‘Learn as if you were to live forever’

Education is empowerment, the one thing that sets many of us apart from that vendor across the hotel who is perhaps as creative, as intelligent, as hardworking. Unfortunately, like a traveler without a passport, he wasn’t able to board the plane and take off in life. He missed the flight of a lifetime.

As I’ve always said, in order to reach the top, you first have to go places. Education is our passport to life’s many takeoffs.

My late grandmother Jovita Arellano Reyes graduated valedictorian from Grade 6 in a public school in Tingloy, Batangas. But unfortunately, her circumstances forced her to quit school after that. But by dint of hard work, she and my late grandfather Igmedio Reyes of Bongabon, Oriental Mindoro were able to send my mother Sonia to St. Scholastica’s College in Manila for high school, and to UP Diliman for college. In doing so, they gave her a passport to see the world, literally and figuratively, and my mother was able to pass the world on to us.

My mother Sonia was 11 years old, a promdi from Oriental Mindoro, when she was brought to St. Scholastica’s to be an intern. It was the first time she was separated from her parents, and to compound her separation anxiety, she was thrust from the boondocks to the barracks, so to speak, under the watchful eyes of the German Benedictine nuns. She recalled crying herself to sleep at night out of homesickness. My grandparents, miles away in Mindoro, cried themselves to sleep, too.

And yet they all persevered because they believed that the education my mother was going to get in a convent school in Manila was going to be both her passport and visa to more opportunities in life. Even in the ‘50s, they believed that education would unlock many closed doors, even plane doors for my mom, female and a promdi at that.

Mom eventually adjusted to her new school, made many new friends and by the time she graduated from high school, she boldly told her parents that she wanted to go to UP! Perhaps the nuns and her parents were taken aback by her guts — but hey, they gave her an education that empowered her to make a choice and now that she was choosing a non-sectarian university that was a republic unto itself, that was as radical as St. Scho was conservative, they consented. They gave her wings, and they were not going to be the first to clip them.

Pope John Paul II and the author during President Corazon Aquino’s state visit to the Vatican in June 1988. Photo by VAL RODRIGUEZ

My grandmother never got past Luzon in her youth. By the time she could afford to travel, she was busy with business, babies, and later on, frail health. My mother, now 77, on the other hand, has seen the world. When planning vacations, she can afford to say without any trace of boastfulness, “Sawa na ako sa Paris, ha.”

To be able to send my three sisters and me to the Assumption Convent, my late dad Frank would work himself to the bone and my mother would deprive herself of some luxuries. But they saw how the school was molding us into  — with apologies to Pia Wurtzbach — confidently smart young ladies with a heart, who knew Math as well as Shakespeare, and could navigate slum areas during outreach programs as well as they could navigate a shopping mall. Even when my parents had a hard time making ends meet because Assumption was expensive, they persevered. They weren’t keeping up with the Joneses because our neighbors weren’t Joneses themselves; they were investing into something that was going to last beyond their lifetimes: a good education for their children. Assumption, then and now, aimed to educate its girls to be servant leaders for social transformation.

But there were sacrifices, and heartaches, too, at being amongst the “haves,” so to speak. Some of my classmates summered in San Francisco while we summered in Mindoro, a beautiful island by the way. Whenever I would sigh to my dad, with a tinge of envy, that I wished I could go abroad, too, he would tell me sternly, “Study hard, work hard so that one day you could see the world, too.” The picture that I had pinned to my bulletin board of hopes was that of a classmate sitting on a bench with a bed of tulips behind her. I promised myself that I would study hard so that one day I could have a photo by a bed — nay, a field — of tulips, too.

Like my mother, my sisters and I were sent to UP, the perfect cap to four years in a convent school. While at UP, a schoolmate at the College of Mass Communications introduced me to Isaac Belmonte, who, with his mother Betty Go Belmonte, was setting up a magazine called “Star Monthly.”

In my sophomore year in college, I became assistant editor of the magazine and by the time I graduated, I was associate editor. Through the Belmontes, I was privileged to work with the presidential campaign of democracy icon Cory Aquino.

After Cory became President, I became her close-in reporter, and eventually, the executive editor of the Presidential Press Staff. Those were heady historic days, a front-seat view of a watershed in Philippine history. But it was also memorable, not just because I survived six coup attempts with my President, but also because it was while working with Cory that I fulfilled my fondest dream — you know the photo in my mind of the bed of tulips?

I finally set foot on foreign soil — Switzerland and Italy, with Hong Kong as my first stopover. To me, it was like pole vaulting from an Ace bag to a Louis Vuitton. If you ask me my most memorable flight, it has to be that one on board Cathay Pacific, descending on the Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong as the lights of the harbor blinked and Love’s Theme played throughout the cabin until touch down. Priceless.

A dream come true: the day I beheld a field of tulips in the Netherlands. Photo by JOANNE RAE RAMIREZ

I have had many, many happy landings since then, and I haven’t stopped learning new things between every triumphant take off and every joyous touchdown.

My six years at Malacañang, and my years with The Philippine STAR and with PeopleAsia magazine have given me the opportunity to meet heads of state, princes of the church as well as princes of pop. At the Vatican, I got to kiss the ring of Pope John Paul II. In Malacañang last year, I got to kiss the ring of Pope Francis as well. I’ve ridden helicopter gunships to the Cordilleras to cover rebel leaders, and I’ve also travelled First Class to interview Pierce Brosnan. Each trip was an unforgettable lesson in life and living.

My mother-in-law, quoting St. Augustine, once told me, “To travel is to see God.” That’s exactly how I felt when I beheld the frescoes at the Sistine Chapel for the first time, or the Niagara Falls in Canada, or the Sydney Opera House from the top of the Sydney Bridge, which I climbed bar by bar, or the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska. The magnificence of God’s work, whether natural or man-made, makes me want to genuflect in awe, in praise and thanksgiving.

To travel is also to up one’s market value — whether before a future mother-in-law or a future boss. You can dazzle them by knowing the difference between Colombia and the District of Columbia and British Columbia, between Newark and New York, between Buda and Pest.

You study in order to travel and see the world, and you return, wanting to learn some more.

So you can say I’ve been studying for most of my life, for my education didn’t end when I passed through the portals of Assumption or UP. I think I’m still learning when I pass through the columns of the Eiffel Tower or the Novotel in Cubao.

I don’t want to stop learning because I don’t want to stop working for a purpose greater than myself.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)