A winner the day you were born

In a recent book by Sionil F. Jose, Why are we Poor?, a collection of short articles gleaned from his newspaper column, he claims that we are poor materially not because of the paucity of resources, nor the absence of entrepreneurial talents, but because of our failure to broaden the ownership base of our land stewardship. While we might be materially poor, he added, the more important crisis is one of the spirit.

I had recently traveled to Manila, Cebu, and Northern Leyte, and it is clear that our resources are abundant, and the native talent overflowing with creativity. Yet, lurking behind the evident malnourishment of the body in not a few of our compatriots, are also the look of anger of the young and the stare of despair in the eyes of those who have the capacity to improve their condition but are hampered by the social malaise, nay, the moral contradiction of 85 percent of the resources being in the hands of 15 percent of the population, with the gap still getting wider everyday.

Many clamor for another political revolution. We might also look deeper to the contradiction of the battered spirit.

In learning English during our time together, I had followed the contemporary dictum that the purpose of education is for the teacher to facilitate the enablement of students to discover what they already know. We have all grown in settings where we nurse best the sentiments of our misfortune. Our songs have lines like, “Ako’y pobreng alindahaw,” or, “I was poorly born on the top of the mountain.” We are apologetic with our “My Nipa hut is very small,” and our soap operas strums the hamstrings of our broken hearts and shattered desires. During public gatherings, we reserve the front row for the favored few, and cower at the back to be unobtrusive and incognito. We delight in being the invisible self.

Yet, as one of our medical practitioners had once told me, every human being who comes to this world is already a winner at conception. For every egg that is fertilized, there are at least, 200 million sperms vying for the chance to do the honors, and given the chances multiplied by attempts, with but one that makes it, the odds for a sperm is one-to-billions of making it. And we did.

Then consider the nine months when only two cells conspired to create one of the most complicated organisms in the biosphere, complete with metabolic process we are just beginning to understand, where the mechanics and the electronics of our bodies are of infinite wonder and sophistication. Yet, we grow up assessed for our inabilities rather than affirmed for our abilities.

In our language time together, I reminded you that you did not learn your native tongue by reading it. By the time you were three, your language proficiency was already adequate. Yet, we had forgotten how to use our ears to learn a language. Rather, we are fearful that we might mispronounce words. Worst, we have bought into the notion that because we are not schooled as others, our learning capability is less.

You will remember my story of the lady who at 28 still labored under the burden of the debilitating image of her perennial retreat into her self-story: “I am an illegitimate child,” until one day, while contemplating suicide by the metro stop, she saw her reflected image and realized that she was no longer a child but a 28-year-old woman! And the term “illegitimate” is one that applied to what her parents did, or failed to do. It had nothing to do with her character, let alone her personality. Nor should it be a defining quality of her spirit. Erasing the images of “an illegitimate child” off her self-story, she was left with but the open-ended yet to be defined statement of “I am …”

Today, at the culmination of your training, you are reminded again that you were already a winner the day you were born. And that at every moment of your life, you hold in your hands all defining characteristics of your “I am.”

Grasp then the power and the glory of your being. We shared with you tips and techniques on how to polish your English, but more importantly, you have been invited again to remember that you are one, unique, unrepeatable gift of life into human history, of whom there was never one like you before, and there will never be another one like you ever again. So, go and be it!