Hero

What’s a hero and what does it take to become one?

There were several attempts to answer that before and after National Heroes Day, ranging from emulating Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio to saving the Philippine flag from a flood.

The latter, in case you still haven’t heard about it, was done by 12-year-old Janela Arcos Lelis, of Malinao, Albay. At the height of Typhoon “Juaning” a couple of months ago, Janela went home to retrieve a flag that had been entrusted to the care of her 19-year-old brother, Edcel, by the Citizen’s Army Training group, of which he was a color officer. Edcel himself could not do it because he was busy helping evacuate people to higher ground. Janela found her home flooded but waded into the swirling water anyway, took the flag, and brought it to safety. A photographer caught her doing so, and truly she was a sight to behold, literally trying to keep her head—and the flag—above water.

I was about to contribute my two-cents’ worth to the question above when I came across a story in the Inquirer that offered a far better answer. It was as best a definition of what a hero is and what it took to be one as I could get.

That is the story of Jomel Lapides, a 21-year-old UP graduate, a laborer’s son who topped the nursing exams. That is not unusual, other children of impoverished families have accomplished the feat. What is unusual is that he doesn’t want to go abroad to ply his skills there.

“My family and friends are here, I’m content with what we have,” he says. What they have is an unfinished one-story, two-room, place, with a clothesline at the back. Jomel currently works part-time as a Math and Science tutor. After he gets his license, he says, he plans to apply to the PGH. That was where he interned, treating patients that were just as indigent as he, if not more. That is also the source of his decision to stay on. “These are the people who really need help.”

That has heroism written all over it.

What makes Jomel’s decision even more laudable is the contrast it strikes with the one Elmer Reyes Jacinto took seven years ago. Like Jomel, Elmer came from an impoverished family, recalling later that when he was a kid in Basilan he and his classmates could hear the sound of gunfire from their schoolhouse. More than Jomel, Elmer topped the board exams for medicine. Less than Jomel, Elmer decided to work abroad, specifically in New York, not as a doctor but as a nurse. The last was a statement unto itself, speaking volumes about how desperate and inferior the Filipino had become.

Of course it wasn’t hard to understand Elmer’s choice. Easy to say, “Where’s your loyalty to country?” but not very easy to decide otherwise while standing in his shoes. Try being poor and see what kind of pressures are likely to be exerted on you if you had the chance to work in the city that never sleeps, as the neighborhood karaoke puts it, and hemmed and hawed about it. If fact, forget about being poor, just try being an average Pinoy dreaming about how highly you are going to be esteemed working in the land of the free and brave, and see what pressures you are going to exert on yourself if at all you had any doubts.

Elmer’s decision is perfectly understandable, but it is also perfectly unfortunate. Especially when you consider how much this country spent to educate him only to lose that investment to the brain drain. Especially when you consider the message it sends to the world that a Filipino doctor qualifies only to work as a nurse in America. Especially when you consider—as Jomel has—the teeming masses in need of doctors and nurses in this country.

Doubtless what Jomel has done won’t make him Hero of the Year of Time Magazine the way Efren Peñaflorida’s kareton did. It doesn’t look as dramatic. Doubtless what Jomel has done won’t make him hero of the National Historical Commission the way Janela’s Iwo-Jima-like toast to the flag did. It doesn’t look as patriotic.

But it is heroism anyway, and just as luminous in its own quiet way. It offers a new way to define heroism. What is heroism?

It is doing the right thing despite the alternative being perfectly understandable.

If Janela Arcos Lelis had not plunged into the raging floodwater, her family, her school, his brother’s group would have understood it. Who knows? She might even have gotten a tongue-lashing before she got her medal: Didn’t she realize she could have drowned, what fool risks her life for something altogether replaceable? But for a photographer immortalizing the incident, it might have gone unnoticed and unappreciated, and who would have been the wiser for it? But Jalena did it anyway, and would probably do it again, for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do.

If Jomel Lapides had decided to follow in Elmer Jacinto’s footsteps, his family, his friends, his community would have understood it. Of course the pasture Elmer landed in didn’t exactly prove too green, he and several other Filipino nurses walked out of their jobs after being exploited cruelly and got sued for it. But it’s still a lot greener than Basilan, it’s still a lot greener than anywhere in the Philippines. At least it still fetches greenbacks which are 45 times worth more than any green back home.

Who knows? Even now Jomel may be getting a tongue-lashing: Doesn’t he realize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he is throwing away, what fool does that for a country whose people are desperate to leave it anyway? But for a newspaper that got drawn to its novelty, it might have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. But Jomel has done it, and will probably do it again and again, for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do.

It is the road not taken, and it makes all the difference.

It also makes for a hero.