Signposts for the graduates

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.  Mahatma Gandhi

Seeing the sea of graduates flow past the gates of their universities and into the deep ocean of possibilities, trials, challenges ahead of them tempts me to share my own journey since I myself graduated over 20 years ago from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. Still light years (I hope) away from the rocking chair, I see myself succumbing, wanting to ramble about my own tales even as I know that there is still much to learn, and that I may, in fact, not even have mastered my craft.

But being (almost) exactly where I dreamed myself to be makes me want to ramble, indeed, and share some signposts that were helpful in my journey. I’m living the dream I dreamt when I was a teenager filling up my summer days in my mother’s hometown in Bongabon, Oriental Mindoro, when there was no electricity most days (and nights), and therefore, no television. When I was not in the beach or with my playmates, I would pass the hours writing about imaginary people I interviewed in my mind, writing their profiles on lined pad paper from my grandmother’s store. Maybe I was inspired by reading all those magazines and books in the ancestral home, my relatives being voracious readers. I invented and reinvented the characters in my journal, distilling what I knew of them into prose. My dream then, and my dream when I was starry-eyed student struggling with Louie Beltran’s deadlines and freedom-of-the-press issues in Journalism school, were images from the same reel. I wanted to write about people. (Later, in the year 2000, Max Soliven would tell me I had billions of reasons to make my work interesting  the world had six billion people.)

I ensnared the heart of my teenaged dreams. Now, I make a living doing exactly the same thing I was doing during those Bongabon summers, except that the characters and interviews are for real, and the articles are fact rather than fiction. Perhaps that is why I have both a life and a living  I enjoy what I’m doing for a living. And when you like what you’re doing, you don’t have to work a day in your life. That’s signpost number one.

There was a time when I was tempted to veer away from that vision. From the various career talks I attended in my senior year in high school, it seemed that the road to the big bucks was not paved with articles and feature stories. They said you would earn more if you took up Business. So I actually spent my first two years in college as a Business Administration major till I flunked Math 100 (Calculus). After I flunked Calculus, I thought long and hard about what I really wanted to be.

If my main goal then was a high-paying job, then it certainly wouldn’t be through a Business Administration course (a difficult quota course) because I couldn’t even make heads and tails of Calculus. Confused, I actually went to the Guidance Counselor at Vinzons Hall and we looked over my aptitude tests. They showed that I was really inclined towards communications and the arts. I followed my heart, and found out that there lies my treasure, too.

Sign post number two: Follow your heart and maybe the high-paying job will follow. I wouldn’t really say journalists have high-paying jobs, they have high-yielding jobs. Their work yields results. They have the power to make a big difference in the lives of millions. They can “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable ” (according to Finely Peter Dunne, a 20th century Chicago newspaperman). They participate in and not just observe history, they can right wrongs and make people see the light. And if you get to be a Ricky Lo  wow he has had conversations with people we only see on the red carpet on Oscar night.

My very first trip abroad was a work assignment. The trip was so hectic my feet bled after from too much walking in bad shoes. But I’m not complaining because the call of duty took me to the inner sanctum of the Vatican, where I got to kiss the hand of Pope John Paul II. 

Thank God I flunked Calculus.

* * *

The workplace will never be a bed of roses whatever field you’re in. There is politics even in the hierarchy of priests and nuns and other religious leaders.

But it isn’t always the b_st_rds and the b_tch_s who get ahead and survive, as many a TV series would make us believe. I read somewhere about the “Policy of Nice.” It’s about people getting ahead without stepping on other people’s toes. There is even a book entitled, “Nice guys can get the corner office.” Quixotic but true. That’s signpost number three.

The late President Cory Aquino played by the rules and tried her best not to do wrong by anybody. She didn’t steal or scheme to stay in power. There was a time that some of us thought her legacy of clean and honest government was unappreciated. But when Cory died, Filipinos showed that the good men do are not buried with their bones  sorry, Mark Anthony!

Finally, if you think doing one’s homework ends when you leave school, you haven’t learned your lesson. Presidents and Prime Ministers, teachers and preachers, reporters and brokers  we all must do our homework. The minute we think we know it all is when we know nothing at all. That’s signpost number four.

I’d like to think every day is Graduation Day  and tomorrow is an ocean of opportunities and discoveries and lessons still. We may have graduated from university, but thank God we haven’t graduated from Life!

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])