By Rev. Cris Amorsolo V. Sian
University Church Senior Pastor Rev. Cris Amorsolo Sian gives a message to the Class of 2020 during the Virtual Commencement Exercises.
I have heard lots of sentiments, especially coming from the graduating class of 2019-2020, pertaining to the commencement exercises during this COVID-19 pandemic season. Let me mention some of them:
- “How unfortunate we are because we will not be able to wear a toga, climb up the stage to receive our diplomas in front of our classmates, faculty, staff, and administrators, and most of all, in front of the ones who really derive great joy from this significant milestone of our lives–our families.”
- “Those of us who are graduating with honors will not be able to publicly receive our hard-earned medals, thus, will feel that we are deprived of the accolade that we so deserved.
What you are having instead is this sorry-excuse for a commencement exercises, viewed from the safety and comfort of your homes, probably just donning your worn-out “pambalay” clothes while eating junk foods, your hair unkempt because you decided to postpone your shower until this virtual ceremony is over.
Whatever you are feeling right now, I’m with you. No judgments whatsoever. As a matter of fact, my heart goes out for you. I feel you, brothers and sisters.
I am just inviting you, however, to look at your situation from another perspective. If you are just open, I will say, that you are one of the most blest generations of graduates. For some twist of fate, life decided to teach humanity, including you graduates—vital lessons in life—not through the experience of others, but by experiencing it yourselves. The tuition is quite high!
–probably trillions of dollars spent in health care and maybe the same amount for government aids to their needy population.
–mind-boggling amount of money in economic losses due to lockdown in a global scale.
–we will probably be spending tons of money for research of the vaccine and if the vaccine is available already, for its production so that it will be available to all health agencies in the world.
–4.2 million infections, 284,022 deaths, 1,499,929 recoveries, 2.4 million active cases..
—not to mention the Fear, paranoia, suffering, and panic in a global scale..
The price that we pay for this pandemic is just unprecedented all throughout human history. This, at least for me, is the price of the tuition fee we paid for this hands-on experience. This, for me, is your final OJT. What lessons have we learned from it?
1. Life will hit you adversely without any warning or explanation
There is no rhyme or reason to a lot of human predicaments. It comes when it come. The song of “The Grateful Dead” entitled “Uncle John’s Band” has a line that says: “…Cause when life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at your door…” it speaks about the nature of life. Human life is highlighted by vulnerability. Everything seems fine at the moment and one false move, your life comes crumbling. Sometimes, one text or call from someone close will ruin your day. One routine checkup from your physician can mess your whole life up. The question is not whether you will be hit or not…the question is when? It’s only a matter of time. When human suffering confronts you, it does not necessarily mean that you are a bad human being, it simply means that you are human being.
This pandemic has shown us that there is no vaccine for human suffering. COVID-19 has afflicted politicians, movie stars, sports personalities, Royalties, cab drivers, healthcare workers, street vendors, mendicants, employers, employees, the unemployed etc. It has disrupted and dislocated almost every aspect of communal life both of rich and impoverished countries. America and Italy, powerful countries, but almost exhausting their response capabilities at the heights of this crisis.
2. Life is so fleeting (passing swiftly). The scriptures in Psalm 90 describes these two realities, mortality and the fleeting nature of life. “You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered…”
This reality has been experiential to many during this global pandemic. From the next-in-line to the throne to the homeless man on the streets, the reality of how fleeting life is hit the homerun. Many giant companies (like airlines, hotels) who were doing good few months before are now asking for bail out from their respective governments because they might go bankrupt, others already declared bankruptcy. World Bank says that the virus has battered the global economy. As shops closed, factories halted, international and local tourism crippled, stocks plummeted, the world’s economy took a serious hit. Entrepreneurs who were on their way to building sustainable development suddenly found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy. People with stable jobs for decades suddenly found themselves unemployed. Lots of families lost their breadwinners, many of them worked at the frontlines, to COVID-19 infection. One day you’re healthy and doing well but all of a sudden you are isolated from everything familiar and struggling for your life. We acquiesced/complied with government-imposed-restrictions because for the first time we knew that we are all vulnerable. There were countries, like Italy, who regarded the threat as trivial—to their own peril. Point is, our circumstances could radically be altered, sometimes not for the better, at the blink of an eye. That is how fleeting life is to everyone, no exceptions.
M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, says, “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, says: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” According to him, suffering is the only thing that bestows value upon the world. Without pain and misery, life would be absurd and worthless. I am not saying that we should desire to suffer, that would be masochistic and crazy. What I am trying to say is that since suffering and pain are part of our existence as mortal and vulnerable creatures, we need to live as deeply and beautifully as possible by responding in such a way as to find meaning in our sufferings. CPU’s has a lot of remarkable stories of people who were in abject poverty. They came to CPU to become work students. Regardless of the difficulty in lumping studies with work schedule, not to mention the financial constraints they had to face, many graduated with highest honors. Because of the superior values they learned from hard work and tough circumstances, many of them attained financial freedom. Many of them even came back to CPU and became benefactors. That’s one example on how suffering coupled with wisdom could propel one’s life for the better.
This pandemic has revealed to us, experientially, that life is highlighted by mortality and its fleeting nature. Upon realizing that I only have one lifetime to live, can I still muster the audacity to waste it away? No. I will not waste it. This would be my response:
3. I will make my life count.
How do I make my life count?
A. Invest it on relationships
Before the COVID 19 pandemic, there was a pandemic that was not dealt with exhaustively, at least on the same level we have dealt with COVID 19 pandemic—government immediately imposed lockdowns, almost all people in the entire planet initiated measures to protect themselves from this pandemic; agencies, private citizens, political leaders responded by procuring PPE’s, testing kits, and raising funds to help the needy population, concerted efforts were being made to find the cure for the virus. The mental health pandemic, represented by the steady increase of depression and suicide cases, was an underrated pandemic. But according to the WHO, in 2019, 1 person died of suicide in every 40 seconds, that’s 3000 deaths per day. In the year 2019 alone, there were 800k plus people who successfully killed themselves, 3 times the number of deaths due to COVID-19. DOH says that Philippines has 3.3M depression cases (diagnosed).
In 2019, 179 people committed suicide in Iloilo Province alone (10 deaths due to COVID-19 in WV). I am not trying to downplay this current pandemic. I am not also claiming to be an expert on the issue of the high rise of mental health problems and suicides, because realistically, experts have identified myriad factors.
Experts, however, contend that these people already felt isolated, alienated, for a relatively long period of time regardless of the presence of significant relationships around them. Experts further contend that there is a very crucial 20-minute-window which is a deciding moment whether a person decides to take his/her own life. In that 20-minute-crucial-moment the presence of someone who listens and really cares can radically alter, for the better, the fate of that person. 800k deaths, and there was nobody in that crucial 20-minute-window to be with the sufferer, speaks a lot of the status of our relationships. The demands of the success-oriented-world caused a lot of working parents to work longer hours and do lots of overtimes. For sure, it has brought a lot of people at a higher spot in the corporate ladder and financed everything that was vogue—travels, clothes, state-of-the-art gadgets, sleek cars, fancy restaurants—but at the expense of what? Emotional alienation, disorientation, and detachment, between individuals, families, and communities.
I have heard some positive feedbacks coming from families that during these forced lockdown they realized what they have missed—family bonding—they realized how much they missed eating, talking, laughing, playing, working, exercising, praying together as a family. I have even heard feedbacks how all these time they had been chasing things that they thought would make them happy and contented just to realize during these pandemic—that they already had it all the while…family, relationships.
One of my best friends, a nurse in America was infected with COVID-19. He was intubated for weeks. I had been communicating with him whenever possible until his release from the hospital last week. He now is reunited with his family. One of the things that made him sad was the thought of not seeing his family for the last time and the thought that If he died, his family will not be able to see his body because immediate cremation was mandatory for people who died of COVID-19. But he said that his consolation was, everything that’s needed to be said has already been said. He has invested so much love and quality time with his family—that whatever happened they already knew how much he loved them. Invest in meaningful relationships while you still can because life is so fleeting.
B. Be a hero.
David Bowie wrote the song Heroes. It was inspired by true event. One day he saw to lovers, kissing each other under the Berlin Wall. They were ignoring the military and guns around them, and were lost in the moment with each other. It is a story of love and hope that triumphed over the odds. “We can be heroes even just for one day”. We are a generation that reveres heroes. We spend billions of dollars for tickets to watch our favorite sports figures or artists. We quarrel against other fans who also think that their idol is really the GOAT, the greatest of all time, and not your idol. In return, we buy their endorsed products—shoes, clothing line, beauty products, underwear—just to be identified with that person. We give all-star ball players, for example, staggering salaries and allowances. There are ballplayers whose monthly income cannot be achieved in a lifetime of toil by an honest, hardworking laborer. Movies that feature superheroes—Spiderman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the like, are raking millions of dollars in the box office. I think these are all projections of our desire to be a hero. And our stereotypical concept of a hero is someone having extraordinary ability, doing spectacular feats, breaking world records, influential, famous, stunning, fantastic, and charismatic individuals—who are epitomes of our perceived heroes.
This pandemic revealed the unfairness of our perception, coz for the first time we realized that we have so many unsung, underpaid, unnoticed heroes that really save the day—health workers, store personnel, janitors, orderlies, military personnel, delivery guys, social workers, officials in-charged of public welfare, health and safety, government leaders—people who make our lives better, easier and safer these days.
For the first time we realized, like David Bowie declared, “we can be heroes!” Some of you already are. In this darkest hour we have seen humanity’s finest. Private citizens producing their own personal protective equipment for front liners, business people donating food packs to volunteers, business people and private individuals donating sizeable amount of money for buying testing kits and research for the discovery of the vaccine, countries sending financial and manpower assistance to other countries, I know a senior high school student from CPU who used social media to ask for 20 pesos to individuals in order to help others—she was able to help hundreds of families, I have witnessed neighbors, who for weeks, would cook food to be distributed to their neighbors. In a world filled with stories of inhumanity we do to one another– selfishness, cruelty, corruption, bullying, apathy— we have learned humanity. I just pray that we will not unlearn that lesson on humanity. If we are to survive the future, we must embrace humanity. Graduates, I just pray that as you go out of the portals of your dear Alma Mater, never forget the lesson you learned the hard way, You can be a hero…always choose to be a hero. Meaning, you can always choose to be a blessing to peoples and communities.
C. Live a God-glorifying life. Never leave God out of the equation, lest you suffer the consequences.
The Psalmist in Psalm 90 prayed: “Lord, teach us to number our days aright so that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”. This prayer is actually a petition to God to remind people of the fleeting nature of life so that we will be able to live lives that matter. The highlight of the prayer, however, is the conviction that a person needs wisdom from God in order to live lives that are impactful. He prayed further, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days…and may the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us.”
He prayed to the Lord for wisdom so that he will be able to live a meaningful and satisfying life. For it is only by dwelling upon God’s favor and his unfailing love that all our achievement will have eternal significance.
I think you would agree that during this lockdown people learned to pray deeper and in more satisfying ways. There is a deeper hunger for God and His words. Social media is bombarded by posts of people expressing their dependence upon God during this difficult time. We lost many things we thought to be important only to find the most important, God. My prayer is that…your faith that was strengthened, purified, deepened by trials will become your constant source of hope all your days.
Congratulations graduates!