On April 9 each year, the Philippines marks Araw ng Kagitingan — the Day of Valor. We pause to remember the soldiers, both Filipino and American, who endured the unimaginable during the Bataan Death March in 1942. Their resistance and suffering have become part of our national DNA, etched into how we define sacrifice, nationhood and strength.
But perhaps courage is broader, more intimate, than war stories alone. Talk show legend David Letterman once said, “There’s only one requirement of any of us, and that is to be courageous. Because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior.”
It’s a surprising quote from a late-night host, but it rings with evolutionary, forensic and everyday truth.
As a biological anthropologist, I study how humans have changed and adapted over time. And if there’s one thing our ancestors needed to survive the brutal, unpredictable world of early hominin life, it was courage. Courage to hunt, to migrate, to face predators. Courage to protect their young, to endure childbirth without medical help, to form social bonds in a violent and volatile environment.
The fossil record may not show emotion, but healed injuries, shared tools and buried dead tell us something: Our ancestors didn’t just have brains or brawn. They had guts. They had grit. They chose to care, to take risks, to stay when it would have been easier to run.
Early humans didn’t thrive because they were the strongest or fastest. They survived because they worked together, helped the injured and faced uncertainty as a group. That, too, is courage — not the lone warrior model, but communal resilience. In fact, the emergence of cooperation, empathy and shared responsibility is a key chapter in the story of human evolution.
We see it in burial rites, in the ways early communities nursed sick members back to health, in the transmission of knowledge across generations. These acts may not fit our modern images of heroism, but they were acts of everyday bravery. And they still are.
Courage made us human. It continues to define how we live and how we serve.
As a forensic scientist, I see courage take a different form. It is the courage to say, “I don’t know,” when pressured to produce certainty. It is the quiet bravery of resisting shortcuts, of holding the line when the evidence is ambiguous. It is choosing not to overstate your findings, even in high-profile cases. In courtrooms, courage means telling the inconvenient truth. In laboratories, it means rejecting flawed methods — even when they’re widely used. In teaching, it means reminding students that science is not about looking smart. It is about being honest.
Consider the analyst who faces pressure to make a conclusive match, knowing the evidence supports only a probability. Or the pathologist who must stand in court and calmly explain why the popular theory of a case does not align with the autopsy findings. Or the forensic anthropologist at a mass disaster site, painstakingly working to identify human remains while families wait for names and closure.
These are not moments of physical battle, but they require a form of intellectual and moral valor that is just as critical.
Forensic courage is often invisible. There are no medals for it. But it matters. It preserves the integrity of our field. It guards against injustice and honors the dead by refusing to let their stories be distorted by guesswork or pressure.
But courage is not reserved for anthropologists, forensic experts or soldiers.
I see it every day in my students, especially those writing their theses and navigating research for the first time. It takes courage to ask for feedback, to admit confusion, to keep going when the page stays blank. It takes courage to present in front of a panel, knowing your ideas might be questioned. And yet, they persist.
I see it in overseas Filipino workers, boarding planes bound for places they’ve never seen, carrying the weight of their families’ hopes. In nurses and caregivers, choosing compassion over comfort in a foreign land. I see it in single parents navigating a world that often refuses to bend, and in children who choose kindness even when cruelty is easier.
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it’s just the voice that says, “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
And here’s the thing about courage: It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to feel real at first. Sometimes pretending to be brave is enough. Sometimes the act comes first, and the feeling follows. Our bodies may tremble, but we move forward anyway. That, for me, is still courage.
There is a particular kind of bravery in showing up, in staying true to your task, especially when no one is watching. And perhaps this is what kagitingan means in our time — not only great, historic feats of wartime gallantry, but the small, daily acts of standing firm, staying honest and carrying on.
Whether you are a soldier, a scientist, a student or a survivor, the instinct to endure, to persist, to protect, is an act of valor.
On Araw ng Kagitingan, we remember extraordinary bravery in extraordinary times. But let us not forget the quieter, everyday courage that surrounds us — and lives within us.
In forensics, in anthropology, in teaching, in life: The work continues. And it continues because somewhere, someone chose courage.
