For all ye who love life and learning, lend an ear here.
GET A LIFE
Jose Dalisay Jr., PhD
Address to the Graduating Class
UP Baguio, 23 April 2005
Former UP President (Francisco) Nemenzo - whom I was
privileged to serve - was frankly not too fond of the
phrase "iskolar ng bayan" to describe the UP student. We
are all, of course, scholars of the people in this
university, in the technical sense that our studies are
subsidized by the sweat of the poor, whose hopes we bear
upon our shoulders.
But the President's point was that scholarship remains a
distinction to be earned not merely by scoring well in an
entrance examination, but by adopting a lifelong attitude
of critical inquiry and rational judgment.
This, sadly, is something that many of us lose upon our
entry into the University and our immersion in its life -
not only its intellectual and academic life, but also its
social and professional life. The curiosity ends, the magic
fades, the writing dries up, and we retreat to a cocoon -
to a dimly lit room marked "Me & Myself" - there to spend
the rest of our career sulking over the next fellow's
promotion and so-and-so's research grant.
"Get a life" has been one of my lifelong mantras. I have
always believed that while a formal education is a
wonderful thing, what I call an active life - with all its
serendipitous detours and little accidents - is even
better. It is a cliché by now to say that there are many
things we can never learn in school - but for those of us
who are in school, it is even more important to remember
this.
Some of the best things happen when we step outside of our
own lives and begin to be engaged in those of others.
Often, the answers to our own problems lie in others, and
in their larger predicaments. While involvement in a great
cause can also create its own kind of blindness to
everything else, I believe that, at least once in our
lives, we should embrace a passion larger than ourselves;
even the disillusionment that often follows can be very
instructive, and will bring us one step closer to wisdom.
One of the best ideas I ever heard came from a friend whom
I used to play billiards with until the wee hours of the
morning: "Everyone," he said while cleaning up the balls on
the table, "should be entitled to make at least one big
mistake."
I would not have been the writer I became if I had chosen
the safe path and stayed where I was supposed to be. It
took me two years to finish my MFA, and only three to
finish my PhD. But before that, it took me 14 years to get
my AB.
At 12 - like your chancellor - I entered the Philippine
Science High School. As my parents never tired of telling
anyone who cared to listen (and even those who didn't), I
was the entrance-exam topnotcher of my batch, No. 1 of
about 6,000 examinees. However, what my parents didn't say
was that after my first year in Science High, I was going
to be kicked out - with a 1.0 in English and a 5.0 in Math.
What happened? Well, you might say that I got a life.
From the grade-school nerd who read two books a day in our
all-boys Catholic school, I suddenly discovered girls,
parties, and fun. What did I do? I used my 1.0 in English
to save my 5.0 in Math, by writing a letter of appeal that
began with "At the outset, let me say that I bear malice
toward none." I guess it worked, because they put me on
probation for a year, and I survived PSHS by the skin of my
teeth.
At 16, I entered UP as an industrial engineering major -
and promptly got a 5.0 in Math 17, for too many absences -
the bane of the arrogant Science High graduate, even the
perennial flunker like me who thought he already knew more
Math than he needed to know.
At 17, still a freshman, I quit college - over the tears of
my mother, whose fondest hope was for me to graduate from
UP just like she did. I wanted to join the revolution,
like many of my comrades; at the same time I was impatient
to get a job.
At 18, I was working as a newspaper reporter covering
hospital fires, US embassy rallies, suicide cases, factory
strikes, and typhoon relief operations.
I spent most of my 19th year in martial-law prison.
At 20, I was a husband and father.
At 26, I took my first foreign trip.
At 27, I learned how to drive - and went back to school.
At 30, I got my AB, and decided that what I wanted to do
was to write and teach for the rest of my life, so here I
am.
I have been shot at, imprisoned, and worst of all, rejected
by more crushes than I care to remember. Aside from my
abortive career in journalism, I once worked as a
cook-waiter-cashier-busboy-janitor, cutting 40 pounds of
pork and chicken every day before turning them into
someone's dinner.
Much earlier, I worked as a municipal employee, checking
the attendance of Metro Aides at seven in the morning, and
then I studied printmaking and sold my etchings cheaply by
the dozen in Ermita. Incidentally, it was at that
printmaking shop that I met my wife June, who's here with
me today, and for whose patience with my colorful moods I
am forever grateful.
Some of these events have found their way to my writing;
most of them have not and never will. I believe that
creative writing should generate its own excitement, beyond
whatever may have happened to the author in his or her own
life. But neither can I deny that my outlook has been
influenced by what I have seen out there, as bright, as
indelible, and as disturbing as fresh blood.
If we are to abide by the Phi Kappa Phi motto to "let the
love of learning rule humanity," we should first ourselves
be ruled by the love of learning - learning from books, and
learning beyond them.
On the other side of the equation, let me observe that
there is, today, a nascent but disturbing strain of
anti-intellectualism in Philippine politics and society.
The vulgar ___expression of this sentiment has taken the
form of the suggestion that we can dispense with brains and
education when it comes to our national leadership, because
they have done us no good, anyway.
It is easy to see how this perception came about, and how
its attractiveness derives from its being at least
partially true. Many of our people feel betrayed by their
best and brightest - the edukado, as we are called in our
barangays - because we are too easily bought out by the
powers that be. Marcos and Estrada had probably the best
Cabinets in our political history, well-stocked with
prestigious PhDs from places like Oxford and Stanford; but
in the end, even they could do nothing against their
President and his excesses.
For us UP graduates, the seductions of power will always be
there. Power and wealth are also very interesting games to
play, and few play them better than UP grads - the power
side more than the wealth, as I suspect that Ateneans and
La Sallites are better at making money than we are.
But even these can put you out of touch. I have friends in
Malacañang and Makati who seem to have lost all sense of
life, thought, and feeling on the street, beyond what their
own commissioned surveys tell them. Worse, they seem to
have lost touch with their old, honest, self-critical
selves. They forgot all about Sophocles and poetry and
mystery and music you can't buy at the record store.
To be a UP student, faculty member, and alumnus is to be
burdened but also ennobled by a unique mission - not just
the mission of serving the people, which is in itself not
unique, and which is also reflected, for example, in the
Atenean concept of being a "man for others." Rather, to my
mind, our mission is to lead and to be led by reason - by
independent, scientific, and secular reason, rather than by
politicians, priests, shamans, bankers, or generals.
You are UP because you can think and speak for yourselves,
by your own wits and on your own two feet, and you can do
so no matter what the rest of the people in the room may be
thinking. You are UP because no one can tell you to shut
up, if you have something sensible and vital to say. You
are UP because you dread not the poverty of material
comforts but the poverty of the mind. And you are UP
because you care about something as abstract and sometimes
as treacherous as the idea of "nation", even if it kills
you.
Sometimes, long after UP, we forget these things and become
just like everybody else; I certainly have. Even so, I
suspect that that forgetfulness is laced with guilt - the
guilt of knowing that you were, and could yet become,
somebody better. And you cannot even argue that you did
not know, because today, I just told you so.
