Heidi Briones

BSP-3

Rizal Without the Overcoat

Through our high school and college education, we learned about our national hero, Jose Rizal his date
and place of birth, education, family, love life and even daily life. We say that we know all about our
national hero, which is why we celebrate him as a spiritual being who enjoys food and has friends, just
as we do laughing, smiling, and crying. Unfortunately, the records may not even be 100% accurate, and
historians at the time were making assumptions about some of the information. Some of the evidence
for this was rumors or misinformation that Rizal said he could speak 100 languages. Not given as such,
some sources cite 9, others cite 11, and other historians cite 22, making their claims absolutely clear.

Jose Rizal became a human, a Filipino, and he lived and breathed like us. This was confirmed by Ambeth
Ocampo after seeing unpublished works and information of Jose Rizal, photographs of a picnic in France,
him playing a flute, a photograph of him consuming together with his friends, taking a funny
photograph, and Rizal himself doing things that had been no longer shared to the public's eyes because
they had been, in Ocampo's words, no longer heroic sufficient or simply did no longer glorify our
National Hero. And unfortunately, we have ruined his dying wishes by burying him in a regular coffin
rather than under a monument, a simple tombstone and cross with his name and dates of birth and
death rather than a full plate with text. If his family preferred, he could build a simple fence with no
anniversaries. Yet, instead of drawing closer to him, we glorify his humanity and what he has done for us
year after year.

Perhaps in the future we will learn more about him than we already do, but for now we remain so close
yet so far from him and his life's work.