COMMENCEMENT addresses, like the speeches of politicians, are usually cliché-ridden, which is why most of them are predictable and boring. However, one of the things that you should struggle against for the rest of your lives are clichés and the sophomoric (what we call back home as “pa-kyut pero baduy naman”). Happily, there was one commencement address this year that was quite bromide-free and this was the speech delivered by the reigning Miss CNMI International to the kindergarten students of Dandan Elementary School: “You are a small kitten now when you look into the mirror,” she said, “but you’re [already] a lion in the eyes of your parents….” Christine, a future CNMI chief justice, advised the kids to remember only three things: Respect God, love your parents, get educated. In the very long history of humankind, there are very very few pieces of advice that are half as handy.
Now I will tell you some other useful things I’ve learned these past 35 years.
It is SO nice to be young. You think you know everything and you think you can do anything. You believe that you matter, and that only if you would you could change the world.
You know what? You can, and you should.
All you have to do is to stop believing all this talk about how your “culture,” your upbringing and your relatives have made you the person that you are and that they could prevent you from rising above them. That is nonsense. All this blabber about “culture” usually comes from well-meaning liberals who do not realize how unbearably patronizing and condescending they sound every time they talk about the “natives.” Most of them are hoping that you, unlike most of the statesiders, would listen to them. Don’t.
Insist that you should be judged as the person that you are and the things you intend—and will—do. Then tell them what your culture REALLY teaches you: Respect for the elderly, self-sufficiency and the fearlessness required when crossing the most violent of all oceans aboard hand-made wooden boats without a compass and any other Western navigational tools.
You have no excuses not to succeed. You have been provided with all the advantages that your counterparts in the Third World can only sigh about. If you don’t believe me then ask your maids or your farmers.
You can be whatever you want to be.
Remember the word “pro-active”? You probably heard CNMI officials mention it when praising a virtue they had just violated by their actions. Pro-active means that you can fix whatever bad thing that happened to you—that you have the power to do something about it. It means taking control of your life by doing things that you can do instead of waiting for others to do it for you. You are, to quote a very wise man, responsible for your own life, and your behavior is a function of your decisions, not your conditions. You can make things happen.
As one of the more famous philosophers of the 20th century would put it: “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. [Because] if you want to make the world a better place [then] take a look at yourself and make that change.”
Nietzsche? Sartre?
Michael Jackson.
Don’t be a victim and don’t believe that you are one. Don’t blame someone else for your predicament. Instead, do something about it. Whenever confronted with an unpleasantness, never ask who is to blame, but what is the solution.
And remember: The more you know, the more you can change the world.
You’ve been ceaselessly told that the future belongs to you. Well, it does. But why wait? NOW can also belong to you.
