Pastilan! Living the dog-eat-dog world of a Global Pinoy!

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Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

Henri Frederic Amiel once said that, “It is not what he has, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”

In this world, we are faced with two types of people. One who would have the ability to withstand the trial and the other who would make the best out of the trial. Most often than not, we are usually geared to just withstand the trial. It is just but ordinary, based on our human instinct, to survive. Everyone wants to survive, everyone would want to live another day, almost everyone I know would want to see their selves able to withstand the challenge that were posed before us.

Unfortunately, I do not belong to that type of people. No, not me. I consider myself to be more of that who would make the best out of the trial.

I would do my best to survive the day and use that trial to soar to the highest mountain, to let me see what I could have missed should I have quit, to conquer the sky and see what is waiting for me on the other side of my circumstance. To me, every little trials, challenges and problems are just there to hold me back, to stop me from becoming the person I want to be, to limit my potential -- but that, ladies and gentlemen, is a choice. It is a choice to yield to life’s trials, a choice to just withstand it or a choice to live it and use that trial as a spring board to dive into the bigger ocean.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I have already chosen to fight, to reach for my stars, for I believe, nothing or no one should stop me, to bring me down and let me lose the courage to continue the fight. I have already made a resolve that I will not just live the day but would see my tomorrow with candor, with grace, with self-respect. I would not succumb to the enticing of losing the battle, to the temptation to just let it go, to the mediocrity of “I live another day”. I would see to it that the choice I made to fight would not abandon my free spirited self. No, not until the last breath escapes my gasping mouth and flaring nostrils.

Being a student of the University of Baguio, I am determined to finish my studies. Oh well, that could be very fundamental. I am not unique. I consider myself as an average individual. I have nothing to show off. But what lies beneath this average student is an extraordinary willpower to kick the trials and use it as my stepping boulder so I could reach for what is up there. I never allow myself to sulk to what I know could be left behind.

Sometimes it is the darkest, most violent thunderstorms that bring forth the most beautiful, clear, blue skies. Most of the time, I see myself to be by and large the same with my peers. Only to realize that there are some things I do and believe that made me a little different somehow. I believe my challenges as a student is generally very similar with most of my fellow students. I have to survived the demands of academic pressures, the sleepless nights to beat the deadline of submission of papers, I cannot count how many times I have ran out of money so I could buy school-related projects, these challenges are for sure mundane in comparison with that of the challenges of other people.

What is more challenging to me is what lies beyond. Living a college life is more intricate than what we thought it is. Being a student in the University of Baguio necessitates separation from our comfort zone. It is also living a dangerous life. Let me explain how.

When I talk about trials, it is easy to think about the usual problems that a normal, average student would face in a daily basis. Day in and day out, school has something to do with it. But that is a fact; universities are there to bring out the best in you. To make you understand the intricacies of life that awaits us all after this journey. Only few can understand that all these workings would boil down to the pursuit of excellence. Excellence is the state or quality of excelling. It is considered to be an important value, and a goal to be pursued. For me, achieving a high level of performance or exceeding normal expectations of performance or meeting the highest expectations of what can be achieved through performing well in excess of the norm or simply put, outperforming most – is excellence.

The problem is, being a student; it is very easy to sway with the tide. And so the real problems we all have are not the ones that are obvious, that are basically there to make our life a bit tough, the ones that we should worry more are those that are deceiving. The real trial in our life is how to find ourselves - to find our passion.

Then remember what T. Alan Armstrong thought provoking issues on passion, “If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.”

It is no secret: Life is tough. But the good news is we don't have to go through it alone. The culture of excellence that our university is putting into action should be seen in a personal context of self-determination and road of finding ourselves. To find out what we really want to achieve in life. We must know how we are really going to be tomorrow.

It seems that somehow we are tricked into thinking that life is about attaining status and wealth. We are conditioned to respond to getting a raise by buying new things that we could not afford before. We have attended to this amazing university with a vocational mindset, hoping to get hired by a big fancy company or start a great new company, all with the goal of gaining great financial success. But is that journey the kind of life we would truly enjoy?

I have found myself struggling to find the balance between the priorities of a couple of different goals. I am still not sure what matters most to me. Take a moment to ponder with me the importance of each of these goals; to be financially wealthy, to travel the world, to create something, to teach something, to help someone, to create opportunity, to seize opportunity, to do something that really matters.

I guess what I am trying to express is that the key to enjoying life is experiencing it all, and then going back and doing it again the way you think is right. Your priorities for each goal in life will be different from mine, which is what makes us unique. But we have to take ourselves out of this “victim” syndrome where when we are faced with the tragedy of life’s challenges, we just fall to our knees, while others would just withstand it all.

There is more we can do, we can stop ourselves from falling victims to self-pity or just living another day, we can trample this trial and use it to reach for our bright future ahead of us.

We can be the very best survivor of the trial because we did not just choose to live but we lived the day to become best! Life is all about flying, we fly then we land. We land to the best spot we could find while soaring up high.

Until we can say, this is it, Ladies & Gentlemen, the eagle has landed.

News always fascinates me. Writing is a challenge and one of those passions included in my very short list of things on my bed spread. The problem with news, it should be straight that I ended up spending so much of my time being vigilant so that the truth is not bent, that honesty shall prevail and for fraud to surface. The good news is, in the College of Nursing, there is not much bad news and it is good to me. But in the long run, it is practically impossible that good news is constant. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, he warned that, “Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost.”

It is the bad news that excites me. I actually loathe at it. But just like Bonaparte, there is not an instant to be lost when presented with it. In my short stay in the University of Baguio, I have met spectacular personalities, worked with different types of people and rubbed elbows with the amazing and the simple. The culture was extremely unfamiliar to me, I learned a thing or two and bruised me big time in the process but at the end of the day, I hit the bed with a smile, that at least, life has never been less interesting. I even pray for it. Hoping that life be a constant opportunity to beat the bad news, that bad news never stays the same. It churns the optimist in me.

Being a chunk in the arena of student leadership, I want to emphasize two things. First, there is a need for all the students of the College of Nursing to sprint and be “bold and daring.” Secondly, everybody must do the same. When it comes to what is considered as bad news, it is when change is introduced. That of course is a sign of lack of understanding that change would improve us all. Another is often the news that would involve participation and time. Time is what we make of it. It is just frustrating to hear complaints about certain issues but only the few would put effort to be a part of the solution. The majority would flee from involvement, so it elates me to see students reading what is on the bulletin board. That is a sign that at least their visual gift is not actually wasted.

I dare everyone to be bold and daring. Be bold to stand for what is right and to uphold the truth. Be bold to accept our roles as student by respecting our Clinical Instructors, administrators and those who are in authority. Be bold to accept that our mentors are not omniscient and only through constructive participation and sharing that true symbiotic relationship shall exist. Be bold to respect individual differences and promote tolerance. Dare to be part of the solution, but if you are oblivious to bother, try not to add to the problem. Be bold to go beyond your potential. Do not be satisfied with what is just being presented within the boundaries of the classrooms, the world is so vast, we can actually drown with its vastness and yet, we are still ignorant of what the world has to offer. Dare to make a difference. Dare to acknowledge that all the persons we meet in this university have its own purpose, be nice to everyone even if others are not. Do not be too traditional. Life changes and together with it is the demand of the time compelling everyone to be more creative, to be assertive of our rights and to be more participative. Be bold to remain a person of character and virtue.

Student life is not without end. This part of our life shall be reduced to memories but what would be left is our ability to withstand the real battle waiting for us after graduating from this university. What lies ahead is the true test of our character, our virtue and our strength to win the real challenges of life. Take advantage of this chance, when we are still allowed to falter because of our naïve disposition, when we can still fail because it is understandable, be wary of this opportunity to be care free for at the end of the day, when we are no longer under the responsibility of our instructors and administrators, we shall be by ourselves. We shall be the person based on the choices we made during the time when we are still being prepared to travel the journey they call life. Let us all be careful of what we pick along this journey, for what may break or help us is what we did or did not choose.

Life will be a constant skirmish of good and bad news. It will not change but it does not matter, what matter most is who was left standing. Who fought the fight, who made the difference, who were the bold and the daring.