National Heroes Day, held every August, celebrates no hero in particular. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ (NCCA) website states that a committee in 1995 recommended nine Filipino historical figures as National Heroes. To this date, no action has been taken on the recommendations as the NCCA explains that any such proclamation might trigger bitter debates. President Duterte recently demonstrated this when in an interview after the May elections, he said he would raise Lapu-Lapu to the status of National Hero. But beyond the debate is the simple fact that our heroes’ stories are written to inspire us to become better Filipinos, if not Filipino heroes ourselves. Yes, there can still be heroes and villains in this day and age when our greatest challenge is to navigate rush-hour traffic. Recently giving the commencement address at Harvard, American film director Steven Spielberg enumerated the monsters of racism, homophobia and ethnic, class, political and religious hatred as villains to be vanquished. In our country, the biggest villains are powerlessness, hopelessness and apathy--powerlessness to stop the further spread of social problems such as poverty; hopelessness that whatever we do will amount to nothing because of overwhelming odds; and resultant apathy or disconnectedness from our communities because we firmly believe that whatever the problem, it is the government’s job to solve it.