I wish I knew How to Quit You

Ooooh. This hits home.

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Dare to be Different

By Howie G. Severino

(Commencement address at the Cahbriba Alternative School in Los Banos, Laguna, March 31, 2006)

Congratulations to all the graduates and to your parents. As a parent myself of a three-year-old boy, I already feel proud when my son says he just drew an insect. So I can imagine what it will feel like when he actually climbs a stage to receive a diploma after many years of hard work.

Like many fathers of toddlers, I am curious about all the options for basic education. But I am most interested in schools like yours that call themselves alternative.

Being alternative anything in life is both a badge of honor and a cross to bear. It means having the courage to be different, and the creativity to blaze a new trail. But it could also mean risking rejection and even ridicule. Both Christ and Rizal offered alternative views of the world, and both paid the ultimate price for being different.

Now I don’t expect any of you to become martyrs. But your elders and I do expect you to be brave enough to be different, and be true to your alternative education and upbringing. Twenty years ago, in 1986, our society was aching for political change and yearning for democracy. But most of the world expected us Filipinos to succumb to violence. Then like magic, we surprised everyone, including ourselves, with our creative and peaceful way of change. It was an alternative that inspired people around the globe to imitate us.

Today, God knows our society needs change once again, and yearns for fresh ideas and new ways of doing things. Often the alternative is simply the obvious choice for those of us who were raised and educated properly. But sometimes making the right choice is difficult because it involves being different from our friends and classmates. Even being honest can be difficult, when everyone else around you is cheating. When the entire barkada is smoking, you have to believe that it’s cool not to smoke.

I am what others call a “TV personality.” So sometimes a TV viewer will talk to me on the street and inform me proudly that his family watches the kapuso network all day and most of the night. I have to gently remind that person that there are better uses of a family’s time than watching TV for hours on end. For example, his family can actually have conversations. They can interact with each other, rather than with a box that mostly wants to sell you something. Watching TV for hours every day is what everyone else is doing. The alternative is being selective and smart about what you watch, and varying your daily activities so there are other influences on your life aside from TV.

As a training officer at my network, I tell rookie TV reporters that if they want to get ahead, they should watch less TV and read more books.

But since Filipinos do watch so much television, what people choose to view is one way of gauging where our culture is headed. And what used to be alternative viewing surprisingly defines what is popular today. Many of you can probably guess that the most popular TV show is not one that gives away money, dresses women in revealing outfits or causes stampedes; the number one program in the Philippines is a historical drama set in Korea, with a lot of information about exotic cooking. Yes, Jewel in the Palace shows that Filipinos can be fascinated by other cultures, by history, and by good story-telling that requires concentration.

I co-host and produce a weekly program called I-Witness. It is a documentary show that was a big risk for our network because many did not think that Filipino viewers would have the patience to watch documentaries and other serious programs. But six years later, we are still around as one of the longest-surviving public affairs shows in the country. Our documentaries are now on DVDs that sell out in bookstores. And I am often approached by fellow commuters on the MRT who want to talk about our latest topics, which are often about history, the environment, and social issues.

I say all this as evidence that the public’s tastes and preferences, even our culture itself, can change for the better, if one is willing to be different and to offer appealing alternatives.

Maybe one day in your lifetimes, if we work hard enough in creating and popularizing alternatives, we shall also have clean elections and honest leaders.

But being alternative is not valuing change for change’s sake. It means being smart enough to know what needs to be changed and what should be preserved and continued.

A few decades ago, powerful people saw ancient forests and thought they should convert these into timber and other alternative uses, as if anything old had little or no value. A generation of environmentally concerned individuals had to grow up, many of them educated here in Los Banos, before another form of alternative thinking caught on – that trees had more value alive than dead.

Today, we are still trying to overcome a crisis of values, and I don’t mean just Christian values. Our society seems trapped in a system that puts little value on what does not have monetary value. That is why it is more important for our government to send workers overseas than to keep families together. Money sent by OFWs can be measured, but family togetherness cannot, except in our hearts.

That is why open space in Manila is not treasured until it can be converted into a mall. It’s the same reason that heritage buildings that help us remember the past can easily be demolished.

These are the kinds of values that dominate our time. But you can be ahead of your time. You can believe with all your hearts that value is not limited to the numbers you see on price tags, that work has worth beyond the money that is earned, that respect cannot be bought at a fancy clothing store.

Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet of non-violence, once said that we must become the change that we want to see.

Changes for the better begin with trail-blazing ideas, but also with examples of people who dare to be different… and dare to dream that the alternatives we offer today become the next dominant values of our time.