Homecoming

Kala-log out ko lang sa Friendster account ko. It's official. I'll be delivering an inspirational talk in my alma mater's March recognition day. If I correctly read my former teacher's personal message, I'll be addressing the honor students of first to third year.

Now I'm a bit queasy. Not because I'm afraid to deliver a speech before them, or because Benigno "Ninoy" S. Aquino High School is now Makati's second biggest and most modern campus the place might suddenly make me feel estranged, but because I couldn't wait to meet again my fellow Benignians in person, and break before them some trite statements that they themselves have probably heard several times in many speeches, valedictory or otherwise, their message has sadly become sour - uninspirational.

One of which is that poverty is not a hindrance to success. Is it not?

Time and again, we have seen many gifted children from underprivileged families, though born with extraordinary intellectual and artistic abilities, not growing up to be scientists, academicians, entrepreneurs and world-class professionals. Nature has given them the headstart, but they simply don't grow up to their potentials or to what they were expected to be simply because they were financially "challenged", sometimes even "handicapped", they didn't have the means and the resources to optimize their innate gifts. Many of them do not even finish gradeschool. Surely, they were not impervious to poverty's whips and slashes!

The word "success" is very subjective, ok. And to explain why a person will/will not become successful really entails a thorough examination of a gamut of factors, poverty being just one of them. But should we deny the fact that poverty IS a problem by saying that it's not a hurdle to achieving one's ultimate dreams at least?

It kinda irritates my ears everytime I hear that line "poverty is not a hindrance". It's supposed to exhort the listener, alright. But it fails to encourage as it is a lie. I conjures a familiar image of a traditional politician whose message contains nothing but false hope, empty promises. In it's vain attempt to sound profound, the statement lacked the luster of sincerity.

Poverty is a hindrance - a problem. Why deny it? The more we acknowledge and face the truth, the more we could react to it more intelligently, more creatively, more practically.

It's gonna be my turn to deliver a speech before the students this March. I vow this platitude will not be heard on that day. I just hope my audience's sensibilities are prepared to hear me say an opposite thought.