A Message to the Class of 2006 (or My Late 2005 Commencement Address)

Going to the graduation ceremonies at UCLA last weekend, I reflected upon my own graduation a year ago. My then-sister's-fiance-now-brother-in-law was hoping that I would speak at my Pilipino Commencement, but at the time I had writer's block, and simply did not know what to tell my class. A year later, it looks like I finally have something to say. So call it a year and a week late. Enjoy this long (and purposely unedited/cut post).

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Allow me the honor of wishing to all of you graduates my deepest congratulations! I'm sure you all have heard a thousand times over how amazing an accomplishment this is, and how now you are armed with the tools to change the world and solve the problems that plague our world. And oh how many are out there! Hunger, war, disease, poverty. But you'll take care of it. It's your generation's turn. And it's your efforts as graduates of UCLA that will redeem the errors that humankind has wrought upon itself, and bring about a world of peace, prosperity, and social justice. Your generation will be our salvation. And I just have one thing to say to add to that: I hope you enjoyed that verbal sedative, because by the time you're finished reading this, they've just hurled you off the Ivory Tower.

Now before you start judging me, thinking that the real world has turned me into a Bible-thumping neo-con, just read on. I have not forgotten my work at UCLA. I have not thrown away all the knowledge and the cherished memories I had working with Samahang, APC, and the coalitions we helped build in the efforts to build a more equitable society. I still believe the war in Iraq is wrong, and that Pax Americana is an American-centric egotrip, too drunk off the colors of the American flag to understand what democracy and freedom really mean.

But I also want realistic and sustainable change. I believe that the Earth would not have the resources to sustain us if every person in the world were equal, living an average American lifestyle. I believe that the United States cannot make a complete, immediate withdrawal from Iraq unless it has a strategy to prevent extremists from Iran from taking over. I believe that while the efforts to lower student fees are admirable, lowering those fees would not sustain the quality of the University education unless the University receives more resources from the government, and that can only result in a monumental shift in minds of California politicians and voters taxes, and their willingness to pay more to support social services.

If there's anything that a year paying my own rent has taught me is that everything has a price, people and resources have their limits, and the social ills that woke us up in college have been around for thousands of years and have never been solved. Even the best efforts of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and all of the other prophets, saints, social activists, and Children of God couldn't stop the suffering and tragedy in the world. Somehow I don't expect us to fare any better.

So with all the gloom and doom, and the seemingly inevitability of Armageddon upon us, why even attempt to actualize this wishy-washy idea of social justice? In all the darkness, I found some glimmer of light in the words of a mentor, Tim Ngubeni. I remember that it was my 4th year, and I was working in UCLA's Community Programs Office, where Tim's the director. I was in training for a governing body called the Campus Retention Committee and some of us weren't able to finish our homework assignments. As we gave our reasons why the work didn't get done, Tim would have none of it, and shot back, in his patented deep and booming South African accent, "Excuses?!? Excuses are tools for the incompetent!" At the time, I thought Tim was just berating us with another of his catch phrases, but upon further reflection, maybe this was the key to this whole struggle for empowerment and social justice. At is very basic level, that's what personal empowerment is: freedom from excuses.

If you really think about it, we use excuses all the time to hold back our own personal power. Sadly, most often it results in prolonging the suffering of another. How many times have we invoked weakness or ignorance to escape responsibility for the suffering around us? From wars fought an ocean away, to the disease and famine that affect billions around the world, to the homeless people we walk by on the street, we put up shields around us to prevent ourselves from intervening. And I have been guilty of putting up these shields all too often, based on a fear not based on failure, but on a fear of success. For if I were to be successful in, say, providing a meal for a homeless person and alleviating their hunger for one day, then the next time I encounter a hungry person on the street, all excuses to ignore them are now irrelevant, because I have shown that I have the awareness and the ability to alleviate that person's hunger. I must now either address this person's hunger, or CONSCIOUSLY walk away. Either way, I am forced to take responsibility, and face my personal values head on. And nothing is more frightening than facing your own demons.

But should we be successful in eliminating our fear of responsibility, imagine the possibilities. Imagine a world where no one says, "Oh, I can't prevent this person from going hungry," or "oh, I can't do anything because I'm thousands of miles away, or "oh, it's not our fault; we had bad intelligence." A world where we owned up to the consequences of our actions. Maybe that's what a world of social justice looks like. A world without excuses. And should our relatively insignificant world be wiped off the face of the universe, perhaps knowing that we did our best to build a just society is all the salvation we need.