Education forever
Today is the beginning of March, and for some, it’s graduation. Schooling is a magnificent journey, an enlightening experience, a golden opportunity to “retreat” from the world for a while and listen — and let the teachers do the talking. In school, we learn to look at things differently, to discover, to increase our knowledge and acquire wisdom and to answer for ourselves the questions, “What do I want? And why?” so that we may become more like the people we were intended to be.
We cannot become what we need to be by “remaining.” Because I’m sure God made us for a great purpose and a greater good. “To serve God is to reign,” as the UST core value reminds me.
I want to share with you how important it has been for me to be passionate about serving through learning. I remember those times when I had difficulty understanding the lesson. “What was that again, Fr. Dela Rosa? Hermeneutics? That’s what, po? Oh the study of…” And us mates, priests, lawyers, professors, businessmen in the classroom tried so hard to understand, yet nothing sank in. Finally, some made sense of it all, while others only pretended they understood. Some found a can of beer to blame, the long jeepney ride where they fell asleep, the overload of papers my teacher classmates checked to make illiterate students brilliant people. Nevertheless, we would just sit up, alert till dismissal, when we scrambled to borrow books from the enormous ecclesiastical library (that drove me nuts searching for dogma) until the next class when we had to intelligently discuss hermeneutics for Fr. Dela Rosa — a true inspiration. Education is knowledge forever, even if it means being awakened while dozing behind a book and bombarded with a question dreamland didn’t furnish, because beauty was sleeping!
I got to learn in that half-moon, elevated room that when my classmate, Gen. Romeo Peña, was asleep, one leg bopped up and down briskly. Was that a police diversionary tactic, I wondered, while attending my National Defense College of the Philippines class, because when Romy was awake his leg would lay still. And me? I remember falling briskly asleep at 2 p.m. during an anthropology class at UP in that steaming hot room with skulls. Waking up, not even knowing what had happened momentarily due to a brief fatigue blackout, I stretched my arms and shoulders backward. I realized I had moved an object behind me. I screamed because I had bumped against a hanging skeleton that, some time ago, had been a living human being.
There were competitive times too, as we assembled in an auditorium for an IQ test during high school at Maryknoll College. What makes a car run was the query on a sheet. Comparing answers later, we laughed till we cried. Some answered a radio, others the tires, some a bumper, and finally, could it be an engine…? I never got to know the correct answer the psychologist wanted! I was one of the last to complete that exercise in the huge auditorium at what is now Miriam College. As with all exams, we sat like regular students seated next to one another. First came the freshmen, then the sophomores, then the third-year students and finally the graduating class, all of us filling up 500 seats and never near a classmate.
Research and fieldwork have always been exciting but rather expensive — Butig in Lanao Sur, Sultan Kudarat in Maguindanao, Bonggao, Tawi Tawi, Balanguingui in Sulu and so forth in Ulutanga, Mindanao. In the Academy, our fieldwork was referred to as the Cadet Attachment Program or CAP. While for the Police, Fire and Jail recruits, fieldwork was referred to as Field Training Exercise to make them understand life, not just theories (and rightly so), in the service of a demanding citizenry.
The value of education is bountiful. It prepares us to discuss current issues, historical accounts, even the origins of the universe. All told, didn’t you feel like a little god and less of a mortal, knowing, and being boastful of learning something new every day? It turns out I was completely ignorant and realized how completely kind life can be when, even if we’re graduates and educators, we can be perennial students in any college with professors welcoming us wholeheartedly. Education should never be snobbish. We subject ourselves not just to learning but knowing, to store up new knowledge in the vaults of our brains and memories.
One of the values I learned at UST, aside from the liberal arts of humanitarianism, philosophy, literature, research, history, theology, etc., is that knowledge lightens up my heart and brings a sparkle to my eyes: with it, I am young forever. It is encouraging for me to continue discovering new things through academics while adding spirituality to my life on a Dominican campus.
Education has prepared us for a better future. I myself became confident, equipped with the right direction and the right knowledge to lead in whatever path I desired. So can you have confidence, too? I’m positive it’s a yes. If it’s a no, I encourage you to make knowledge your arrow of strength, too.
Education is our passport in everyday life. So we get rated scholastically on our capacity to use our mental, moral, emotional and even physical prowess? That’s all right. Grades are meant to be confidential as we move onward towards a diploma. A diploma is not merely a beautiful piece of sheepskin paper affirming we’ve satisfied the requirements of school. It is a testimony of our parents’ desire for their children to secure a bright future, and it’s a student’s reward for all the sleepless nights studying for exams and cramming to beat deadlines. A test of our tolerance for stress, and if not, a candidate for a cool cucumber to put over eyebags. Me? I want to remain in school to be taught. Sitting down and learning will never be outmoded.
By the way, the start of the Holy Week was Ash Wednesday and I reminisce about the bold letters on our patron saint’s St. Antoninus statue: “Every individual has the responsibility to quiet down the agitated, encourage the fearful, and assist the sick.”
God works through different people in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves His purpose through us all. All too soon, another question pops up: How can we get along with each other if we are all so different from each other? Through school, in a classroom precisely because we are different individuals, committed in a convergence, complementing — not competing with each other — to assist the many whose lives we may touch with compassion, patience, and understanding.
Isn’t it obvious God loves variety and uniqueness? I look around and see introverts and extroverts in my office, thinkers and feelers. Some work best when given an individual assignment while others work better as a team. I push them with deadlines, thinking life is not just surviving in this world nor getting by nor making a living — it’s doing things that have a positive impact on many even if we know that everything that happens in this world happens at the time someone up there chooses. Whether it be birth or death, planting or pulling up, tearing down or building. God sets the time for sorrow and the time for joy, for mourning and for dancing, for tearing and mending, for silence and for talking. He sets the time for love and the time for hate, the time for war and the time for peace. And surely, success is not for sale. Schooling, anyone? Go make a difference.
People seldom improve when they only have their own yardstick to measure with. I can assure you I’ve made more improvements in my own life as a result of learning, and more from criticism, than from praise. Regardless, live to get the gold to feed yourselves; if you won’t, convince a friend to go to school to discipline his or her life.
Friends, by the way, are some of God’s best gifts to us. Well, parents come first and your younger naughty siblings, too. Convince a relative to study. Try a scholarship. Be an inspiration for friends or relatives. Let’s get outside of ourselves and care about what’s happening outside through guided education.
Be a dreamer. As the saying goes: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” We need men and women entering the workforce to say, “Why not?” We need solutions to air and noise pollution, garbage and traffic. We need sincere human relations. Right?
So, dare to succeed! Keep your head in the clouds. Dream to make knowledge a reality. Obstacles? Obstacles are things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
The world is full of people who follow wherever the path leads. We need people in our community who strive to walk new paths and leave a trail behind to follow.
