CHOOSE TO CARE AND TO HOPE
Address to Graduates - Commencement Exercises
DE LA SALLE UNIVERSITY
October 9, 2004
Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J.
I would like to thank the Board of Trustees and the faculty of De La Salle University for this singular � in fact, most unexpected and unusual -- honor. I am sure there must have been not a few raised eyebrows when this award was discussed at the Board, as well as today, just as there were not a few raised eyebrows among my own Board of Trustees and community. Especially right after the UAAP basketball season. But it does give me an official occasion to congratulate the DLSU community most warmly for a great and dramatic championship. Truly, warmest congratulations. As we went through the basketball season, Bro. Armin, Dr. Quebengco, other administrators and I have shared with each other, that there are times when our alumni and students would express convictions which are a paraphrase of the famous dictum of Vince Lombardi about winning, �UAAP basketball is not everything. It is the only thing.�
But in our more quiet moments, we do see � at least sometimes -- that the truth is that it is not the only thing. And that is one reason I am standing before you today. The honorary degree given me by DLSU is a Doctor of Science for work in science education. Three decades ago in the early 1970s, when La Salle and Ateneo were still fighting it out in the NCAA, several friends from La Salle, UP, and Ateneo set out on a shared mission of seeking to make a contribution to strengthening science and technology in our country. At that time there were only three PhDs in math in the country, Dr. Marasigan and myself at the Ateneo and Dr. Favila in U.P. It was not much better in physics and only a little better in chemistry. Among the pioneer group were Dr. Ester Garcia, Dr. Roger Posadas, Dr. William Padolina from U.P., Prof. Salvador Gonzalez from La Salle, and myself from Ateneo. This grew in subsequent years with Bro. Andrew, Dr. Paulino Tan, Dr. Lita Quebengco, Dr. Wyona Patalinghug and others from DLSU, Fr. Samson and Fr. McNamara from Ateneo, Dr. Estrella Alabastro and Dr. Cristina Padolina of UP. This quest born out of shared vision and shared friendship changed the shape of graduate education in science and engineering in our country. From the three PhDs we had in mathematics in the early 1970s, we now have about 100. One of my genuine sources of sense of achievement are my PhD students leading the math departments in many universities -- here at DLSU are Dr. Vennie Gervacio, Dr. Aurora Trance, Dr. Blesilda Raposa, Dr. Arlene Pascasio. Four years ago when my students and colleagues organized a conference on the occasion of my 60th birthday, it was they who led the effort and organized the symposium held at De La Salle.
Towards the late 1980s and the 1990s under the leadership of Dr. Ceferino Follosco, then Secretary of DOST, we helped lead the largest intervention to date to improve science and engineering in our country, the ESEP. It provided Masters and Ph.D. grants, major equipment and library grants and overall large-scale support for science and engineering. I chaired the Project Advisory group and among the members were Dr. David Booth and Dr. Ester Garcia, who were my predecessors in receiving this honorary doctorate and speaking before you.
When I received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of the Philippines in 1992 and delivered the commencement address at UP Diliman, I spoke of what drove me and colleagues from De La Salle and UP to dedicate ourselves to building up graduate and research programs in science and engineering. I said:
�In the work of building up of education and science in our country . . . it has been my privilege to work closely with colleagues from the University of the Philippines, De La Salle and other universities. . . . In the mind of the general public, the relationship between U.P., Ateneo, De La Salle and other schools is usually seen in terms of rivalries in sports or bar and board exams. These are real, but there is also a greater and a deeper reality. It is that of a shared passionate commitment to a better life for our people and a better future for our land that has created among us bonds of unity beyond sectoral rivalries and tensions. For this occasion, which highlights our shared aspirations, my deepest thanks.�
I echo the same sentiments today.
But this occasion is for you, our graduating students and your parents and families and your teachers and friends. Congratulations to you and your parents and families on your singular achievement -- graduating from this distinguished university and ready to face the challenges of life and career. One of the most memorable commencement speeches I have read was that of Guy Kawasaki, one of the founders of Apple Computer, to the graduating class of his high school. He entitled his speech �Hindsights� and in a most vivid and entertaining way he speaks of 10 lessons learned since he graduated from high school.
His last hindsight is about parents and family. He says:
�Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone. This is the most important hindsight. It doesn�t need much explanation. I�ll just repeat it: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.
Nothing � not money, power, or fame � can replace your family and friends or bring them back once they are gone. Our greatest joy has been our baby, and I predict that children will bring you the greatest joy in your lives.�
As you go forth from this commencement, you will probably be most focused on career and success in life. You need to, because you are entering a very competitive world and our country needs young people like you to compete and succeed for our nation to prosper. But, as I tell my students, we live our lives in concentric circles. There is the outer circle of work, career, and financial success. Since we live most of our life in that circle, we can forget that there is a more important inner circle -- the circle of family, close friends, our life with God. It is actually here where we live our lives with much support, meaning and fulfillment.
So to you our graduating students, this is a time to thank and to celebrate your parents, families, teachers, friends. A time too to thank our good and generous God. To our parents here, be assured that your sons and daughters know you are there for them and their appreciation for your sacrifices will grow stronger through the years.
Some months ago I was on a flight to San Francisco. Beside me was a Chinese girl. On the last few hours of the flight, we chatted a bit. She had gone to Qinghua, the MIT of China. So she had a very privileged schooling like you. She had just finished graduate school in finance at Stanford � and so we shared stories of the Stanford I knew and her experiences of Stanford of more recent years. She said she was working in an investment house in San Jose, California. But she had just come back from a month of teaching finance in a university in Shanghai. She said that this was a commitment she made, to go back regularly to China and share of her finance expertise. I was impressed. I was even more impressed when she said that her other commitment was to give priority in her investment house to get investments for an industrial zone beside her home village. She got me thinking about the way we sometime phrase commitment to country in terms of staying or not staying. This young woman taught me that it is more a question of heart and of love. If you have a heart that cares for your native land, you will find a way to make a difference even if you are far away. And perhaps, on the other hand, if you do not have the heart, you will not make a difference even if you stay.
So the other thing I want to invite you to today is to give a care for your country and your people and to seek to make a difference. Our daily newspaper and tv headlines, the daily conversations you hear are of darkness and a sense of hopelessness. Care anyway! Over the years, I have learned that, in the face of our unending crises, you can choose, as the Christophers say, to stand aside and curse the darkness or you can choose to light a candle and do something for others. I invite you to light a candle. Believe me -- when you reach my age it will be much more satisfying to look back on how many candles you have lit than on how many times you have cursed the darkness.
Last Friday and Saturday I was at Fort Bonifacio at the Gawad Kalinga Expo. Gawad Kalinga is a massive outreach effort for the poor, spearheaded by the Couples for Christ. The ambition is to build 7000 communities among the poor � most visibly to build 700,000 homes for them in 7 years, but most important to build communities, education, health, livelihood with them. The GK expo last weekend had about 30 model houses, illustrating the 300 GK sites all over the country and introducing the many Filipinos and friends who are giving of themselves and their resources for the work. If you were there, several things would have caught your eye. One would have been a BMW being raffled off to build homes. This is the story behind it.
A couple of years ago, a young Englishman, Dylan Wilk, who had made a fortune in his early 20s in the world of computer games became intrigued with Gawad Kalinga. He visited, was much moved by what he saw, and decided to dedicate the next many years of his life to helping in the work. One of the first things he did was to sell his custombuilt BMW and build a community of homes with the money. Much as he loved his custombuilt BMW, he has told Rotary clubs and other audiences, he felt that he would really be much happier if he could build community and homes for the poor. Early this year he texted me a couple of times asking for prayers that he might persuade some of his Filipino friends to consider doing something similar. One responded -- and so over the weekend we saw this BMW being raffled off. As I went through the model houses, it was clear that this was not an isolated case. I saw several corporations, Smart, Selecta, Procter and Gamble, committing major resources to this venture. There was a family in the U.S. whose children had grown up. They sold their big house and their Mercedes and built a community of homes with it. I met Filipinos from Singapore and Indonesia who are raising funds to build homes in Baseco. There was an 8-year old boy from Texas, who made paintings and sold them and built three houses. The story would repeat many, many times in the people I met or read about over the weekend. Stories of Filipinos here and abroad who have chosen to light a candle, to care and to hope.
A second thing that might have struck you was the presence of our Muslim brothers and sisters in this Couples for Christ gathering. I talked with Mayor Totoy Paglas of Datu Paglas in Maguindanao and his wife, Lailanie. They have now built together with Gawad Kalinga 250 homes for the poor in what they are calling a Highway of Peace. Mayor Totoy said that he realized from talking with the old people that before martial law, the Muslims, Christians, Lumads lived together in peace. Today he says that their GK communities are a mix of Muslims, Lumads and Christians finding once more the peaceful life before the divisions of martial law. I was happy to tell him that a group I work with together with Bro. Rafe Donato would be coming to Datu Paglas and three other municipalities in Maguindanao to help the elementary schools, especially in reading and mathematics. For most of us in Manila, Mindanao is terrorism and conflict and Abu Sayyaf. In fact, I could not persuade my colleagues to consider doing the project signing in Datu Paglas. But I have lived and worked in Mindanao. There are wonderful stories there of love and hope � as with Mayor Totoy and Madame Lailanie.
When I presented these signs of hope in one meeting, one question was, "But what is that among so many?" What is 700,000 homes when we have millions of families of squatters in our land? A valid question, especially since after one year, GK has built only about 10,000 homes. This is the same question the apostles asked of Jesus when he asked them to find food for the 5,000. They said, �We have found a boy with 5 loaves and 2 fishes, but what is that among so many?� But Jesus took this seemingly insignificant offering and fed the 5,000. In his speech last Saturday, CFC chairman Frank Padilla said that the wonderful thing that we are discovering anew in this work is the miracle of the Gospel � Fr. Tito Caluag calls it �abundance in scarcity�. Homes being built because employees in one company pool together their unused leaves, because a young woman decides to forego a big party for her debut and instead celebrates with her friends by building a house, because grade school kids decide to make an alkansya in the shape of a GK house and ask family members to give a peso or 5 or 10. It is truly feeding multitudes through five loaves and two fishes. And when you visit Baseco -- which is just nearby -- and see the houses rising from the fire that razed the homes of 4,000 families just last year, it is not so small after all.
But there is more. Choosing to care and to hope rewards you a hundredfold. Our Christian Service program for second year high school students asks them to work for a semester in institutions like CRIBS for babies or ERDA for streetchildren. It has been a surprise to us � and to the boys as well � that they actually become quite good taking care of babies. But what I want to tell you is what happens to the boys. What has struck me most is how this contact with poor children changes the way they relate to others, esp. to family. Perhaps because the poor have nothing but themselves, the gift they often give to us is discovering ourselves and our loved ones. One boy writes of how he used to live in his world of computer games. His mother was a busy business woman and there were times when she would come home tired but he would just ignore her. That is, he says, before this experience with the poor taught him "to prioritize others first before myself." His experience opened his heart to how hard his mother was working for them. He could not find the words to say how sorry he was about his past behavior. So one night when she was working late at her computer, he brought her a sandwich and a glass of orange juice. His giving of himself to the poor children came back a hundredfold. For what could be a greater gift than a son finding his mother and a mother having her son given back to her.
The quest to build our country has grown ever more urgent in our time. It is no longer a question as in the 1970s, of whether we can catch up in science and technology � though that remains an important quest. It is a question of whether we as a nation can survive and prosper. It is a question of whether we will focus on the signs of darkness and despair or we will focus on the signs of light and build hope. In a homily I gave for the Simbang Gabi in 2002, I referred to part 2 of the �Lord of the Rings�, which I had just watched in a premiere and said:
�In a scene in the battle for Helms Deep, a frightened young boy turns to the great warrior Aragorn, �The men say that it is hopeless and we will all be dead by nightfall.� Aragorn replies, �No, there is always hope.� In the scenes that follow he shows that hope is not a given, it is the courage of leaders and people � and unexpected help from friends like the Elves � that create hope. In the moment of despair, the Elves had to choose whether to stand by or to join and give hope. They made the choice of joining and giving hope.�
And so, my dear graduates, choose to join and to give hope. Choose to care and to hope.
In the midst of your intense pursuit of career and success, remember your inner circle and give time to your family, your friends, your God.
Believe in the miracle of the loaves and fishes -- the seemingly little that you offer can help feed a multitude.
And yes, it will come back to you a hundredfold. For the wonder of gifts from the heart is that, as with the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, they are not diminished, but grow in the giving.
Congratulations once more and good afternoon.
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