Two cheers for the young

This is the time of the year when thousands of young Filipinos finish college, don their togas and listen to the mesmerizing blather of commencement speakers. Everything has been said before, the challenge of the real world beyond the campus, the need for the young to assume their roles and et ceteras. But what are our young mandarins thinking, aware as they are of Kris Aquino’s dizzying social whirl, and at the moment, the cacophony of young politicians clamoring for their votes?

"The tragedy of youth," wrote the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, "is that it is wasted on the young."

Can we say the same of our youth?

It is an historical given that oldies like myself mourn the good old days. This miserere is common among the elderly from ancient times to now. Ambeth Ocampo — and he is not even that rickety — complained that we have lost the urbanidad, the marmoreal virtues of decency and politeness which characterized the behavior of our grandfathers. You don’t have to belong to the upper crust — which is just a lot of crumbs — to be decorous; go to the village, to the peasantry and you will find propriety there.

But the young today?

Not long ago, at a lecture before freshmen at an elite college, during the question and answer period, I was floored by these two observations:

1. If everyone is doing it, then it must be right.

2. If I don’t bribe, how can I get ahead?

Sometime back, Peter Parson’s shocking documentary on the Japanese atrocities committed during the 1945 liberation of Manila was shown to upper-class students. After the screening, this was the comment: "What is in it for me?"

These basic questions may not be indicative of the thinking of young Filipinos today but they need to be answered not just by the young themselves, but by teachers, public opinion shapers, parents.

Heber Bartolome, the singer and composer who was very much involved in social activism in the ’60s and ’70s said the other day that the young musicians today, with all their groovy talent, do not say anything, they just wail about feelings, of love and loss, and they are irrelevant to a generation confronted not so much by unemployment as by the most basic of needs: food.

Look at TV, all those crowd drawers, those asinine talk shows that elevate crassness to the highest ratings, the fantasy movies, the canned stuff from Korea and elsewhere. Is this all that we value and admire?

But people don’t want to be reminded of grime and poverty. As an Indian film star said, the masses — and that means the downtrodden all over the world — want escape from their pitiable lot for which reason they crave laughter, brightness, fantasy — even if these are beyond their reach.

That is one side of the picture. Every so often, though, this tired old man is enlivened by teenage, purposeful visitors.

Recently, two Ateneo senior high school boys came to see me about writing. One had tagged along because he wanted to listen to what I had to say. Did he also want to write?

"No," he said, "I want to be a politician."

He went on. "I am sick of all the politicians now. They are not only corrupt, they have nothing between their ears. And they have no feeling for the people."

That fledgling writer must forgive me for having paid more attention to the boy who wanted to be in politics. I asked if he had other classmates who felt like he did, and he assured me there were.

She is a pretty, young, successful lawyer on New York’s Wall Street but she decided to come home to devote time to help rebuild this country from the rubble left by my generation. She wanted to discuss what she could do. I told her that her reentry would be traumatic, that she must be patient, understanding and compassionate.

Then last week, I got a visit from Youth Tourism Response-Philippines, an NGO of youngsters, all of them sterling nuggets of hope. One young woman was in San Francisco for years, had a good job there but now she was back to contribute what she could. Another was in Germany for years, speaks German, and is now settled here. She is married, has worked in government for more than a decade, and now she is going back to the university to teach full time, for she feels that is where she can do more than rot in a government office.

But what was most impressive was what one of them said — that they were all single, still young, and can devote themselves to their striving. When they get married, have families to feed, they know they will have to make compromises.

This is precisely why they must work now when they have all the energy and are not yet hostage to shackling compulsions.

I recall our history, the youths who started Asia’s first revolution against Western imperialism, who sought to establish Asia’s first republic — Rizal who was 35 years old when the Spaniards executed him, Aguinaldo, Mabini, Luna — they were all in their thirties, and Gregorio del Pilar who died in that epic Tirad Pass battle in 1899 — he was 24. And those who fought Marcos — all of them young, too, Ed Jopson, Emman Lacaba, and yes — this month more than 50 years ago when Bataan fell — all those soldiers in the Death March. And now, those adolescent politicians mouthing those sickening clichés about integrity and service to the people — how many of them really mean it, and will fructify their words with deeds, and their very lives?

My own youth — how it was during the Japanese Occupation, when we knew hunger, flight, fear, death, even — all the travail of those horrible years which matured us. In those cheap, greasy restaurants over pancit bihon and siopao, in those quiet afternoons in the shade of campus trees, we relived the war, and from that sobering stretch of time, we dredged from our deepest being what we could do so that we would have lasting peace and justice as well.

But many of us fell along the way, we grew old, dissipated. Corrupted even. Alas, as my doctor Vince Gomez said, once you have ridden the Mercedes, it is difficult to get off.

And so one day, during the martial law years, I saw one of my old friends. He was the editor of his college paper, a stirring speaker, a leader. He became a politician, ascended the heights, became a wealthy ally of Marcos. We saw each other in Makati after a hiatus of many years although I always saw his picture in the papers. He came to me, embraced me and whispered: "I hope you understand."

I understand how the heart falters, how the sight dims and how age lays siege to all of us, but I will never understand how the dream can die. And so, although I know it won’t be, how I wish I could have a lease of another 30 years so I can see how these brave young Filipinos who gladdened me will survive — like I did — and prevail, which I couldn’t.