Google Doodle Honors Jose Rizal, But What Would He Be Like if He Was Alive Today?

Filipinos today will find a familiar face in today’s Google Doodle.

Drawn in sepia, Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, who celebrates his 158th birth anniversary, is flanked by the two objects that best represented his two careers: the quill and magnifying glass—prolific writer and physician. The two novels that indirectly sparked the Philippine Revolution float below him, Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (The Reign of Greed).

Rizal has been mythologized again and again. People say he was Asia’s first documented metrosexual (Doubt it). He was the first emo. He was the first softboy. He was the second coming of Christ. The last rings strongly in his hometown of Calamba, where Rizalistas, as they call themselves, practice a variant of folk Christianity where Rizal is considered the messiah.

Born in 1861 and executed by firing squad at the hands of the Spanish in 1896, he left an abundance of material: letters, essays, and diaries allowing us to know the man behind the mystery.

Given all we know about him, one thing is very clear: the dude would feel right at home in 2019.

Like the multi-hyphenates of today, Rizal was a polymath who would do well in the current gig economy. Aside from being an ophthalmologist and a novelist, he was also a painter, a woodworker, and a sculptor. He wrote poetry and essays, social commentary pieces and plays. He concerned himself with various branches of study including architecture, economics, and anthropology. He knew a good deal about martial arts and fencing, and could work a pistol. As icing to the cake, he also knew at least 22 different languages. All by the age of 35. (Which, technically, makes him a millennial, right?)

If he lived in 2019, he would no doubt be famous. He is an accomplished writer and physician, after all. He’d probably have a weekly column online. (He wrote for the Spanish newspaper La Solidaridad under a pen name). He’d host podcasts on his novels. He might even be a part-time professor, the cool kind you’d definitely have a crush on. He had a knack for it when he was exiled to Dapitan.

As the epitome of an ilustrado, he’d definitely be a social butterfly and a jet setter, flying off to Pitti Uomo, one of the biggest international menswear events in the world. He was known as a particularly dapper man. We wouldn’t be surprised to see him on The Sartorialist. Or have his own well-curated Instagram feed with thousands of followers.

But back to serious business.

Rizal was loved enough that monuments were built in his honor. He was influential enough that his written work was required readings in schools.

In the turbulence of 2019, he’d probably call out the injustices he saw, write about it profusely, get bullied on social media as a result, and face arrest without any struggle (sound familiar with the current government?), much like what he did when he was captured in Barcelona. He was a political figure through and through, and would most likely still be one today.

In his essay “The Indolence of the Filipinos,” he defended the indolence of his countrymen by attributing it to several external factors, the biggest being that Filipinos are not their own masters. Question is: would he still think the same seeing the Philippine as it is today?

Unlike another Philippine hero, Andres Bonifacio, he was a reformist, not a revolutionary. He believed in gradual change. But he probably didn’t think it would take more than 150 years.