It’s hip2b2

I just attended the De La Salle University (DLSU) Batch 2006-2007 Third and Summer Term Graduation Ceremony this morning (June 16 2007 at 9:00am) at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). Here is the graduation response of this year’s class … ummm, DLSU does not have valedictorians … speaker?

To our Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Joaquin Quintos IV, our University President, Br. Armin Luistro, our Chancellor, Dr. Carmelita Quebengco, our beloved Lasallian Brothers, college deans and administrators, faculty and staff, dear parents and friends, my fellow graduates, good morning.

Graduating—doesn’t it always feel like a victory? With make-believe diplomas on hand like scepters, we march, poised and resolute, clad in togas of unbroken black. Under the gleam of light and gaze of others’ eyes, we hold our heads up high as we go, images of confidence and certainty. Ecstatic, our imaginations race over the boundless horizon before us.

‘Shall I proceed to law, medicine or business?’, we ask ourselves; ‘Or, shall I devote myself to research and teaching? Pursue graduate studies, a Master’s perhaps or a ladderized Ph.D.? Or maybe begin working? Will I work for-profit or not-for-profit? Shall I start my own firm or join someone else’s? Will it be a local organization or a multi-national?’ So many thoughts, so many options, so many possibilities.

But this hopeful dreaminess does not last. It doesn’t take long before we realize that we’re about to make our debut into the fabled ‘real world’, an unforgiving wasteland where choices are oppressively limited, where no-strings-attached is an age-old joke, and where heroism waives due process and is immediately punishable by death. We’re crossing over and can no longer turn back.

Yet this realization comes not in an all-encompassing instant. Like droplets of water that bang by the force and consistency of gravity on foreheads, bare and unadulterated, the rape of youthful idealism is slow.

And, it begins with a seemingly elevating benediction by those who’ve come before us—as they say, ‘You, the youth, are our nation’s hope for a brighter future’.

With every inspirational talk and graduation response delivered across the 7,107 islands of this youth-predominated country indebted to this snippet of unacknowledged brilliance, surely, we cannot help but wonder how long it’s been since this saying’s become so ubiquitous and indubitable. Perhaps, during the time of our parents, these selfsame words were used to (and I quote) ‘inspire’ them during their grade school, high school, and college graduations. Perhaps, during the time of their parents, our grandparents, this too was true. Moving further and further back in time, do we not correctly remember even our national hero, Jose Rizal, making a declaration of similar import, albeit somewhat less directly, in his letter to the women of Malolos?

Sadly, repetition does not produce results.

‘You, the youth, are our nation’s hope for a brighter future’—does it not sound oddly like the waving of a white flag under such ornamented circumstances, so as to disguise the fact of delegation if not capitulation?

‘You, the youth, are our nation’s hope for a brighter future’—does this challenge not loom before us on a towering pedestal, a worthy yet just about unreachable goal, a Herculean task commanded of a youth bewildered by a duplicity between what is demanded and what is proffered, what is expected and what is done?

‘You, the youth, are our nation’s hope for a brighter future’—does it not beckon like a call to martyrdom, the blasting of a horn before a charge to an inevitable and outwardly (only outwardly) heroic death?

Sadly, repetition does not produce results.

Repetition produces goals but no means, an end but no paths, a peak but neither ladder nor rope. The goal of nation-building is a worthy goal indeed, but can we rightfully expect the mass of Filipino youth to take up the challenge when the only means to its accomplishment lie in martyrdom—the sacrifice of all things valuable, the relinquishment of all bonds of friendship and family, love, loyalty and fidelity, the death in our hearts and in our minds of the natural human inclination toward the ‘good life’?

Happiness is every living being’s most righteous desire. We all stand rightfully unashamed in our hopes for a good home, a loving family, quality education for our children, ample (and hopefully palatable) food to eat, a steady supply of running water, energy, disposable income for a rainy day, and so on. Happiness is no evil aspiration. It is, in fact, at the root of our every act of kindness, at the root of compassion, and of every great deed of heroism. It is what drives us to build a better country for ourselves and for those that we love. Happiness is every Filipino’s most righteous desire.

Yet, happiness is now but distant reality. Today, those willing heroes become martyrs. Those determined to uplift the state of the Philippines must die, often in ways more horrifying than mere bodily death. For centuries, we’ve witnessed the ritual murder of youthful hopefulness, the murder of hope within those who are our only hope. For centuries, the young were made to choose advancement over honor, power over character, money over wisdom and spiritual wealth; they were made to believe that goodness is alien to happiness, that richness could only be gained at the expense of a life of responsibility and moral integrity. We’ve been made fools of, believing that the only way to righteousness is total self-sacrifice. And, believing this was true, we’ve unwittingly made it so, to our own detriment, and to our own demise.

Our vision, as the new generation of Filipinos, drawing from the strength and guidance of those who’ve come before us—the administrators who are the brick and mortar of this university, the faculty who have so often endured our ignorance, cradling even the tinniest spark of brilliance within us with such undeniable joy, the staff who though silent and, at times, near invisible, make our academic lives so seamless, so perfect, and our parents who, God knows, could have poured much less financial, emotional, and physical investments into many other things at much greater return but didn’t—(our vision with their strength and guidance) is to create for ourselves a new Philippines, a Philippines where good deeds are rewarded, where gallantry is praised and heroes lifted up. We will build for ourselves a new world where love for country and love for family are no longer disjoined, a world where living the ‘good life’ becomes a possibility for every Filipino, and nationalism, a choice free to all, made by all.

As the new generation of Filipinos, we will build institutions that will usurp those of the decadent past. We will make of social work the profession of every citizen—entrepreneur, industrialist, engineer, scientist, educator, all. Social justice shall become the cause of every man and woman, and social development her only goal. And they will be rewarded. They will be praised. They will be prosperous, empowered and, most of all, happy. They will live like sovereigns among sovereigns in a land of the sovereign free, a land that will be of our making.

And, when, in a scant few decades, we find that our time is done, we will in turn call upon the youth of our sunset years, and with those selfsame words we shall bring forth to them a new message of inspiration. As we say, ‘You, the youth, are our nation’s hope for a brighter future,’ we will exhort them to become our nation’s heroes, not its martyrs.

Wainwright Gregory S. Yu
Manila, Philippines
June 16 2007

This term’s graduation speaker is Wainwright Gregory S. Yu (yes, we are related), Summa Cum Laude, Br. Gabriel Connon Awardee, Student Leadership Awardee, Carlos J. Valdez Gold Medal for Excellence in Accountancy Awardee, Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis in Philosophy and Member of the De La Salle University Jose Rizal Honors Society. Congratulations Wainwright and Good Luck!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 8:13 am and is filed under Academics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.