April arrives with barely a whisper, and yet it carries a weight many forget to notice: it is National Literature Month. This is not a token observance but a reminder that a people’s soul is embedded in the stories they tell. Without literature, a nation may exist in body but never in spirit.

Literature is not a decorative art in every society—it is a necessity. It records what history cannot always remember: the laughter of children under nipa huts, the silence of widows after the war, the chants of farmers calling rain into their fields. No census, legal archive, or ordinance can contain the fragrance of memory as literature does. It is where our idioms are safe, where our grandmothers’ lullabies are never lost, and where the deepest fears and wildest hopes of a people can be spoken without shame. And so, to neglect it is to erase ourselves while still breathing.

When one speaks of literature in Eastern Visayas, Waray literature must be mentioned—not as a footnote, but as a living, breathing force. For too long, it has remained in the shadows of more dominant regional languages, often dismissed, underestimated, or forgotten altogether. And yet, its value lies not in how many people speak it today, but in the universe that it contains—one shaped by tidal surges, coconut groves, whispered prayers in the dark, and the endless rhythm of people who endure. Waray literature doesn’t just tell stories—it safeguards the collective consciousness of a people who have been battered by storms, both literal and historical.

But the tragedy is this: most Warays themselves are unfamiliar with their own literary heritage. Ask a young student in Tacloban about Iluminado Lucente or Eduardo Makabenta, and you may be met with a shrug. Worse still, many schools continue to privilege foreign texts and Tagalog or English classics while giving only a passing glance at regional literature, if at all. It’s as if our own voices are too small to be worthy of the page. In our own classrooms, our words remain guests, never hosts. That should alarm us more than we admit.

It’s important to realize that literature is not merely for the literary. It is not just for those who write in broadsheets or win national awards. Literature is the unpaid teacher of the community. It helps a grandmother remember the song she sang while fleeing during the war. It gives a young writer in Borongan permission to write about their small town without apology. It allows the fish vendor, the tricycle driver, the housemaid to find parts of themselves in print, not as metaphors for misery, but as central figures in a story that matters.

When literature is neglected, culture becomes ornamental. We end up parading costumes in festivals without understanding the myths behind them. We perform courtship dances but forget the metaphors in the old love songs. Without written and oral literature, our cultural presentations risk becoming entertainment with no soul. We become fluent in mimicry but illiterate in meaning.

This is why National Literature Month must be more than a ceremonial branding on a calendar. It should be the moment we ask difficult questions about the cultural priorities of our schools, LGUs, and even ourselves. How many barangay libraries carry even a modest collection of Waray books? How many local government events make space for storytelling, poetry readings, or creative writing workshops for the youth? Without intentional action, we are letting a treasure rot quietly in the attic.

Literature, especially the regional kind, is not an afterthought to development—it is its foundation. People who know their stories are harder to manipulate, more resilient in crisis, and more daring in imagination. This April, may the observance of National Literature Month compel not just remembrance but recovery: of texts, of language, of identity. For a culture that cannot write itself down is a culture waiting to disappear.

THAT’S the ideal thing to do whenever we find ourselves in some difficult conflicts, especially in the area of politics. Let’s not make things worse by following the urges of the flesh, the ways of the world, and much less, the game of the devil. If water is what extinguishes fire, it is also sweetness that can overcome bitterness.

By not only staying calm but also choosing to be sweet with the parties involved, always showing affection and respect for the others, we facilitate the resolution of any conflict we have with them, we can even learn something from the differences we can have with them.
There will always be some wonderful changes that will take place in all the parties involved. There will be some polishing and refining of all the views and position at play. Most of all, we can remain brothers and sisters, friends and lovers of each other, keeping intact the charity that should always rule our life.

We have to remind ourselves that when we find ourselves in some conflicts with others, we should see to it that we avoid going through it by our lonesome. That would make these occasions of bitter conflicts a useless and purely negative event.

Truth is our conflicts with others can have tremendous meaning and positive effect on us if we go through them always with Christ. If we go by our Christian faith, we are sure that Christ is ever willing to suffer the bitterness for us and with us, and to convert that bitterness into the very means of our salvation, in fact.

There is no human bitterness that Christ is not willing to make also as his own. And he does it because he loves us, he wants to save us, he wants to bring us back to him. Let’s remember that his love is first of all gratuitous. He loves us first before we can learn to love him in return.

Christ loves us even if, according to our human standards, we do not deserve to be loved. Let’s never forget that because of this love, he, being God, emptied himself to become man, and still went further by assuming all our sins by going through his passion and death on the cross and by his resurrection.

We should therefore lose the fear of bitterness when we find ourselves in conflict with others, and learn how to convert it into a means and occasion to gain a greater good for all of us. If we believe in Christ and follow what he has taught and shown us, we will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of bitter conflicts, and all the other negative things that can mark our life.

So, we just have to be sport and cool when we find ourselves in some bitter conflicts with others. In fact, the ideal attitude would be to welcome these occasions of bitter conflicts, since in the first place, it cannot be avoided no matter how much we try. We have to cultivate a more positive outlook toward it and relish its inherent benefits for us.

For this, we need to discover and appreciate the link between the suffering caused by these bitter conflicts and loving. The two need not go against each other. In fact, they have to go together if we want our suffering to be meaningful and fruitful. And we have a way to do that. Go through them with Christ in his passion, death, and his resurrection!