Over a century ago, Jose Mercado Rizal, our national hero, was shot at Bagumbayan.
I knew him first through stories that has a gamu-gamo in it. Later, in high school, thanks to Ms Mylene Capati, my Filipino teacher during my sophomore and junior years, Rizal became an inspiration through his works of Noli Me Tangre and El Filibusterismo. Though both are required read during high school, it made a mark because Ms Capati challenged us to stage the best play about Noli Me Tangre. So, we did = )
I still remember how our room at Colegio de San Juan de Letran, 217, called "The Bag", was transformed to become the backdrop to fit the first 20 chapters of Noli Me Tangre. We had two nitso at the back of the room to the horror of our teachers. Specially, Ma'am Silvela, our Religion teacher = )
The beauty of the whole becoming-a-man situation is that, in order for one to stage a play about Rizal's work, one has to read the book which encourages one to reading and understanding the Philippines during Rizal's time.
Back then, me and my high school friends, the KAKA, got into theater big time. (By the way, Kaka is the term Crispin uses when he calls his older brother, Basilio, in Noli Me Tangere. Which will also tell you, that these moments were not simply a stage play but a galvanizing point that will forever link the lives of twelve men.) By that, I mean, we read the novels in order to understand the nuances and objectives of each of the character so that we can create what Rizal was trying to say. So that in return, the audience can experience his work in a new way.
It was only recently, after finishing reading the book called The First Filipino, a book first printed in the 60s, that my understanding of Rizal grew deeper. The book made Rizal real to me. Expounded the internal mechanism that drove him to be become who he is. This has shifted his heroism, for me, from the area of myths and genes towards the science of psychology, environment, nature and nurture.
It also explained to me why he wrote so strongly. So beautifully. His obras, his magnum opus, his works after all was written before he was 33. His work were untarnished with the beautiful burden of having a wife and raising kids. He wrote the books even before he was domesticated = )
But one can argue, how could a man love someone completely if his burden is the whole independence of the Philippines? I even doubt, if he could find a true partner at that time to share his burdens. For one, only few women would really understand him and get him for only a privilege few ever went to school. And it would not also help that it was customary, at that time, to have single educated ladies be married via arrangement as early as 15 years old. And the fact that his surname, Mercado, is linked to Burgos of the GomBurZa in a bad way as seen through Spanish eyes, didn't help either. Plus, Facebook has not been invented yet = )
I do not mean to trivialized his greatness. I firmly believe that he is the greatest Malay to have ever lived. His circumstances, his choices and decisions and the result of those is legendary. Heroic indeed. And the book made me understand him as a man, as a Filipino. The book made him accessible to me. Made him a friend, a brother. He came alive = )
After reading the book I was thrown back to a chapter in El Filibusterismo, when Simoun, the more seasoned Crisostomo Ibarra of Noli Me Tangre, was talking with and actually lambasting Basilio's semi-charmed life. I felt sad because Rizal's observation in the 19th century is still very true now at the 21st.
It is true, "... nothing is new under the sun."
Now, as a I do my morning run and as I reach the front of his monument at the Luneta, I will forever offer a salute as I pass by.
Rizal showed what was possible. And now, I believe him in ways unknown in my past.
"... why think like mere men?"
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