Howie Severino to young graduates: 'GenP, you are uniquely strong'

Journalist Howie Severino delivered a commencement address to graduates of AMA-Online Education, July 31, 2021

Read his full speech below:

Congratulations to Batch 2021 – congratulations not only for graduating but for the good fortune of your survival.

It hasn’t been easy to stay alive these days. It has meant sacrificing time with friends and loved ones, disrupting our cherished ways of life, and living with fear. Even when we comply with all the protocols and make the sacrifices, we can still get sick, as what happened to me and millions of others around the world. I have two titas and three titos who passed away within three months of each other.

So maybe I shouldn’t congratulate you for survival, since it’s more of a roulette, a roll of the dice, than an achievement. I should instead tell you, “count your blessings.”

We can never erase our losses, and we constantly think about what was and what could have been. Yet we know that the darkest clouds have silver linings, and sometimes there appears a rainbow.

So in one of humanity’s darkest eras, the greatest silver lining is a golden opportunity, the opportunity created by crisis to make our world a better place, to make your lives even more meaningful and productive.

The danger and desperation of our times have forced us to adapt, and we’re realizing some of the changes have not been so bad. A few border on the ideal.

The opportunity borne of crisis has already borne fruit in the form of new and better ways of living and thinking. It will be up to your generation to make sure the best of these improvements continue into the far future.

Allow me to describe a few of these fruits.

One, we’re seeing a surge of sharing. The most visible public expression of this trend has been the community pantries that have bloomed like wild flowers all over the country and even in OFW communities overseas. But we see this even on smaller scales, among neighbors and individuals, and larger scales that include business owners who forego rental income and accept losses just to keep workers employed.

I do not think this simply resulted from a sudden impulse for charity motivated by pity or altruism. In my view, this surge in sharing is the fruit of a universal empathy that has bonded the world, a common feeling that has blessed us all.

Unlike other crises in our lifetimes, the pandemic has excluded no one. We are all affected. Most of us have suffered physically, mentally, and financially. Many of us have grieved. All of us have been locked down and stressed out by fear, uncertainty, and loss of social interaction.

We see our own suffering in the suffering of others. That’s empathy, when we can feel each other’s pain.

When we help others, it helps ease our personal pain and we feel better. That’s what drives me and others to send fruits, cookies and care packages to friends and colleagues who are in the hospital for Covid or for whatever other reason. I never used to do this before.

But I know what it’s like to be in isolation in a hospital, afraid of what could happen next. Any contact from the outside world, like a surprise food delivery or even a text message, is a reminder that you haven’t been forgotten and others are cheering you on to recovery.

Long after the pandemic is over and our common suffering has become a distant memory, it is possible that kindness and sharing will already be embedded in our consciousness as the go-to solution for easing our heartaches, when in another time it used to be shopping or drinking or gorging ourselves with unhealthy food.

Another unforeseen fruit of this crisis is our new awareness of nature and the outdoors. This is most famously seen in the conversion of many to plantitos and plantitas. I myself fancy the title of Hala-Man.

But this is no trivial pursuit. Plants have proven therapeutic benefits for our mental health. They’re living and safe companions in our isolation.

A NASA study concluded that many kinds of common plants can clean indoor air, produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide.

Plants make perfect gifts during this time. A new shirt or blouse is not so useful when we rarely go to events, but an ornamental plant is a visual treat that’s good for our physical and mental health.

Humans naturally crave nature; it’s in our DNA. But we’ve been separated from nature by a mistaken notion of progress. Plants can bring nature indoors.

But the outdoors is where we need to be. After 16 months of the pandemic, the global data show that being outdoors minimizes risk and nearly all infections have occurred indoors. We can’t live outdoors, but we can dine out there and choose outdoor leisure activities. In our media work, we choose to do interviews outdoors if we can.

That’s why bike commuting is the response of many to Covid. Exposure to others while biking is minimal, it builds up your lungs and immune system, and you’re much closer to the environment. Besides, it helps you save money at a time when money is tight.

The recent proliferation of bicycle lanes, some delightfully delineated with night lights, finally recognizes cycling as a part of the transport system and needs to be made safer. But it is also the fruit of what I described earlier, a recent trend towards sharing, in this case a sharing of the road that used to be greedily reserved for motor vehicles.

As bicycles are the smallest and most vulnerable vehicles on the road, a respect for bikes and their riders reflects a respect for the rights of even the most vulnerable members of society, a trend we need to encourage if we are to become a kinder, more humane country.

The third fruit of our time is the slower pace of life. We all used to be in a hurry — to get dressed for work or school, rushing so we won’t be late, and trying to fit in other activities while coping with traffic.

Now we’re mostly at home with our families. Breadwinners who worked overseas have had plenty of time to rebond with loved ones. We all regret the loss of income from not being able to work. But income can be recovered, time with our loved ones cannot. You who have lived through this crisis will have a sharp sense of what truly matters in life.

Finally, as the parting fruit in this narrative, the pandemic has shown very clearly what kind of leadership matters in a public emergency. That this test of leadership has occurred on the cusp of the election season is a gift from this crisis. It must motivate you, the youth, to register and vote intelligently based on what you’ve seen, heard and experienced. You are plenty, you have a voice, and you can make a difference.

As the sage Bob Marley once said, “you never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”

And you are uniquely strong. No other living generation has come of age and adapted during an emergency as widespread and deadly as this.

Every generation has a brand name. Mine is the boomer generation, the martial law babies. Then you have the millennials and Gen X.

May I propose a new one for you, based not just on your age group but on what really makes your demographic unique — you are the pandemic generation, or GenP.

I and your other elders here today will trust that you as GenP will not let this crisis go to waste. You will take the fruits of our time — the surge in kindness and sharing, the new awareness of nature and the outdoors, the value of family time, and fresh wisdom about leadership — and run with these fruits into a brighter future.

There’s an old saying, “may you live in interesting times.” Some generations waited a long time before anything truly extraordinary happened. At the perfect age, GenP, you’re already there. Can’t get more interesting than this.

Congratulations and count your blessings.