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Shards
by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inqiuirer


Speech delivered at the Commencement Exercises
Conferment of the Pax Award
Saint Scholastica’s College, Manila
March 25, 1995

            Reverend Mother Prioress Pia Lansang, President Sister Angelica Leviste, Dean of College Sr. Mary Vincent Feliciano, Members of the board of trustees, Reverend Sisters, Pax awardees of the past years, members of the faculty and the administration, parents, guests, fellow Scholasticans.

  I thank you all for the honor you give me. I hope you don’t mind my starting off in an irreverent mood. You, the graduates, cannot be too serious this afternoon because, finally you are getting out of here.

You know, in the print journalism field where I belong, when there are awards given, we almost always ask, "May cash award ba?" Is there cash to go with the trophy or plaque? Not that we are so pro-money. It’s just that, seriously speaking, if you choose, and I mean choose, to answer the call of journalism here in the Philippines, you make a vow of poverty. But what a wonderful, privileged life we live. But that is another story and I will get to that later.

We are not all that poor. I think we just have sophisticated tastes which do not match our pay checks. But we could make a lot more if we went into, say, public relations or advertising which are decent, honorable occupations. But these are high-paying jobs, these are not vocations.

There are honors and there are awards in this world but I think getting one from the good old school after years of hacking it out in the mean streets out there certainly is wonderful. To be judged well by one’s colleagues is great. But to be judged well by one’s mentors is even a greater surprise. I accept this with humility and great trepidation.

The trouble with this Pax Award is that I am not just supposed to say thank you, I am supposed to say something to the graduates. When our editor in chief at the Inquirer learned about this—this great event—and I wondered aloud about what to say to young people raring to storm out of the gates and meet the so-called Year 2000, she exclaimed: "Make it brief, they’ll love you for it!’’ Then she added, "Do not talk about abstract things. Share with them what you do, what you’ve seen."

As the late Sister Caridad would say, "You cannot share, you cannot give what you do not have." I’m not here to give you a "Quo Vadis"-type speech or homily. The last thing you need today is an inspirational speech. I will be brief, but not too mercifully brief.

We journalists are in this business where our output—sometimes brilliant, sometimes lousy—are read by so many people we do not even know. And if you think this is going to our heads, you only have to think that what brilliant thin we write today, will be sold por kilo tomorrow for recycling. Too bad, fish vendors no longer use yesterday’s news to wrap fish. But I’ve actually seen a copy of the magazine where I had an article being used a pamunas.

The words we string together, the stories we agonize over, sometimes with weeping and gnashing of teeth, sometimes with much fun and laughter, go well with biodegradable organic matter. Isn’t that great? Because that way our words go through the ultimate test of death and decay. What will remain? Will anyone remember? Did we make a difference? These questions you will also have to ask yourselves.

Now you’re honoring me and telling me I’ve made a difference. This is sweet. It’s like your mother saying, thank God, you did not turn out to be a bum. Or thank heaven you made something of yourself. Gruffly but endearingly said and with a heart swelling with pride. To paraphrase the worlds from a popular song: "If they could only see me now." If Sisters Caridad, Liguori and  Paz could only see me now…They’d probably burst out laughing and ask: "Is this for the glory of God?" Well, I certainly hope so. And I hope they’re fondly watching us now from the Great Benedictine Abbey in the Sky.

Speaking of alma maters, this school has indeed been a mother to me and I am sure to all of you. The dedication in my book "Journalist in Her Country," says: "Dedicated to all my mothers. Just that. St. Scholastica’s is one of the unforgettable and, forgive me for saying this, sometimes insufferable mothers. But at the back of the book where my worldly credentials are written, it does not say, she went to St. Scholastica’s or she attended and graduated from St. Scholastica’s. It says, "she was educated at St. Scholastica’s College." Which is to say, something happened, something great quietly happened to many of us here.

With this award, you, educators, are actually saying to yourselves, "Well, we certainly did well on this one." You did. In my judgment, you did, in spite of yourselves, in spite of myself. Not because I am here today. Not because I am given this Pax Award or any other award. It has nothing to do with awards. It has more to do with the values that have been taught me.

Like passion for what is true. Passion, compassion and going down on one’s knees in prayer. Like being strong and being just and being for peace and being for the weak, the wounded, the tormented, the wretched of this land.

There is one great comprehensive exam (and I know you just went through one) that you will have to pass, and you better know it will have to be based on this: "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it unto me."

You know, print journalists do not really relish listening to their own voices. We are not broadcasters. The only other time I spoke to graduates was at the graduation of grassroots workers who finished an intensive course on everything under the sun. This as at the school called "folk school". Almost all of the graduates there had not been to college, some went only as far as Grade 6. But the were all adults had had seen much of life.

My speech was entitled "Tayong lahat ay tagapagbalita." I spoke in perfect Pilipino. After the ceremonies, a friend told me that while I was speaking, a graduate—I do not remember now if he was peasant—whispered, "Aba, may sinasabi din naman pala." Coming from someone whom we sometimes call uneducated—quote unquote—that was the ultimate compliment.

My point is this. Oftentimes it is the humble folk, it is the people who we think do not matter, it is the nameless, faceless, voiceless, powerless who will confirm and reaffirm our faith in what we’re doing. It is not the politicians or the diplomats who thrown compliments to fatten the heart, it is the lowly security guard who upon looking at your ID repeats to you what you wrote, it is the rural folk who send in their letter of support and their gawky signatures to help you face a libel suit, it is a fellow in a small town in Mindanao begging for a copy of a story you wrote 10 years ago because, he explains, it opened his eyes.

Sometimes, things are not so sobering. With the recent hanging of a Filipino overseas contract worker in Singapore and the outrage that spread like wild fire, people have again been calling the Inquirer, demanding that we investigate this, demanding that we expose that. It is as if we have not done our part. Some could be so brash you want to answer back, "Why, did you vote for me? You don’t pay your taxes to me. I am not your congressman, I am not your barangay tanod." But you hold your fire. Sometimes you hurt. Did they know you fell and hurt yourself while climbing a mountain to get a story on a vanishing tribe? Did they know that you almost boxed in the mouth someone who tried to give you grease money?

Once upon a time, during the time of the late dictator, a great  journalist—she is not the Inquirer editor in chief, Leticia Jimenez Magsanoc—wrote a piece that jolted the establishment. It is worth reading even now. It was titled "Who elected the press?" Who elected us? The answer of course is no one. But, and there is the big but. For some divine reason, and in spite of our wretched, wretched selves, we have been chosen. So are you all of you. Who elected you?

The great election fever is on and the great irony is that man of the people we will elect will do the opposite of what they have promised. In the meantime they sing, dance, prance before our eyes, looking so utterly stupid.

I did a little research on the Pax Award and this is what I read and I quote: "Every school has a dream to give the world. The greatest honor a school can give its alumnae is the recognition that this dream has found a realization in their lives, no matter in what part of the Lord’s vineyard these lives are lived.

"The Benedictine dream is a dream of peace. Down the centuries, the Benedictine gift to the world has been the gift of peace. The Pax Award is the celebration of this gift." End of quote.

Wow. As I said, you who are conferring this award, are honoring yourselves. How moving, if not discomfiting that you confer this award named "Peace" on a journalist who is covering a war. I don’t mean just that war that has seen Filipino killing Filipino-—and I have seen much of that—but also the silent, festering war in the soul of this nation.

I feel humbled because whatever it is you think is worth honoring is not my own doing. Please remember this: there is Somebody greater who offers us the grace to do all these things and makes things happen. But you have tear yourselves open, and mean tear open, and accept, and most of all, you have to be brave. I did not study journalism. My background was behavioral science. I even tried to be a nun. But you know, sometimes strange and wondrous things happen.

You think writing is easy? Red Smith, a great sports writer, said: "Writing is very easy. All you have to do is sit before a typewriter keyboard and wait until little drops of blood form on your forehead."

Now I have another job to do here. I have to return the honor and congratulate this school, not so much for its academic excellence—many schools are just as excellent—as for its social thrust and its special program on women. These, I think, are some of the things that make SSC special. I hope people have stopped calling this school "an exclusive school for girls." When you say exclusive, you exclude the rest of the world. So what kind of education is that? "Exclusive is kadiri to hear, condescending like the phrases "kolehiyala English" or "kilabot nga mga kolehiyala." I feel an ice pick stabbing my heart when I hear these things.

I would like this school to be referred to as a school, if not the school, for women, of women, led by women. (I am not excluding the men.) For isn’t "women of character" what this Benedictine school prays for and labors for? A school genuinely steeped in Pax and ora et labora, a tradition that helped evangelize the world and transform barbarians, will not produce wimps. It should bear good fruit—women who are beautiful because they are strong, and most of all, compassionate.

In some places abroad, women’s college are regaining their lost prestige, they are making changes to make a difference. I think St. Scholastica’s, since I left, has made big strides in the social justice department and the kababaihan department and I am proud of that. I hope the graduates have caught the spirit from there. Remember, you are not a woman by accident. And I hope you’re leaving this place fully aware of what hit you.

So, go. Meet life head on. Give life, stir life. Look for signs of life. Strive to be really happy persons.

I’d like to wind up now by giving you an idea—in two paragraphs—of the life this school did not tell me about. As my editor said, tell them what happened to you. Twenty years from now you should be able to write something similar. Sometime ago, I wrote this. Here goes.

Nobody but nobody told me I’d be climbing mountains and bathing in freezing rivers. Nobody told me I’d be meeting with armed men and women who had spent away their youth and their dreams in uncharted jungles. Nobody told me I’d be able to talk to the powerful and the mighty as well as to the poorest and most forgotten of the land. Nobody told me that I’d mingle with people who were the epitome of saintliness or that I’d one day come face to face with a 17-time assassin who would tell me his life story.

Nobody told me people would entrust to me their ugly secrets and their deadly since. Nobody told me I’d confront a snake and slip on a mountain slope or that I’d meet forest people who spoke in songs. Nobody told me I’d have lunches, dinners or coffee with generals, politicians and movie stars, or that I’d be sleeping with prostitutes and embracing AIDS-stricken women. Nobody told me I’d have to track down members of a death squad and buy them so many cheeseburgers. We have been honored and praised, we have been rebuked and reviled.

If I don’t sound too modest today it is because of this: sometimes we do not help this world any when we are too coy, too humble, too shy to tell others about the little good we do while the corrupt strut about and flaunt their clever schemes.

One day when I put together many of the stories I had written, I suddenly felt unsure about their quality. You know, journalism pieces are sometimes called history or literature in a hurry. The stories were not exactly literary gems but rather imperfect shards of so many lives, many events, many places. But then, I thought-- so what, I was there. Others were not. And I had great times—of terror and joy, and sadness and fun.

I have shared with you some shining, though imperfect shards of my experiences and I hope you too would experience great times. To all the graduates of 1995, I say, go, have a great life. (And tell the world of His love.)

I thank you all profusely. Thank you, thank you very much indeed.