. They might never have gone through a time when the whole neighborhood had to band together to clear the streets of fallen trees and posts, share food and water, and then look after each other’s safety when night fell. The children have never experienced these. They live in a world diametrically different from ours.

And yet, we are old enough to know the world does not continue like this forever. In time, even they will come into a time of crisis. We might as well prepare them well. And if only because of this, they ought to carry with them a memory of independence more profound than the regular flag waving and the regular parades.

And they ought not to be afraid of social change because the world is changing all the time as it has always done over history. And it is not at all unexpected that these changes should be marked by periods of crisis when everything stops and gives way to an unfolding occurrence.

These occurrences do happen as cyclical events. Whenever and wherever collective values and beliefs outstrip the confining limits of a social and political establishment, change is bound to come. Such as when Filipinos finally began to realize the condition of their own subjugation and realized as well the value of self-rule and the political freedoms they deserved, it did not take them long to band together to work and fight for change.

And the most important part of that change was the consequent realization that our collective future was entirely up to us. It was not up to the dictates of a foreign culture and country. Ever as before it is in this sense that we are truly free.

After the passing of more than a century since, the work to make a better nation of ourselves continues. This is the lesson which must be taught by every generation to those who follow them. So many who had fallen anonymous in the battlefields of the revolution leave for a us a wonderful lesson. They died without knowing the sweetness of victory and freedom. They leave us with a thought we ought to pay attention to: The revolution continues as it should even in our day and age. As it must for as long as there are so many among us who are poor and less free than others.