Today is Heroes Day, the day we commemorate Jose Rizal's piercing pen, Andres Bonifacio's bolo, and Gabriela Silang's unflinching bravery. But let's get real here: there's another team of heroes waiting in plain sight. No, not the Avengers. Not even Darna. I'm referring to… librarians.
Librarians don't storm battlefields with swords today. They don't lead revolutions on mountaintops. But they do hush loudmouths like their existence hinges on it. And with this age of alternative facts spreading quicker than barangay chismis, librarians are effectively frontliners with card catalogs. Give Captain America's shield a break; a raised index finger from a librarian could silence a riot in an instant.
Librarians are the guardians of knowledge, custodians of our shared memory, and the only ones courageous enough to track you down for book loans past their due date. Rizal might have penned Noli Me Tangere with his pen, but let's be real here, if it weren't for today's librarians, half of us wouldn't even know where to look for a copy (probably stuck between Twilight and a miscellaneous dictionary).
See, heroes sacrifice for freedom, but librarians maintain that victory by holding receipts, literal receipts, such as birth certificates, titles to land, and also the fact that you checked out Diary ng Panget in 2012. They are a living testament that heroism is not all about boisterous sacrifice. Sometimes it's a matter of quiet persistence, working behind the scenes so generations of Filipinos won't forget who they are, where they came from, and why they can never get "there," "their," and "they're" mixed up.
So today, as we honor National Heroes Day, let's not only salute the heroes of textbooks. Let's also give a slow clap to librarians, teachers, health workers, farmers, and all the ordinary heroes. Whether they're guarding the memory of Rizal or just rescuing us from citing Wikipedia in our thesis, they show that true heroism takes many shapes, sometimes grasping a bolo, and sometimes grasping a barcode scanner.
Librarians don't storm battlefields with swords today. They don't lead revolutions on mountaintops. But they do hush loudmouths like their existence hinges on it. And with this age of alternative facts spreading quicker than barangay chismis, librarians are effectively frontliners with card catalogs. Give Captain America's shield a break; a raised index finger from a librarian could silence a riot in an instant.
Librarians are the guardians of knowledge, custodians of our shared memory, and the only ones courageous enough to track you down for book loans past their due date. Rizal might have penned Noli Me Tangere with his pen, but let's be real here, if it weren't for today's librarians, half of us wouldn't even know where to look for a copy (probably stuck between Twilight and a miscellaneous dictionary).
See, heroes sacrifice for freedom, but librarians maintain that victory by holding receipts, literal receipts, such as birth certificates, titles to land, and also the fact that you checked out Diary ng Panget in 2012. They are a living testament that heroism is not all about boisterous sacrifice. Sometimes it's a matter of quiet persistence, working behind the scenes so generations of Filipinos won't forget who they are, where they came from, and why they can never get "there," "their," and "they're" mixed up.
So today, as we honor National Heroes Day, let's not only salute the heroes of textbooks. Let's also give a slow clap to librarians, teachers, health workers, farmers, and all the ordinary heroes. Whether they're guarding the memory of Rizal or just rescuing us from citing Wikipedia in our thesis, they show that true heroism takes many shapes, sometimes grasping a bolo, and sometimes grasping a barcode scanner.
