The Day of Valor, we call it — Araw ng Kagitingan.

Yesterday marked the “Fall of Bataan,” and to many who can barely tell what those artworks on the walls of Manila’s Lagusnilad underpass mean, for example, the reason for honoring “a defeat” may seem odd.

Yet while one may believe decision-makers are generally derisible, the reason for this particular celebration is really rather moving.

There are wars that you lose and wars that you win, but not all war losers end up at the bottom of the pit. Faced with adversity, they become victors of the sort that are immortalized for their faith, endurance, and courage.

To lose one’s life for honor and country, to keep fighting under intense and constant attack — in death, you have won because your faith was undefeated.

But days like these remind us of what we had and force us to take a look at the reality of what valor means today.

They say heroes are born from their circumstances. We had our Rizals and Mabinis because of colonial oppression. We call OFWs modern-day heroes because of economic need, and not long ago, we gave this same honor to brave frontliners who emerged because of the pandemic.

What other kinds of heroes do we have today?

We say they are ordinary folks doing extraordinary things, fighting for causes bigger than they are.

They are people who continue to speak out and act against environmental degradation, defacement, and destruction. They are those who will not back down from transient greed that ruins protected sites like the Chocolate Hills of Bohol and the Masungi Georeserve.

The people who save abandoned animals and victims of cruelty are also unsung heroes. Their work is thankless, backbreaking, and often heartbreaking, yet they push on against lukewarm laws, indifference, and lack of support.

Heroes are those who keep trying, holding on to hope because they believe in something.

These days, however, it can be hard to believe in something.

Unabated corruption has done its job, certainly, making the most valiant among us lose faith.

It’s another form of valiance to hang on — to keep seeing the positive when all else seems sunk in a mire of diffidence. It takes a real belief in humanity to keep getting up to conquer each day. It’s not even about the media frenzy over cruelties reported in the ongoing wars but the daily dose of human foibles we get from social platforms that now serve as our windows to the world.

Ever wonder why there seems to have been a global call for kindness? It’s because the constant barrage of ideas that do not really uplift or serve the world has rendered them acceptable. It’s because the world’s “icons,” no matter in what field, are elevated as “heroes” that we have lost the meaning of the word.

And in the process, we no longer see the real sense of valiance.

It is courage — “feeling the fear and doing it anyway,” as some would say. But more than that, it is conquering those unspoken fears we have about living in a world inundated by selfishness and, even worse, hopelessness.

To have hope is valiance in itself.