Commencement

March and April are graduation months. While graduation programs are culminating activities, they are interestingly, and aptly, called commencement exercises. For indeed, while a chapter in the lives of graduates has ended, a new one has begun. Endings are really beginnings, too.

To graduates everywhere and of whatever year, the commencement exercise is a major milestone in one’s journey through life. There are mixed emotions, of course — gratitude to all who made graduation possible, relief at the end to tedious school work, sadness at saying goodbye to classmates and friends. Add to these — feelings of uncertainty, and consequently anxiety, of what lies ahead. Where does the road lead? 

Graduates everywhere and of whatever year soon realize that the road ahead is even longer than the road they have trekked getting to that much coveted diploma. And that road involves being part of a greater society than just the walls of academe and home. That road involves individual and societal transformations.

As we look at our society today, we immediately understand and see the urgent need for transformation. Not cosmetic change, but deep transformation. Not tomorrow, but beginning today.

Graduates today have an important role to play in the transformation of this nation. More and more, we have become a nation of young people, where the young constitute a majority of the population. Thus, new graduates do not have to wait for the future for them to be a force for societal change. They can be that force now. They can start making a difference now.

It is instructive to recall an anecdote:  A young graduate, full of idealism, goes forth raring to change the world. After some years, not succeeding in changing the world, he downsizes his goal and now just seeks to change his country. After some more years, he still is unsuccessful in changing his country, so he once again lowers his sights and just seeks to change the city where he resides. After sometime, he has become really disappointed that he cannot even change his city, and thus settles for seeking to transform his family. But even this has become difficult. So, feeling frustrated, not having changed the world, not having changed his country, not his city, not even his own family, he focuses on changing the only thing left — his own self.

What is the moral of the story? Is it to forget about idealism? Is it to forget about dreaming big? Is it to just be pragmatic and content with the way things are? No!

I  believe the moral of the story is this: if one wants to change the world, one should change himself first. The young graduate should have focused on transforming himself first, before attempting to change the world. Mahatma Gandhi puts it well: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Some would like to transform society by reforming structures and systems. While this will help, it is not enough unless we also address the fundamentals. 

A former high government official in the US, Charles Colson, who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon, was imprisoned due to charges related to Watergate. In prison, he encountered the Lord in a special way, in a similar way that Ninoy Aquino did, also in prison. In his book, “Against the Night,” Charles Colson writes: “I spent the first half of my professional life in politics and public service. When I was in the White House, I was a complete secularist. . .I really believed that people could be changed by government being changed. But when I became a Christian, I gained a new perspective on the actual influence political structures have over the course of history. I began to see that societies are changed only when people are changed, not the other way around. The crisis is not political; it is moral and spiritual.”

If we want to transform society, we need to hit the root of the problem. Since the core of the problem, as many agree, is moral and spiritual, then let us strike there. Otherwise, we will only keep jabbing away at the surface manifestations without landing the knockout punch.

We need to confront the multifarious problems in our country today with a strong value system, anchored on a solid moral and spiritual base.  Changes in governmental system, structures and processes should be founded on a moral and spiritual bedrock, otherwise these changes will not address the root causes and will therefore fail. Corruption can be licked with a stronger counterculture of honesty and fear of God over a culture of greed. Poverty can be overcome with a stronger culture of caring and sharing instead of a culture of indifference and selfishness.  Crime can be eradicated with a stronger culture of life rather than a culture of death.

Of course, all these will require a lot of work and any process on social transformation can actually overwhelm because of the complexity of it all.  We may not even know how and where to begin. But then, we are not called to solve all the problems of the world. We simply begin with ourselves and not point to, and blame, others. We start with small things. Let’s start by being honest, caring and being people who value life ourselves. Doing something good to others always inspires, and in some intangible but real way, transforms both the doer and the recipient. Let us do something good today, do it every day and hopefully help this posture go viral. As a Michael Jackson song expresses it: “Maybe you and I can’t do great things/ we may not change the world in one day/ but we can still change something today/ in our small way.”

A final thought: We should not limit doing good to just our own little circle of family and friends. We need to think of country too, and in fact, especially so at this time. There should be no room for apathy and indifference. Whatever happens in our country affects us all. In the context of the coming elections, we need to actively participate for we get the government we deserve. Everyone needs to do his part if we want transformation in our country.

I get inspiration from a quote in Jose Rizal’s “El Filibusterismo” with the character Isagani speaking: “When I have gray hairs like those, sir, …and turn my gaze back over my past and see that I have worked only for myself, without having done what I plainly could and should have done for the country that has given me everything, for the citizens that have helped me to live — then, sir, every gray hair will be a thorn, and instead of rejoicing, they will shame me!”

In a lot of ways, not only graduates go through commencement exercises. All of us are given continuing opportunities to commence doing something good. Let us do so today and, by the grace of God, sustain it all the way, to the ends of the earth, till the end of our days.

Jose Tale, a lawyer, is a member of the International Council of Couples for Christ.  He is also the Chief Legal Counsel of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).