WE were all born, again, on Aug. 21.

Nineteen years ago, at a time of deep uncertainty over the future of the nation, a man returned bearing the gift of certitude. Former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. returned to remind us of the one thing many had already forgotten: the essential truth that the Filipino was truly worth dying for.

The forgetting process began as soon as martial law was declared, leading an American senator to famously remark that the Philippines was peopled by 40 million cowards run by one SOB. The machinery of martial law accelerated the process, by creatively confusing the fate of the nation with the personality cult of the conjugal dictatorship. By 1983, in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, the sense of drift and despair was thick. The pro-democracy movement continued to make some headway in highly urbanized areas and in the countryside, but the country as a whole seemed -- quite literally -- hopeless.

Aquino's return, and his act of self-sacrifice, quickened the life of the nation, and gave it hope.