Not to be ministered unto, but to minister

A graduation affirms, not ends, each student’s exploration of knowledge, skills and relationships. It provides a distinct venue to reflect on the immediate past, running after academic requirements, extracurricular involvements, over-demanding if not terror professors, schedules, and importantly, tuition funds. It is a season of thanksgiving — to parents, particularly the OFW kind, who work long and hard in some foreign land to provide an education for their children; and to teachers who unselfishly provide guidance and mentoring to help their students successfully navigate four to five years of university life. Undeniably, they are the real honorees in this annual occasion, and they have to be applauded loudly.

Traditionally, a graduation ceremony includes a commencement speech delivered by a presenter known for his selfless, earnest and inspirational points of view. He usually shares his life story to awaken the mind and the heart, his template of the road to success, the do’s and don’ts of family and corporate life, and a call to “give back” once they have the wherewithal to do so.

In his book Onward!, fiction writer and journalist Peter J. Smith put together an exceptional and eclectic collection of commencement addresses culled from thousands of speeches he has reviewed to complete this admirable initiative. The anthology encourages you to peruse more than 200 articulate pieces as you acknowledge and celebrate your own continuous journey into the future, and discover ways to apply them to the growth of all mankind.

The brilliant discourses in this archive were given years ago, but they remain relevant and motivating to this day. They came from people with commendable talents, broad experience, and laudable perspectives, like company CEOs, literary geniuses, multi-awarded journalists, spiritual leaders and heads of countries, among others. As a tribute to batch 2012, this writer shares these universal, timeless and helpful nuggets of wisdom selected from Onward!’s outstanding roster of commencement speakers. For sure their voices will resonate beyond the four walls of the graduation hall.

• Take risks. Civil rights mover Vernon Jordan said, “I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.”

• Nothing is impossible. Writer Toni Morrison mused, “The best thing you can give yourselves for graduation is the gift of possibility. And the best thing you can give each other is the pledge to go on protecting that gift in each other as long as you live.”

• Love what you do. “Watch out, watch out, as you go along, that what you’re doing is not merely a job, not merely a career, but your work, the thing that you really want to do, ” writer Frances Fitzgerald advised.

• Move on. “I solemnly promise you that these have not been the best years of your life,” writer Ellen Goodman exclaimed. “The truth is that people who look back to college as the peak experience have had the dreariest of adulthoods. I don’t wish that on any of you.”

• Free the mind and the spirit. Poet Maya Angelou avowed, “Young women, young men, this is the time. Since life is our most precious gift, and since it is given to us to live but once, let us live so we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity. And in living your lives each of you can say, ‘All my conscious life and energies have been devoted to the noblest cause in the world — the liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.’”

• You can make a difference by caring.  Journalist Anthony Lewis said, “Those of us who are not saints are bound to wonder, in the circumstances of this terrible century, what difference we can make. The belief that an individual can transform society is usually an illusion; newspaper columnists suffer from it, occasionally. But if wholesale transformation is unlikely, change does happen — and it usually comes because enough individuals refuse to live inside a compartment. Do not turn your head away from injustice. Know the limitations of your country and yourself, but do not give up. Do not stop believing you can make a difference. Care!”

• Continue learning and growing. Broadcasting icon Diane Sawyer announced, “Beware of things that go ‘duh’ in the night. I don’t know if evil and ignorance are, in fact, twins, but I can tell you this: of all the people I have interviewed, and I have interviewed murderers — Charles Manson — and I have interviewed bigots and racists and tyrants like Saddam Hussein — the one thing they have all had in common is profound ignorance about the world. Sometimes it’s willed, sometimes it’s pathological. But if you don’t keep growing and learning, the danger is not just being boring, but being unwittingly cruel.”

• Guard your right to a free press. Broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw declared, “If television screens were to go dark and printing presses were to stop rolling, the world would not stop changing. There still would be problems of unemployment, overpopulation, and nuclear proliferation. Those problems and all the others would not dry up. Indeed, they would grow at an alarming rate to the point where soon we would not be able to deal with them. And so I suggest to you that a free press is an irreplaceable source of power to a free people. I suggest to you that it is a fragile right that must be guarded zealously. I am counting on all of you to help.”

• Don’t become a cynic. Actor Paul Newman asserted, “Do not let people make you cynical. And do not think for a minute that you can have a good, full life if you don’t care about what happens to the other people who share this nation and this planet with you.”

• Connect with one another. “I am only human,” said Oscar award-winning actress Jodie Foster. “My eyesight is faulty, my hands are shaky; a million things will distort the goal. And no matter how well I aim that arrow, I never completely connect with the other. But it’s the process of trying that is significant. That’s where all the messy, beautiful human stuff lies — in the space between the ‘you’ and the ‘other,’ and between the ‘you’ and the ‘I.’”

• Build from a strong foundation. Speaking from a wheelchair, Superman actor Christopher Reeve shared: “We all have this inner strength within us — nothing special about me. Anybody can do it if they just rely on a solid base or a foundation that you start building now with education you’ve received.”

• Time is of the essence. Industrialist Malcolm Forbes averred, “We’ve got little enough time; you don’t realize until you’re running out of it how little time you have. So I would say to you, in the time you have left, make the most of it by making the most to you and not to somebody else.”

• Listen to your conscience. Former US President Bill Clinton said, “In all things in life, choose your conscience, and trust your instincts and lead your lives without regrets. It is simply easier that way.”

• Look beyond you. Former US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton recalled, “As students, we debated passionately what responsibility each individual had for the larger society. The most eloquent explanation I have found of what I believe now is from Vaclav Havel, the playwright and first freely elected president of Czechoslovakia. In a letter from prison to his wife, Olga, he wrote, ‘Everything meaningful in life is distinguished by a certain transcendence of human existence — beyond the limit of ‘self-care’ toward other people, toward society, toward the world.”

• Silence of the heart. Mother Teresa, now called Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, believed that “love begins at home — right there. And we must love until it hurts. And how do we begin to pray? God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”

• Patience and courage. Spiritual leader Dalai Lama expressed, “You have achieved your goal, and now you are ready to begin another chapter. Now you really start a life. Real life may be more complicated. You are bound to face some unhappy things, hindrances, obstacles and complications. So it is important to have determination and optimism and patience. If you lack patience, you lose courage. There is a Tibetan saying: ‘Even if you have failed at something nine times, you must continue and not lose hope.’ Use your brain to analyze the situation. Do not rush through it, but think.”

The following quotes from the world’s new thinkers are not included in Onward!, but they surely draw a lot of parallels from what have been said by other great minds decades ago.

• Help effect change for those who need it. JK Rowling, the British novelist internationally known for the Harry Potter series, affirmed, “If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.”

• “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Game changer Steve Jobs pronounced, “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. On the back cover of its final issue was a photograph of an early-morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish.’ It was their farewell message as they signed off. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.”

• Treat people well. Maverick Bill Gates advocated, “I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities, on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.”

• Choose to be kind. “Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice,” mused Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. “Gifts are easy — they’re given, after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.”

• No sincere service is too small.  Incumbent US President Barack Obama counseled, “But I hope you’ll remember, during those times of doubt and frustration, that there is nothing naive about your impulse to change the world. Because all it takes is one act of service — one blow against injustice — to send forth what Robert Kennedy called that ‘tiny ripple of hope.’ That’s what changes the world.”

• Put together an arsenal of fondness. Peabody award winner for broadcast excellence and WNYC Radiolab co-producer Robert Krulwich reflected, “In every career, your job is to make and tell stories, of course. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you’ve helped who’ve helped you back. This is the era of  ‘Friends in Low Places,’ the ones you meet now who will notice you, challenge you, work with you, and watch your back. Maybe they will be your strength.”

The commencement speech is a venerable and respectable tradition in the academic world. And from these wise quotes the overwhelming theme of the collective thoughts rests on the meaning of the Latin motto “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister” — to love, to care, and to be in the service of people. When you get invited to deliver one, be proud and feel honored. Not everybody gets that chance.

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com  or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.