You can dream and on your dreams you will build your future and the future of our country

To the graduates of Batch 2007 congratulations! This is graduation season. Let us not overshadow its importance with the political campaigns now going on. Our graduates deserve to be recognized. They deserve to get equal opportunities in the workplace. They deserve to get good compensations and benefits in their jobs so that they do not have to go offshores. We need them here in our country. It is about time we do something to keep our brothers and sisters in our homeland.

Dear graduates, as you successfully hurdled through your first important challenge in life and enter a new phase, do not ever forget that you can dream. Victor Hugo, the Frenchman who wrote the famous book, "Les Miserables", on which the successful Broadway and West End musical was based, once said, "There is nothing like a dream to create the future". So, go on and make sure you follow your dreams.

Keep your dreams alive. You have to understand that in order to achieve anything, you will have to have faith and belief in yourself. You should have a vision. Work hard. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. A poet once said, "dreams are like stars...you may never touch them, but if you follow them they will lead you to your destiny". The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. And just like the lyrics from the song, Somewhere, from the Wizard of Oz goes, "…and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."

Our country needs you to be strong, determined and dedicated. We need more dreamers so that the Philippines can once again wave its flag proudly to the rest of the world. Your idealism and energy should bring new, fresh ideas to the development of our country. Having fear to take the first step or putting yourselves down right away without even trying will not help. If you have already given up and told yourselves that nothing good will happen to our country – what is the use? With such an attitude, you have already lost the battle.

You are the youth who will bring back that change to our motherland. You should be determined to do your best in whatever field you have chosen to help our country get out from the terrible struggle – be it political, social or economical.

All it will take is for all of us to understand what this country is and what this country must become. The Philippines is our country, there is still a lot to be done with it. Let us not abandon her. We must endear it to our hearts and honor it. It was to be a nation where each man would live with equal opportunities and self-dignity – to strive, to seek, and, if he could, to find his happiness. While all of us must continue to work toward that day, we should do our part in nation building. Do not just leave everything to the politicians – they will continually corrupt our country and use up our taxes for personal gain. We must not allow them to continue their plight to exploit the Filipino people and this archipelago.

Building the Philippines is our duty. From this day forward, it is your challenge, as it will be so for all Filipinos. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants or politicians, who solemnly sign laws and then systemically break them. The work ahead is difficult. The choices we will face are complex. But I am confident that within each Filipino is a warrior – brave and courageous. He will always "fight for the right without question or doubt." Let us change our ways and our direction. We should not be serving ourselves. It is about time we serve our country. Go into the world now ready to use your talents and your education.

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I would like to use one of my father’s inspiring graduation speech which I am sure will put some meaning into the graduates’ experiences, dreams and fears and I quote, " Sir Winston Churchill was asked to give the commencement address at Oxford University. After he was introduced with the usual necrological type introduction that I just received, Sir Winston Churchill stood up, went to the podium and said, "My dear graduates, never give up." And then he went down to his seat and sat down. That was his commencement address. Actually I’m tempted to do the same thing.

But I just want to say that I congratulate all of you, I am very proud of all of you. There are only two things I’d like to add to the speech of Winston Churchill. And that is a saying from Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher who said, "our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." So I hope you remember that in the years to come because you as we did will fall many times but then you have to stand up again.

And I would like to say that we were very happy to graduate from high school because they gave us a hard time in school. But the most touching scene was when we got our diplomas and when we went down from the stage, we saw the professor that we hated most. The guy who had given us the hardest time in three subjects was crying to see us go. He told us, "You are the best students I ever had." But by golly, we hated that teacher. And yet in retrospect, in the years ahead, we found out that he had been the teacher who taught us a lot. Because he challenged us, to do our best, and to be our best, if only to show him that we could do it. So, there you are, you can do it. You can fight. You can meet the challenge of tomorrow. And you are the ones on whom our nation’s hopes are filled. We are counting on you to make our country great.

You know when we were students in high school we were made to memorize poems galore, and one of them was, we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. We wonder by lawn sea breakers and go by desolate streams, and yet we are the movers and shakers of the world whatever it seems. Go out and dream, go out and shake the world. And remember nothing is hard, nothing is insurmountable, nothing cannot be conquered by you.

Our national hero, Jose Rizal, once said of the youth, "Itaas ang inyong noong aliwalas. Mutyang kabataan sa inyong paglakad." Raise high your brow serene, fair hope of the fatherland, our country’s youth. And on the eve of his death he said, "I die just before we see the dawn break over our native land. You who will see that dawn, salute it. But forget not those who have perished in the night.

This is your dawn. You who will see that dawn salute it and remember those who perished in the night. Go forth and carry the message of your school in your hearts and conquer the world. Mabuhay and God bless you."