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Withdrawal of Degree due to fraud

Create Value

Speech delivered last March 1, 2002
Launch of the Ateneo de Manila University John Gokongwei School of Management
John Gokongwei, Jr

Good morning.

I am John Gokongwei, Jr. I am not an Atenean but I feel at home with you. Today, at least.

Sixty-two years ago, I could not have dreamt of appearing before the Jesuits and their students to tell the story of MY life. I was no more than a student then, at San Carlos University in Cebu, when my father died suddenly. It left me, the eldest, the responsibility of taking care of my mother and five siblings. That was tough for someone who was 13. Creditors had just seized our home and business and I had no experience with earning a living.

But here I am–not all on account of my good looks or charming personality–but because I somehow survived. And when I look back, I know now that I did so because I recognized CHANGE when I saw it.

The first change was war. I had turned 15. My mother had already sent my brothers and sister to China where the cost of living was lower. From Cebu, she and I had to make money to send to them.

I turned to peddling. My day began at 5 in the morning. I would load my bicycle with soap, thread, and candles, and then bike to neighboring towns to sell my goods. On market days, I would rent a stall, lay out the goods from the bike, and make about 20 pesos a day, enough for me to survive and to buy even more goods for next time. Those days, you might call my BICYCLE AGE.

After two years of biking and peddling, at 17, I entered my BATEL AGE. The batel was a small, very utilitarian boat that defied the open sea and would take me farther from Cebu and all the way to Lucena, from where I would take a truck to Manila, with companions twice or thrice my age. The sea trips could take two to three weeks depending on the weather, and the land trips another five to six hours. (I was lighter then, you can imagine.)

On the batel, I read books like Gone with the Wind under the great blue sky to pass away the time, even if we traders were always in fear of sea pirates and the bad weather.

Once, our batel hit a rock and sank. Thank heavens for my rubber tires! Those were the goods I had with me to sell in Manila. Well, we all held on to those tires, which meant I saved all those traders and those traders saved all my tires.

At that time, the War was still going on. Ironically, I look back at the War with the fondest of memories. It was the great equalizer. Almost everyone I knew had lost big and small fortunes at the time. This meant we all started at ground zero. Ground zero meant living by our wits alone; ground zero meant starting equal; ground zero was where I discovered I was an entrepreneur.

When the War ended, I was 19. Because of the war, the economy was more dependent than ever on imports. So when I set up Amasia, my first company, it was to import textile remnants, fruit, old newspapers and magazines, and used clothing from the US.

There was a side benefit to this. I would wear some of my own stock, so I would have different clothes to wear when I went courting Elizabeth, the woman who would be my wife. But at the end of it, I made some money.

The Bicycle Age was over. The TRADING AGE began.

By then, my brothers and sister returned from China. Together, we worked in the trading business I had begun: as bodegeros, clerks, warehousemen, cashiers, and collectors. And all this while they were all still going to school; me, I stopped schooling. Like most Chinese-Filipino families, we worked where we lived, and at times, we had to endure the stench of rotten oranges and potatoes filling our two-story apartment.

By the early ’50s, we were importing cigarettes and whiskey as well. Business was good. But two factors made me change strategies again. First, I saw that trading would in time become a low-margin business BECAUSE we were at the mercy of our suppliers and buyers. Second, I saw that the government was working on import-substitution policies to encourage local business. President Quirino wanted to shore up the country’s foreign exchange reserves that had been depleted as a result of the high importation of the post-war years.

So I decided to enter the AGE of MANUFACTURING. In 1957, I started a corn milling plant producing glucose and cornstarch. Why cornstarch? Because I thought–and it turned out, correctly–that the unglamorous cornstarch would be in great demand from better known businesses like textiles, paper, ice cream, pharmaceuticals, and beer.

But there was one problem: I needed capital. That was not easy. I was 30, had no big company success to back me up, and I didn’t know any bankers.

Thankfully, Dr. Albino Sycip, then chairman of China Bank, and DK Chiong, then president, gave me a clean loan of P500,000 to start my business. He would be asked later why he did that and he said something about knowing a good man when he saw one. (Maybe he knew something I didn’t.) Anyway, from there Universal Corn Products, the predecessor of Universal Robina Corporation, was born.

Of course, the bigger cornstarch players did not give us an easy time. They engaged us in a price war. That is a nice way of saying they tried to kill us by selling low.

But we prevailed, and started to get clients like San Miguel Corporation. It was my first real taste of competition. And I liked it. I think THAT first experience prepared me for the bigger, tougher competitors in my future.

By 1961, cornstarch was becoming a commodity, and I saw that there was no future in a business where we had to keep lowering margins to survive.

It was time to get into the bigger, and riskier, game played by big multinationals like Procter and Gamble and Nestle. I saw that all they did to capture the market was to brand their products, for instance their coffee and their toothpaste. That is, give their coffee and toothpaste a name, a face, and an image that customers would instantly recognize and identify with quality. Me, I dreamt that one day I would be the Philippine Nestle or General Foods. So the Manufacturing Age for me was giving way to the AGE of BRANDS.

So, we put up CFC, and our first successful product was Blend 45, an instant coffee we put out to directly compete with Nestle’s Nescafe. We positioned it as “the poor man’s coffee,” hired top movie star Susan Roces to endorse it, and employed Procter-and-Gamble veterans to sell it. Basically, we took a page out of the multinational book, and applied it to our business. We gave our coffee, snack food, candy, and chocolates a name, a face, an image. Today, Jack and Jill, Max candy, and Cloud 9 have become household names.

It was also at this time that I returned to school for an MBA–with all due respect to the Jesuits, at De La Salle University–and a decade later, for a 14-week advanced management program at Harvard. Going back to the university for studies which war had interrupted gave me an appreciation, believe me, for the beauty and the breadth of business life. This is something I believe I would never have gained if I had chosen to stop my education.

The success of URC opened up many opportunities for our group. We had the choice to focus on food where we were very successful-or to pursue other businesses. We decided that there were too many good opportunities to pass up, and that remaining in our comfort zone would stunt our growth. So we got into the Age of Expansion.

For the next two decades, we pursued businesses that answered positive on FOUR CRUCIAL QUESTIONS.

First: Is there a market?

Second: Could we compete against both local and foreign players?

Third: Could we find the right people for the job and did we have enough capital to pursue the business?

Last and most important: Did we have the stomach for it?

That is, could we take the sleepless nights, the cutthroat competition? We went into textiles, retail, real estate, telecommunications, aviation, banking, and petrochemicals because we said YES to all those questions. Still, in all those industries, we were faced with tough and worthy competitors: the mighty SM Department Stores and Malls, the unbeatable PLDT, the entrenched Philippine Airlines and the powerful San Miguel Corporation. Most pundits expected us to fail. They were wrong. Robinsons Stores and Mall, Digitel, Cebu Pacific Air and Universal Robina Corporation are now market leaders in their respective fields.

That’s because they offered the public a choice.

Remember the story of David and Goliath? Every industry has its Goliath. But every David knows that all giants have their weaknesses. Every weakness is an opportunity.

In a few months, we will launch our mobile services to compete with two giants, Globe and Smart. Our stomachs are churning for sure, but we know that we faced similar challenges before, and we are hopeful we can prove the pundits wrong again.

In the past decade, which is one-sixth of my entire business life, the company has tripled in size. This was the decade when our companies raised money from the global equity and debt markets, brought our companies public, and hired the best professionals to run them. In six decades, we grew from a one-man team to a group with 30,000 employees.

Now I am in what you can probably call the AGE of GLOBALIZATION. I am always asked where I stand on this issue. I say that it does NOT matter where I stand because as sure as the Ateneo Basketball Team will win next year’s UAAP championship, global barriers will come crashing down, and we have no choice but to prepare ourselves for that.

Still, our company will not take globalization sitting down. OUR future and the country’s depend on how we act now. JG operates branded food concerns in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Hongkong, China, and soon, Vietnam. We also sell our snack foods in India, Korea, and Taiwan–one of the few ASEAN companies to do so.

In a few years, when foreign products find their way into OUR shopping carts as they already have, we want Piattos and Chippy to find their way into THEIR shopping carts as well. Our dream is to be the first group to plant the Philippine flag throughout Asia.

As I look back, I ask myself, “What if I had stopped at cornstarch?” I would probably be the owner of the biggest cornstarch group in the country today or just as possibly, be broke.

But I chose to live my life unafraid even during times when I WAS afraid. I discovered that opportunities don’t find you;/ you find your opportunities. I found those opportunities when MY FATHER PASSED AWAY, WHEN WAR CAME, THROUGH CHANGES IN PRESIDENTS AND THEIR POLICIES, DURING MARTIAL LAW, DESPITE COUP DE ETATS, PAST ECONOMIC BOOMS AND BUSTS, AND IN THE MIDST OF MARKET SHIFTS AND MOVEMENTS.

Now I’m 75 and retired. And funny, but I often wonder what ever happened to my first bike! The bike that was my companion during those first years when my family had lost everything. I wonder where it is now? That bike reminds me that success is not necessarily about connections, or cutting corners, or chamba–the three Cs of bad business.

Call it trite–but, believe me, success CAN BE ACHIEVED through hard work, frugality, integrity, responsiveness to change–and most of all, boldness to dream. These have never been just easy slogans for me. I have lived by them.

I hope that many of you in this room will some day choose to be entrepreneurs. Choose to be entrepreneur because then YOU create value. Choose to be an entrepreneur because the products, services, and jobs you create then become the lifeblood of our nation. But most of all, choose to be an entrepreneur because then you desire a life of adventure, endless challenge, and the opportunity to be your BEST SELF.

Thank you.

Hard Work

John Gokongwei , Jr.
Ad Congress Speech
Nov 21, 2007

Before I begin, I want to say please bear with me, an 81-year-old man who just flew in from San Francisco 36 hours ago and is still suffering from jet lag. However, I hope I will be able to say what you want to hear.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you very much for having me here tonight to open the Ad Congress. I know how important this event is for our marketing and advertising colleagues. My people get very excited and go into a panic, every other year, at this time.

I would like to talk about my life, entrepreneurship, and globalization. I would like to talk about how we can become a great nation.

You may wonder how one is connected to the other, but I promise that, as there is truth in advertising, the connection will come.

Let me begin with a story I have told many times. My own.

I was born to a rich Chinese-Filipino family. I spent my childhood in Cebu where my father owned a chain of movie houses, including the first air-conditioned one outside Manila . I was the eldest of six children and lived in a big house in Cebu ‘s Forbes Park .

A chauffeur drove me to school everyday as I went to San Carlos University , then and still one of the country’s top schools. I topped my classes and had many friends. I would bring them to watch movies for free at my father’s movie houses.

When I was 13, my father died suddenly of complications due to typhoid. Everything I enjoyed vanished instantly. My father’s empire was built on credit. When he died, we lost everything-our big house, our cars, our business-to the banks.

I felt angry at the world for taking away my father, and for taking away all that I enjoyed before. When the free movies disappeared, I also lost half my friends. On the day I had to walk two miles to school for the very first time, I cried to my mother, a widow at 32. But she said: “You should feel lucky. Some people have no shoes to walk to school. What can you do? Your father died with 10 centavos in his pocket.”

So, what can I do? I worked.

My mother sent my siblings to China where living standards were lower. She and I stayed in Cebu to work, and we sent them money regularly. My mother sold her jewelry. When that ran out, we sold roasted peanuts in the backyard of our much-smaller home. When that wasn’t enough, I opened a small stall in a palengke. I chose one among several palengkes a few miles outside the city because there were fewer goods available for the people there. I woke up at five o’clock every morning for the long bicycle ride to the palengke with my basket of goods.

There, I set up a table about three feet by two feet in size. I laid out my goods-soap, candles, and thread-and kept selling until everything was bought. Why these goods? Because these were hard times and this was a poor village, so people wanted and needed the basics-soap to keep them clean, candles to light the night, and thread to sew their clothes.

I was surrounded by other vendors, all of them much older. Many of them could be my grandparents. And they knew the ways of the palengke far more than a boy of 15, especially one who had never worked before.

But being young had its advantages. I did not tire as easily, and I moved more quickly. I was also more aggressive. After each day, I would make about 20 pesos in profit! There was enough to feed my siblings and still enough to pour back into the business. The pesos I made in the palengke were the pesos that went into building the business I have today.

After this experience, I told myself, “If I can compete with people so much older than me, if I can support my whole family at 15, I can do anything!”

Looking back, I wonder, what would have happened if my father had not left my family with nothing? Would I have become the man I am? Who knows?

The important thing to know is that life will always deal us a few bad cards. But we have to play those cards the best we can. And WE can play to win!

This was one lesson I picked up when I was a teenager. It has been my guiding principle ever since. And I have had 66 years to practice self-determination. When I wanted something, the best person to depend on was myself.

And so I continued to work. In 1943, I expanded and began trading goods between Cebu and Manila . From Cebu , I would transport tires on a small boat called a batel. After traveling for five days to Lucena, I would load them into a truck for the six- hour trip to Manila . I would end up sitting on top of my goods so they would not be stolen! In Manila , I would then purchase other goods from the earnings I made from the tires, to sell in Cebu .

Then, when WWII ended, I saw the opportunity for trading goods in post-war Philippines . I was 20 years old. With my brother Henry, I put up Amasia Trading which imported onions, flour, used clothing, old newspapers and magazines, and fruits from the United States . In 1948, my mother and I got my siblings back from China . I also converted a two-story building in Cebu to serve as our home, office, and warehouse all at the same time. The whole family began helping out with the business.

In 1957, at age 31, I spotted an opportunity in corn-starch manufacturing. But I was going to compete with Ludo and Luym, the richest group in Cebu and the biggest cornstarch manufacturers. I borrowed money to finance the project. The first bank I approached made me wait for two hours, only to refuse my loan. The second one, China Bank, approved a P500,000-peso clean loan for me. Years later, the banker who extended that loan, Dr. Albino Sycip said that he saw something special in me. Today, I still wonder what that was, but I
still thank Dr. Sycip to this day.

Upon launching our first product, Panda corn starch, a price war ensued. After the smoke cleared, Universal Corn Products was still left standing. It is the foundation upon which JG Summit Holdings now stands.

Interestingly, the price war also forced the closure of a third cornstarch company, and one of their chemists was Lucio Tan, who always kids me that I caused him to lose his job. I always reply that if it were not for me, he will not be one of the richest men in the Philippines today.

When my business grew, and it was time for me to bring in more people- my family, the professionals, the consultants, more employees- I knew that I had to be there to teach them what I knew. When dad died at age 34, he did not leave a succession plan. From that, I learned that one must teach people to take over a business at any time. The values of hard work that I learned from my father, I taught to my children. They started doing jobs here and there even when they were still in high school. Six years ago, I announced my retirement and handed the reins to my youngest brother James and only son Lance. But my children tease me because I still go to the office every day and make myself useful. I just hired my first Executive Assistant and moved into a bigger and nicer office.

Building a business to the size of JG Summit was not easy. Many challenges were thrown my way. I could have walked away from them, keeping the business small, but safe. Instead, I chose to fight. But this did not mean I won each time.

By 1976, at age 50, we had built significant businesses in food products anchored by a branded coffee called Blend 45, and agro- industrial products under the Robina Farms brand. That year, I faced one of my biggest challenges, and lost. And my loss was highly publicized, too. But I still believe that this was one of my defining moments.

In that decade, not many business opportunities were available due to the political and economic environment. Many Filipinos were already sending their money out of the country. As a Filipino, I felt that our money must be invested here. I decided to purchase shares in San Miguel, then one of the Philippines ‘ biggest corporations. By 1976, I had acquired enough shares to sit on its board.

The media called me an upstart. “Who is Gokongwei and why is he doing all those terrible things to San Miguel?” ran one headline of the day. In another article, I was described as a pygmy going up against the powers-that- be. The San Miguel board of directors itself even aid for an ad in all the country’s top newspapers telling the public why I should not be on the board. On the day of reckoning, shareholders quickly filled up the auditorium to witness the battle.

My brother James and I had prepared for many hours for this debate. We were ne rv ous and excited at the same time.

In the end, I did not get the board seat because of the Supreme Court Ruling. But I was able to prove to others-and to myself-that I was willing to put up a fight. I succeeded because I overcame my fear, and tried. I believe this battle helped define who I am today. In a twist to this story, I was invited to sit on the board of Anscor and San Miguel Hong Kong 5 years later. Lose some, win some.

Since then, I’ve become known as a serious player in the business world, but the challenges haven’t stopped coming.

Let me tell you about the three most recent challenges. In all three, conventional wisdom bet against us. See, we set up businesses against market Goliaths in very high-capital industries: airline, telecoms, and beverage.

Challenge No. 1: In 1996, we decided to start an airline. At the time, the dominant airline in the country was PAL, and if you wanted to travel cheaply, you did not fly. You went by sea or by land.

However, my son Lance and I had a vision for Cebu Pacific: We wanted every Filipino to fly.

Inspired by the low-cost carrier models in the United States , we believed that an airline based on the no-frills concept would work here. No hot meals. No newspaper. Mono-class seating. Operating with a single aircraft type. Faster turn around time. It all worked, thus enabling Cebu Pacific to pass on savings to the consumer.

How did we do this? By sticking to our philosophy of “low cost, great value.”

And we stick to that philosophy to this day. Cebu Pacific offers incentives. Customers can avail themselves of a tiered pricing scheme, with promotional seats for as low a P1. The earlier you book, the cheaper your ticket.

Cebu Pacific also made it convenient for passengers by making online booking available. This year, 1.25 million flights will be booked through our website. This reduced our distribution costs dramatically.

Low cost. Great value.

When we started 11 years ago, Cebu Pacific flew only 360,000 passengers, with 24 daily flights to 3 destinations. This year, we expect to fly more than five million passengers, with over 120 daily flights to 20 local destinations and 12 Asian cities. Today, we are the largest in terms of domestic flights, routes and destinations.

We also have the youngest fleet in the region after acquiring new Airbus 319s and 320s. In January, new ATR planes will arrive. These are smaller planes that can land on smaller air strips like those in Palawan and Caticlan. Now you don’t have to take a two-hour ride by mini-bus to get to the beach.

Largely because of Cebu Pacific, the average Filipino can now afford to fly. In 2005, 1 out of 12 Filipinos flew within a year. In 2012, by continuing to offer low fares, we hope to reduce that ratio to 1 out of 6. We want to see more and more Filipinos see their country and the world!

Challenge No. 2: In 2003, we established Digitel Mobile Philippines, Inc. and developed a brand for the mobile phone business called Sun Cellular. Prior to the launch of the brand, we were actually involved in a transaction to purchase PLDT shares of the majority shareholder.

The question in everyone’s mind was how we could measure up to the two telecom giants. They were entrenched and we were late by eight years! PLDT held the landline monopoly for quite a while, and was first in the mobile phone industry. Globe was a younger company, but it launched digital mobile technology here.

But being a late player had its advantages. We could now build our platform from a broader perspective. We worked with more advanced technologies and intelligent systems not available ten years ago. We chose our suppliers based on the most cost-efficient hardware and software. Being a Johnny-come- lately allowed us to create and launch more innovative products, more quickly.

All these provided us with the opportunity to give the consumers a choice that would rock their world. The concept was simple. We would offer Filipinos to call and text as much as they want for a fixed monthly fee. For P250 a month, they could get in touch with anyone within the Sun network at any time. This means great savings of as much as 2/3 of their regular phone bill! Suddenly, we gained traction. Within one year of its introduction, Sun hit one million customers.

Once again, the paradigm shifts – this time in the telecom industry. Sun’s 24/7 Call and Text unlimited changed the landscape of mobile- phone usage.

Today, we have over 4 million subscribers and 2000 cell sites around the archipelago. In a country where 97% of the market is pre-paid, we believe we have hit on the right strategy.

Sun Cellular is a Johnny-come- lately, but it’s doing all right. It is a third player, but a significant one, in an industry where Cassandras believed a third player would perish. And as we have done in the realm of air travel, so have we done in the telecom world: We have changed the marketplace.

In the end, it is all about making life better for the consumer by giving them choices.

Challenge No. 3: In 2004, we launched C2, the green tea drink that would change the face of the local beverage industry — then, a playground of cola companies. Iced tea was just a sugary brown drink served bottomless in restaurants. For many years, hardly was there any significant product innovation in the beverage business.

Admittedly, we had little experience in this area. Universal Robina Corporation is the leader in snack foods but our only background in beverage was instant coffee. Moreover, we would be entering the playground of huge multinationals. We decided to play anyway.

It all began when I was in China in 2003 and noticed the immense popularity of bottled iced tea. I thought that this product would have huge potential here. We knew that the Philippines was not a traditional tea-drinking country since more familiar to consumers were colas in returnable glass bottles. But precisely, this made the market ready for a different kind of beverage. One that refreshes yet gives the health benefits of green tea. We positioned it as a “spa” in a bottle. A drink that cools and cleans.thus, C2 was born.

C2 immediately caught on with consumers. When we launched C2 in 2004, we sold 100,000 bottles in the first month. Three years later, Filipinos drink around 30 million bottles of C2 per month. Indeed, C2 is in a good place.

With Cebu Pacific, Sun Cellular, and C2, the JG Summit team took control of its destiny. And we did so in industries where old giants had set the rules of the game. It’s not that we did not fear the giants. We knew we could have been crushed at the word go. So we just made sure we came prepared with great products and great strategies. We ended up changing the rules of the game instead.

There goes the principle of self-determination, again. I tell you, it works for individuals as it does for companies. And as I firmly believe, it works for nations.

I have always wondered, like many of us, why we Filipinos have not lived up to our potential. We have proven we can. Manny Pacquiao and Efren Bata Reyes in sports. Lea Salonga and the UP Madrigal Singers in performing arts. Monique Lhuillier and Rafe Totenco in fashion. And these are just the names made famous by the media. There are many more who may not be celebrities but who have gained respect on the world stage.

But to be a truly great nation, we must also excel as entrepreneurs before the world. We must create Filipino brands for the global market place.

If we want to be philosophical, we can say that, with a world-class brand, we create pride for our nation. If we want to be practical, we can say that, with brands that succeed in the world, we create more jobs for our people, right here.

Then, we are able to take part in what’s really important-giving our people a big opportunity to raise their standards of living, giving them a real chance to improve their lives.

We can do it. Our neighbors have done it. So can we. In the last 54 years, Korea worked hard to rebuild itself after a world war and a civil war destroyed it. From an agricultural economy in 1945, it shifted to light industry, consumer products, and heavy industry in the ’80s. At the turn of the 21st century, the Korean government focused on making Korea the world’s leading IT nation. It did this by grabbing market share in key sectors like semiconductors, robotics, and biotechnology.

Today, one remarkable Korean brand has made it to the list of Top 100 Global Brands: Samsung. Less then a decade ago, Samsung meant nothing to consumers. By focusing on quality, design, and innovation, Samsung improved its products and its image. Today, it has surpassed the Japanese brand Sony. Now another Korean brand, LG Collins, is following in the footsteps of Samsung. It has also broken into the Top 100 Global Brands list.

What about China ? Who would have thought that only 30 years after opening itself up to a market economy, China would become the world’s fourth largest economy? Goods made in China are still thought of as cheap. Yet many brands around the world outsource their manufacturing to this country. China ‘s own brands-like Lenovo, Haier, Chery QQ, and Huawei-are fast gaining ground as well. I have no doubt they will be the next big electronics, technology and car brands in the world.

Lee Kwan Yu’s book “From Third World to First” captures Singapore ‘s aspiration to join the First World . According to the book, Singapore was a trading post that the British developed as a nodal point in its maritime empire. The racial riots there made its officials determined to build a “multiracial society that would give equality to all citizens, regardless of race, language or religion.”

When Singapore was asked to leave the Malaysian Federation of States in 1965, Lee Kwan Yew developed strategies that he executed with single-mindedness despite their being unpopular. He and his cabinet started to build a nation by establishing the basics: building infrastructure, establishing an army, WEEDING OUT CORRUPTION,providin g mass housing, building a financial center. Forty short years after, Singapore has been transformed into the richest South East Asian country today, with a per capita income of US$32,000.

These days, Singapore is transforming itself once more. This time it wants to be the creative hub in Asia , maybe even the world. More and more, it is attracting the best minds from all over the world in filmmaking, biotechnology, media, and finance. Meantime, Singaporeans have also created world-class brands: Banyan Tree in the hospitality industry, Singapore Airlines in the Airline industry and Singapore Telecoms in the telco industry.

I often wonder: Why can’t the Philippines , or a Filipino, do this?

Fifty years after independence, we have yet to create a truly global brand. We cannot say the Philippines is too small because it has 86 million people. Switzerland , with 9 million people, created Nestle. Sweden , also with 9 million people, created Ericsson. Finland , even smaller with five million people, created Nokia. All three are major global brands, among others.

Yes, our country is well-known for its labor, as we continue to export people around the world. And after India , we are grabbing a bigger chunk of the pie in the call-center and business-process- outsourcing industries. But by and large, the Philippines has no big
industrial base, and Filipinos do not create world-class products.

We should not be afraid to try-even if we are laughed at. Japan , laughed at for its cars, produced Toyota . Korea , for its electronics, produced Samsung. Meanwhile, the Philippines ‘ biggest companies 50 years ago-majority of which are multinational corporations such as Coca- Cola, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever Philippines , for example-are still the biggest companies today. There are very few big, local challengers.

But already, hats off to Filipino entrepreneurs making strides to globalize their brands.

Goldilocks has had much success in the Unites States and Canada , where half of its customers are non-Filipinos. Coffee-chain Figaro may be a small player in the coffee world today, but it is making the leap to the big time. Two Filipinas, Bea Valdez and Tina Ocampo, are now selling their Philippine-made jewelry and bags all over the world. Their labels are now at Barney’s and Bergdorf’s in the U.S. and in many other high-end shops in Asia , Europe , and the Middle East .

When we started our own foray outside the Philippines 30 years ago, it wasn’t a walk in the park. We set up a small factory in Hong Kong to manufacture Jack and Jill potato chips there. Today, we are all over Asia . We have the number-one-potato- chips brand in Malaysia and Singapore . We are the leading biscuit manufacturer in Thailand , and a significant player in the candy market in Indonesia . Our Aces cereal brand is a market leader in many parts of China . C2 is now doing very well in Vietnam , selling over 3 million bottles a month there, after only 6 months in the market. Soon, we will launch C2 in other South East Asian markets.

I am 81 today. But I do not forget the little boy that I was in the palengke in Cebu . I still believe in family. I still want to make good. I still don’t mind going up against those older and better than me. I still believe hard work will not fail me. And I still believe in people willing to think the same way.

Through the years, the market place has expanded: between cities, between countries, between continents. I want to urge you all here to think bigger. Why se rv e 86 million when you can sell to four billion Asians? And that’s just to start you off. Because there is still the world beyond Asia . When you go back to your offices, think of ways to sell and market your products and se rv ices to the world. Create world-class brands.

You can if you really tried. I did. As a boy, I sold peanuts from my backyard. Today, I sell snacks to the world.

I want to see other Filipinos do the same.

Thank you and good evening once again.

Be An Entrepreneur

Commencement Address
Ateneo de Manila University
March 27, 2004 By
John L. Gokongwei, Jr.

I wish I were one of you today, instead of a 77-year-old man, giving a speech you will probably forget when you wake up from your hangover tomorrow.

You may be surprised I feel this way. Many of you are feeling fearful and apprehensive about your future.

You are thinking that, perhaps, your Ateneo diploma will not mean a whole lot in the future in a country with too many problems. And you are probably right.

You are thinking that our country is slipping—no, sliding. Again, you may be right.

Twenty years ago, we were at par with countries like Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Today, we are left way behind.

You know the facts.

Twenty years ago, the per capita income of the Filipino was 1,000 US dollars. Today, it’s 1,100 dollars. That’s a growth of only ten percent in twenty years. Meanwhile, Thailand’s per capita income today is double ours; Malaysia, triple ours; and Singapore, almost twenty times ours.

With globalization coming, you know it is even more urgent to wake up. Trade barriers are falling, which means we will have to compete harder.

In the new world, entrepreneurs will be forced to invest their money where it is most efficient. And that is not necessarily in the Philippines. Even for Filipino entrepreneurs, that can be the case.

For example, a Filipino brand like Maxx candy can be manufactured in Bangkok—where labor, taxes, power and financing are cheaper and more efficient—and then exported to other ASEAN countries.

This will be a common scenario—if things do not change.

Pretty soon, we will become a nation that buys everything and produces practically nothing. We will be like the prodigal son who took his father’s money and spent it all. The difference is that we do not have a generous father to run back to. But despite this, I am still very excited about the future. I will tell you why later.

You have been taught at the Ateneo to be “a person for others.” Of course, that is noble: To serve your countrymen.

Question is: How?

And my answer is: Be an entrepreneur!

You may think I am just a foolish man talking mundane stuff when the question before him is almost philosophical. But I am being very thoughtful here, and if I may presume this about myself, being patriotic as well.

Entrepreneurship is the answer.
We need young people who will find the idea, grab the opportunity, take risk, and set aside comfort to set up businesses that will provide jobs.

But why? What are jobs?

Jobs are what allow people to feel useful and build their self-esteem. Jobs make people productive members of the community. Jobs make people feel they are worthy citizens. And jobs make a country worthy players in the world market.

In that order of things, it is the entrepreneurs who have the power to harness the creativity and talents of others to achieve a common good. This should leave the world a better place than it was.

Let me make it clear: Job creation is a priority for any nation to move forward.

For example, it is the young entrepreneurs of Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore who created the dynamic businesses that have propelled their countries to the top. Young people like yourselves.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, progress is slow. Very little is new. Hardly anything is fresh. With a few exceptions, the biggest companies before the war—like PLDT, Ayala, and San Miguel—are still the biggest companies today.

All right, being from the Ateneo, many of you probably have offers from these corporations already. You may even have offers from JG Summit.

I say: Great! Take these offers, work as hard as you can, learn everything these companies can teach—and then leave!

If you dream of creating something great, do not let a 9-to-5 job—even a high-paying one—lull you into a complacent, comfortable life. Let that high-paying job propel you toward entrepreneurship instead.

When I speak of the hardship ahead, I do not mean to be skeptical but realistic.

Even you Ateneans, who are famous for your eloquence, you cannot talk your way out of this one. There is nothing to do but to deal with it.

I learned this lesson when, as a 13-year-old, I lost my dad.

Before that, I was like many of you: a privileged kid. I went to Cebu’s best school; lived in a big house; and got free entrance to the Vision, the largest movie house in Cebu, which my father owned.

Then my dad died, and I lost all these. My family had become poor—poor enough to split my family. My mother and five siblings moved to China where the cost of living was lower. I was placed under the care of my Grand Uncle Manuel Gotianuy, who put me through school. But just two years later, the war broke out, and even my Uncle Manuel could no longer see me through.

I was out in the streets—literally.

Looking back, this time was one of the best times of my life. We lost everything, true, but so did everybody! War was the great equalizer. In that setting, anyone who was willing to size up the situation, use his wits, and work hard, could make it!

It was every man for himself, and I had to find a way to support myself and my family. I decided to be a market vendor.
Why?

Because it was something that I, a 15-year-old boy in short pants, could do.

I started by selling simple products in the palengke half an hour by bike from the city. I had a bicycle. I would wake up at five in the morning, load thread, soap and candles into my bike, and rush to the palengke.

I would rent a stall for one peso a day, lay out my goods on a table as big as this podium, and begin selling. I did that the whole day.

I sold about twenty pesos of goods every day. Today, twenty pesos will only allow you to send twenty text messages to your crush, but 63 years ago, it was enough to support my family. And it left me enough to plow back into my small, but growing, business.

I was the youngest vendor in the palengke, but that didn’t faze me. In fact, I rather saw it as an opportunity. Remember, that was 63 years and 100 pounds ago, so I could move faster, stay under the sun more, and keep selling longer than everyone else.

Then, when I had enough money and more confidence, I decided to travel to Manila from Cebu to sell all kinds of goods like rubber tires.
Instead of my bike, I now traveled on a batel—a boat so small that on windless days, we would just float there. On bad days, the trip could take two weeks!

During one trip, our batel sank! We would have all perished in the sea were it not for my inventory of tires. The viajeros were happy because my tires saved their lives, and I was happy because the viajeros, by hanging on to them, saved my tires. On these long and lonely trips I had to entertain myself with books, like Gone With The Wind.

After the war, I had saved up 50,000 pesos. That was when you could buy a chicken for 20 centavos and a car for 2,000 pesos. I was 19 years old.

Now I had enough money to bring my family home from China. Once they were all here, they helped me expand our trading business to include imports. Remember that the war had left the Philippines with very few goods. So we imported whatever was needed and imported them from everywhere—including used clothes and textile remnants from the United States. We were probably the first ukay-ukay dealers here.

Then, when I had gained more experience and built my reputation, I borrowed money from the bank and got into manufacturing. I saw that coffee was abundant, and Nescafe of Nestle was too expensive for a country still rebuilding from the war, so my company created Blend 45.

That was our first branded hit. And from there, we had enough profits to launch Jack and Jill.

From one market stall, we are now in nine core businesses—including retail, real estate, publishing, petrochemicals, textiles, banking, food manufacturing, Cebu Pacific Air and Sun Cellular.

When we had shown success in the smaller businesses, we were able to raise money in the capital markets—through IPOs and bond offerings– and then get into more complex, capital-intensive enterprises. We did it slow, but sure.

Success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the small successes achieved day by day that build a company. So, don’t be impatient or focused on immediate financial rewards. I only started flying business class when I got too fat to fit in the economy seats.
And I even wore a used overcoat while courting my wife—it came from my ukay-ukay business. Thank God Elizabeth didn’t mind the mothball smell of my overcoat or maybe she wouldn’t have married me.

Save what you earn and plow it back.

And never forget your families! Your parents denied themselves many things to send you here. They could have traveled around the world a couple of times with the money they set aside for your education, and your social life, and your comforts.

Remember them—and thank them.

When you have families of your own, you must be home with them for at least one meal everyday.

I did that while I was building my company. Now, with all my six children married, I ask that we spend every Sunday lunch together, when everything under the sun is discussed.

As it is with business, so it is with family. There are no short cuts for building either one.

Remember, no short cuts.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, your patron saint, and founder of this 450-year old organization I admire, described an ideal Jesuit as one who “lives with one foot raised.” I believe that means someone who is always ready to respond to opportunities.

Saint Ignatius knew that, to build a successful organization, he needed to recruit and educate men who were not afraid of change but were in fact excited by it.

In fact, the Jesuits were one of the earliest practitioners of globalization. As early as the 16th century, upon reaching a foreign country, they compiled dictionaries in local languages like Tamil and Vietnamese so that they could spread their message in the local language. In a few centuries, they have been able to spread their mission in many countries through education.

The Jesuits have another quote. “Make the whole world your house” which means that the ideal Jesuit must be at home everywhere. By adapting to change, but at the same time staying true to their beliefs, the Society of Jesus has become the long-lasting and successful organization it is today and has made the world their house.

So, let live with one foot raised in facing the next big opportunity: globalization.

Globalization can be your greatest enemy. It will be your downfall if you are too afraid and too weak to fight it out. But it can also be your biggest ally.

With the Asian Free Trade agreement and tariffs near zero, your market has grown from 80 million Filipinos to half a billion Southeast Asians.

Imagine what that means to you as an entrepreneur if you are able to find a need and fill it. And imagine, too, what that will do for the economy of our country!

Yes, our government may not be perfect, and our economic environment not ideal, but true entrepreneurs will find opportunities anywhere.

Look at the young Filipino entrepreneurs who made it. When I say young—and I’m 77, remember—I am talking about those in their 50s and below. Tony Tan of Jollibee, Ben Chan of Bench, Rolando Hortaleza of Splash, and Wilson Lim of Abensons.
They’re the guys who weren’t content with the 9-to-5 job, who were willing to delay their gratification and comfort, and who created something new, something fresh.

Something Filipinos are now very proud of.

They all started small but now sell their hamburgers, T-shirts and cosmetics in Asia, America, and the Middle East.

In doing so, these young Filipino entrepreneurs created jobs while doing something they were passionate about.

Globalization is an opportunity of a lifetime—for you. And that is why I want to be out there with you instead of here behind this podium—perhaps too old and too slow to seize the opportunities you can.

Let me leave you with one last thought.

Trade barriers have fallen. The only barriers left are the barriers you have in your mind.

So, Ateneans, Class of 2004, heed the call of entrepreneurship.

With a little bit of will and a little bit of imagination, you can turn this crisis into your patriotic moment—and truly become a person for others.

“Live with one foot raised and make the world your house.”

To this great University, my sincerest thanks for this singular honor conferred on me today
.
To the graduates, congratulations and Godspeed.

“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”.

Thank you.

Speech (John Gokongwei)

San Carlos University Speech
January 29, 2004

Maayong hapon sa inyong tanan.

After an absence of 62 years, I am back in the school that I love– where I finished my elementary school and high school. They say that England was built in the playing fields of Eton. I, meanwhile, was molded in the playing fields, classrooms, and chapels of San Carlos.

In San Carlos, I formed memorable friendships with Mario Mendezona, Paquito Borromeo, Dr. John Lim, Dr. Roberto Tojong, Ramiro Valenzuela, Roberto Estevez, Totoy Avellana, Dr. Mike Celdran, Chiling Garcia, Guillermo Gervacio, Jesus Go, Pepito Moras, and many others.

I learned from the Society of the Divine World the values that have guided me through the years.

First, discipline. I remember Father Smith, the head of discipline, punishing me for running past his office one day while classes were ongoing. The rule was never to run, but to walk slowly along corridors. My punishment was to stand in the corner of his office for three hours with my arms outstretched as if waiting to be crucified. He may have been a terror, but he taught me the value of discipline.

Second, love for learning. While I excelled in Math and Science, my favorite subjects were English, History, and Music taught by Fathers Krueger and Gries. I even learned to play the flute, a skill which I have—with deep regret– since forgotten. I remember getting my first case of hives during our elementary school graduation rites. I was gunning for the gold and was very nervous that I would not get it. Fortunately, I did. The second time I got hives was when the girl I wanted to marry did not respond positively at first. Today, she is my wife, Elizabeth.

I would like to thank the following teachers– Mr. Espiritu, Captain Trinidad, Mr. Fernandez, and Judge Militante, who is with us today and others.

Third, a Christian education. I remember attending a 5-minute prayer everyday. In fact, I was an altar boy. From San Carlos, I learned the importance of charity. Today, the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation gives every year a sum equivalent to 3 percent of JG Summit’s profit to educate talented Filipinos from all over the archipelago in engineering and the sciences, and to support education through donations to deserving institutions. Our school offers free advanced technical programs like industrial electronics, \process instrumentation, and others because we believe in the importance of practical sciences to bring this country further.

While in San Carlos, I never thought I would ever be an entrepreneur. I wanted to become a fighter pilot instead. But a series of events– the death of my father and the outbreak of the War soon after– forced me to drop out of school, and make a living selling candles, soap and thread in Cebu. I was 15 and I was supporting my family. Now, we are running an airline, Cebu Pacific.

Since then, I have not stopped working. From selling these commodities, I have graduated to more complex businesses. JG Summit, the company I founded, is engaged in seven core businesses. These are food manufacturing, textile manufacturing, petrochemicals, realestate, telecommunications, airlines, and banking. We are now the only Filipino multinational with operations in China, Singapore, Hongkong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and this year, Vietnam. And within five years, we will fly Cebu Pacific Air to the US and Europe, and make sure that the word “Cebu” is on everybody’s lips.

My 62 years as an entrepreneur operating in many industries across Asia has given me a unique understanding of how business operates in different countries. I would like to share with you what I have learned today, if you would indulge me.

The question most asked of me as a businessman is whether the Filipino entrepreneur will survive in the new world? The answer to this is very important because we are faced with globalization through WTO and AFTA, where trade barriers will come tumbling down, and we will have to fight much stronger rivals.

Let me be more specific. We are now facing a preview of what the WTO and AFTA will bring. The AFTA lowers taxes of almost all imports to 5 percent and below. This means that cheap imports will soon flood our countries—rubber tires, garments, textiles and garments from Indonesia, petrochemicals from Singapore and Thailand, and many other products from various countries–making many local industries unviable. It also means that multinational companies will continue to move their factories overseas along with jobs, where they can manufacture more cheaply and efficiently.

In fact, Thailand can produce candies at a much cheaper price than here. With the almost-zero trade barriers, branded candies, some of them Filipino in origin, will be made there and exported to us. This will be a very common scenario in the future if we do not change. If this continues, we will be a country that creates nothing and imports everything.

I compare the Philippines to Thailand because of our similarities. We have almost the same population size. We have 86 million people, Thailand has 62 million. We share the same racial mix. We share the same abundant natural resources of fertile soil, palm oil, coconuts, and others. But why does the average Thai earn more than twice the average Filipino?

Therefore, the answer to this question—Can the Filipino slug it out in the boxing ring of the global economy?—is maybe. We may have a productive and educated labor force, but we do not have an effective entrepreneurial class who are the main drivers of growth in any country. Who else will create jobs after all? Sadly, in the Philippines, we have too few entrepreneurs and the few we have are wary of foreign competition.

We can only grow entrepreneurs and become a contender like Manny Pacquiao—a Filipino I admire immensely for being a world champ– if risks are lessened and the following conditions are put in place.

First, access to capital, both short-term and long-term.

In Thailand where we operate a very profitable food manufacturing business, we borrow at rates as low as 2.3 percent for short-term loans. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, we can only borrow at seven to eight percent. This means that the average Thai businessman is able to borrow money for a third the cost of his Filipino counterpart.

Even more important is access to long-term peso financing or financing payable in five years and longer. In Thailand, entrepreneurs can borrow at 5 percent for long-term. This allows them to build competitive industry and develop tourism necessary for any country’s development. That is why Thailand’s tourism industry is booming while ours is not progressing as well even if our beaches are more beautiful than theirs.

Here, there is a shortage of this type of financing. My recommendation is for companies to issue bonds in small denominations—say P5,000 with a maturity of at least five years— which will help finance industries, commercial and tourism projects and at the same time allow the average Filipino to partake in the economic fruits of such investments. For example, a housewife can choose to invest her money in a retail bond that will give her a higher return on her peso than what she is now earning.

In order to deepen the domestic capital market, government can create an institutional structure that will review tightly the issuance of bonds and keep taxes on such instruments at a minimum. The structure must also allow bonds to be traded like equity so that investors are assured of liquidity.

Second, better labor management. Our wages are competitive to Thailand’s but it is difficult for many local entrepreneurs to forecast their labor costs. For example, there may be times when labor may ask more than what the entrepreneur can give, hurting both of them in the end. Or when an employee does not share the same vision as the entrepreneur and becomes a liability to the whole organization.

I would like to recommend that the following law be passed that will please both labor and the entrepreneur. To give an extra one to six months separation pay on top of the present legislated separation pay— but to allow entrepreneurs to let go of people without any questions asked. This provides sufficient compensation for an employee to tide him over while he looks for another source of income. But this also allows the entrepreneur to be flexible when his business is bad. Furthermore, when an entrepreneur is allowed this flexibility, he is likely to hire more people, resulting in higher employment in general.

Third, cheaper power. In Thailand, our operations can buy power at P3.5 per kilowatt-hour. Here, we pay P7 per kilowatt-hour.

But we cannot fault Meralco and other power distributors for charging high rates because they have to buy power at a high rate as well. Therefore, I would like to recommend another win-win situation. Allow entrepreneurs to build power plants to supply their own power needs and then to sell excess power to each other within a certain boundary. This way Meralco need not lower their rates and business can bring down their costs.

Just to give you an example of how we can cut down power costs. We have built power plants for two of our power-dependent businesses—petrochemicals and textiles. We did this because high power costs had killed most of our competitors in both industries.

With our own power plants, we can generate power at P2.75 per kilowatt-hour. Imagine the savings Filipino entrepreneurs could generate at those rates! Besides, we will also be able to produce enough power to avoid the forecasted power shortage in 2006.

Fourth, agricultural productivity management. In the past, we produced rice and sugar for export. Today, we import both. Meanwhile, Thailand is one of the largest rice exporters in the world, and they can produce sugar at half our costs. Why is that?

Agriculture can be a pillar of our economy just as it is in Thailand. After all, many of our industries need the output from farms. We need sugar for candies, bakery products, and soft drinks. We need corn for the feed of our chickens and hogs. If only we could produce this at a cost comparable to Thailand, we could trim our costs, generate more profit and even pass some of this on to the consumer.

But more importantly, our farms must be geared to compete so that we can create jobs.

Finally, foreign exchange management. The fluctuation of the peso against the dollar over the past few years has ruined many businesses and has scared many entrepreneurs who need to borrow for projects.

In July 1997, at the start of the last Asian crisis, the average rate for one U.S dollar was 29.48 Thai baht and 29.33 Philippine peso, about the same. Today, the baht has devalued to 39 baht to the dollar but the peso is inching its way to 56 pesos versus the dollar.

The Filipino businessman who borrowed a dollar worth P29 in July 1997 must pay (_______) for the same dollar today.

In sum, if we had the same favorable conditions as Thailand—access to low-interest financing, long term financing through bond issues, realistic labor management, lower cost of power, more effective agricultural programs, and a more stable peso—we would entice a lot of entrepreneurs to invest. This will improve the investment climate dramatically.

With this investment environment, we will create an entrepreneurial class that will be more willing to take risks and therefore more prepared to take on the competition of the new world. I have refrained from speaking about graft and corruption, peace and order, population management, and poor infrastructure. That these must be solved is obvious.

After all, it is as simple and clear as human nature. It is important for entrepreneurs to estimate our risks and cost structures before we invest.

To end, I believe that there can be a better future for the Philippines and the Filipino. But we must first face reality. We cannot hide from the changes brought by the WTO and AFTA and must prepare by creating a class of Filipino entrepreneurs who will be able to compete with the best in the world. Entrepreneurs will create jobs and let me be clear in saying that no matter who the next president is, job creation must be top priority. I repeat job creation must be top priority.

I hope that these humble suggestions gleaned from 62 years of experience gives the government an idea of how the mind of an entrepreneur works, and hopefully bold and far-reaching reforms can be implemented to make the Philippine economy globally competitive, and to make the Philippine future brighter, more optimistic and exciting.

Thank you for honoring me with this doctorate. Coming from an institution that I love, I am filled with happiness and exhilaration. Thank you for also allowing me to share my thoughts on how to make our country better—in the only way I know how.

To all of you and especially my friends in San Carlos, I’m glad to be back after 62 years.

Kaninyong tanan, ug ilabi na gyud sa akong mga higala sa USC, ako malipayong nahibalik human sa saysinta y dos (62) ka tuig.

Nagpasalamat ako sa tibuk kung kasing-kasing.

Strength and Courage

(During the two years that we cared for our daughter until after she passed away, we heard of friends who tell us how strong we were. Of course we were encouraged by this compliment and it kept us going. But many times I thought about what “strength” really meant. An unknown author compared “strength” witth another character trait, courage, and one can better understand. This is insightful)

It takes strength to be firm.
It takes courage to be gentle.

It takes strength to stand guard.
It takes courage to let down your guard.

It takes strength to conquer
It takes courage to surrender.

It takes strength to be certain.
It takes courage to have doubt.

It takes strength to fit in.
It takes courage to stand out.

It takes strength to feel a friend’s pain.
It takes courage to feel your own pain.

It takes strength to hide feelings.
It takes courage to show them.

It takes strength to endure abuse.
It takes courage to stop it.

It takes strength to stand alone.
It takes courage to lean on another.

It takes strength to love.

It takes courage to be loved.

It takes strength to survive.
It takes courage to live.

– Author Unknown

Honoring A Father

While thanking my friends through an email, I remembered one of my friends’ Dad. I read his Dad’s name printed at the top row, fourth column on a large brass plate at the Philippine National Red Cross building in Port Area. Those in the list were there because they donated at least 50 bags of their precious, life-saving blood.

So I sent an email to my friend. He responded saying his Dad donated blood more than 150 times. Oh, that’s one for the books – one that requires a fervent sense of purpose and commitment. Since blood donation is as frequent as every quarter, his Dad could have donated blood consistently for about 40 years.

I postulated that the sense of mission of my friend’s Dad is rooted in a profound personal experience. I later learned that his (Dad’s) mother died due to loss of blood when she gave birth to him (Dad). My friend also related the story of his Dad’s College of Law classmate who could have survived an accident if he had blood transfusion.

My friend’s Dad is a great person. I wondered how much greater he could have been if he grew up with a doting mother around. Back in high school, our whole class (and more) frequented their home. We noisily frolicked in their swimming pool, boisterously played in their basketball court, often times raiding their refrigerator. Such a warm, caring and loving home. And though I haven’t personally met my friend’s Dad, I knew we each have a place in his big, big heart – including our individual mischief.

Why am I honoring my friend’s Dad and not mine? I am honoring him as a symbol of the many great Dads out there, including mine. I’m honoring him as a representative of those who regularly donate blood and, in effect give the gift of love and life. Few do so as a matter of duty, but many do so with a sense of purpose and as an act of love. In the same manner, some Dads are Dads as a matter of duty, but most are Dads because of a sense of purpose and love.

When my daughter was sick of leukemia, she needed multiple blood transfusions. We had to scour for blood donors when the blood bank is short of stock. In cases of platelet transfusion, we needed a live donor. Looking for a donor, especially when you have exhausted your friends and relatives, can be tiresome and tedious. Beyond using your charm, the donor should have a desire and commitment to save life.

In the two years that my daughter needed blood, we experienced a very efficient system at the Red Cross national office. We called the Red Cross office up, placed a request, asked confirmation when the blood is available, then took it at the appointed time. More important than the dedicated employees, the system worked most of the time because of committed donors like my friend’s Dad.

We count ourselves very fortunate for having good, loving and caring friends. And we count it a blessing that our friends have great Dads – who made our friends as great or greater.

Happy Fathers Day to all great fathers out there.

Molder of Dreams

(I heard this recited by USA Teacher of the Year awardee Guy Doud. For a teacher in the Philippines where the teacher has “ang gaan-gaan ng sweldo at ang bigat-bigat ng trabaho”, the reward rests in lives changed for the better)

by Clark Mollenhoff of the Des Moines Register

You are the molders of their dreams
The gods who build or crash their young beliefs of right or wrong.
You are the spark that sets aflame the poets hand
Or lights the flame in some great singer’s song.

You are the gods of young the very young.
You are the guardian of million dreams.

Your every smile or frown can head or pierce a heart.
Yours are one hundred lives – one thousand lives.
Yours is the pride of living them, the sorrow too.
Your patient work, your touch, makes you the god of hope.
That fills their souls with dreams, and makes those dreams come true.

Be Your Own Story

Toni Morrison

Commencement address at Wellesley College

Wellesley, Massachusetts USA
May 28, 2004

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1993

———————————-

I have to confess to all of you, Madame President, Board of Trustees, members of the faculty, relatives, friends, students. I have had some conflicted feelings about accepting this invitation to deliver the Commencement Address to Wellesley’s Class of 2004. My initial response, of course, was glee, a very strong sense of pleasure at, you know, participating personally and formally in the rites of an institution with this reputation: 125 years of history in women’s education, an enviable rostrum of graduates, its commitment sustained over the years in making a difference in the world, and its successful resistance to challenges that women’s colleges have faced from the beginning and throughout the years. An extraordinary record-and I was delighted to be asked to participate and return to this campus.

But my second response was not so happy. I was very anxious about having to figure out something to say to this particular class at this particular time, because I was really troubled by what could be honestly said in 2004 to over 500 elegantly educated women, or to relatives and friends who are relieved at this moment, but hopeful as well as apprehensive. And to a college faculty and administration dedicated to leadership and knowledgeable about what that entails. Well, of course, I could be sure of the relatives and the friends, just tell them that youth is always insulting because it manages generation after generation not only to survive and replace us, but to triumph over us completely.

And I would remind the faculty and the administration of what each knows: that the work they do takes second place to nothing, nothing at all, and that theirs is a first order profession. Now, of course to the graduates I could make reference to things appropriate to your situations–the future, the past, the present, but most of all happiness. Regarding the future, I would have to rest my case on some bromide, like the future is yours for the taking. Or, that it’s whatever you make of it. But the fact is it is not yours for the taking. And it is not whatever you make of it. The future is also what other people make of it, how other people will participate in it and impinge on your experience of it.

But I’m not going to talk anymore about the future because I’m hesitant to describe or predict because I’m not even certain that it exists. That is to say, I’m not certain that somehow, perhaps, a burgeoning ménage a trois of political interests, corporate interests and military interests will not prevail and literally annihilate an inhabitable, humane future. Because I don’t think we can any longer rely on separation of powers, free speech, religious tolerance or unchallengeable civil liberties as a matter of course. That is, not while finite humans in the flux of time make decisions of infinite damage. Not while finite humans make infinite claims of virtue and unassailable power that are beyond their competence, if not their reach. So, no happy talk about the future.

Maybe the past offers a better venue. You already share an old tradition of an uncompromisingly intellectual women’s college, and that past and that tradition is important to both understand and preserve. It’s worthy of reverence and transmission. You’ve already learned some strategies for appraising the historical and economical and cultural past that you have inherited. But this is not a speech focusing on the splendor of the national past that you are also inheriting.

You will detect a faint note of apology in the descriptions of this bequest, a kind of sorrow that accompanies it, because it’s not good enough for you. Because the past is already in debt to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets.

But again, it seemed inappropriate, very inappropriate, for me to delve into a past for people who are in the process of making one, forging their own, so I consider this focusing on your responsibility as graduates-graduates of this institution and citizens of the world-and to tell you once again, repeat to you the admonition, a sort of a wish, that you go out and save the world. That is to suggest to you that with energy and right thinking you can certainly improve, certainly you might even rescue it. Now that’s a heavy burden to be placed on one generation by a member of another generation because it’s a responsibility we ought to share, not save the world, but simply to love it, meaning don’t hurt it, it’s already beaten and scoured and gasping for breath. Don’t hurt it or enable others who do and will. Know and identify the predators waving flags made of dollar bills. They will say anything, promise anything, do everything to turn the planet into a casino where only the house cards can win-little people with finite lives love to play games with the infinite. But I thought better of that, selecting your responsibilities for you. If I did that, I would assume your education had been in vain and that you were incapable of deciding for yourself what your responsibilities should be.

So, I’m left with the last thing that I sort of ignored as a topic. Happiness. I’m sure you have been told that this is the best time of your life. It may be. But if it’s true that this is the best time of your life, if you have already lived or are now living at this age the best years, or if the next few turn out to be the best, then you have my condolences. Because you’ll want to remain here, stuck in these so-called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain.

One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic-all designed to maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia. I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, target of your labors here, your choices of companions, of the profession that you will enter. You deserve it and I want you to gain it, everybody should. But if that’s all you have on your mind, then you do have my sympathy, and if these are indeed the best years of your life, you do have my condolences because there is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.

Now, if I can’t talk inspiringly and hopefully about the future or the past or the present and your responsibility to the present or happiness, you might be wondering why I showed up. If things are that dour, that tentative, you might ask yourself, what’s this got to do with me? What about my life? I didn’t ask to be born, as they say. I beg to differ with you. Yes, you did! In fact, you insisted upon it. It’s too easy, you know, too ordinary, too common to not be born. So your presence here on Earth is a very large part your doing.

So it is up to the self, that self that insisted on life that I want to speak to now-candidly-and tell you the truth that I have not really been clearheaded about, the world I have described to you, the one you are inheriting. All my ruminations about the future, the past, responsibility, happiness are really about my generation, not yours. My generation’s profligacy, my generation’s heedlessness and denial, its frail ego that required endless draughts of power juice and repeated images of weakness in others in order to prop up our own illusion of strength, more and more self congratulation while we sell you more and more games and images of death as entertainment. In short, the palm I was reading wasn’t yours, it was the splayed hand of my own generation and I know no generation has a complete grip on the imagination and work of the next one, not mine and not your parents’, not if you refuse to let it be so. You don’t have to accept those media labels. You need not settle for any defining category. You don’t have to be merely a taxpayer or a red state or a blue state or a consumer or a minority or a majority.

Of course, you’re general, but you’re also specific. A citizen and a person, and the person you are is like nobody else on the planet. Nobody has the exact memory that you have. What is now known is not all what you are capable of knowing. You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox. And although you don’t have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it.

Although you will never fully know or successfully manipulate the characters who surface or disrupt your plot, you can respect the ones who do by paying them close attention and doing them justice. The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean. But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind’s disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

Thank you.

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Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. She displayed an early interest in literature and studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature. She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

Listen To Your Heart

Commencement address at Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts USA
June 5, 2005
by Tom Friedman, an award-winning author and foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times.

It is an honor to stand before you this morning — you the class of 2005. I’ve been a journalist all my life. It’s been a great ride. And what I thought I would talk with you about today is not the stories I’ve covered but some of the lessons I accidentally learned along the way about getting through life. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can see a lot by just listening,” or maybe it was “You can hear a lot just by watching.” Either way, the reporter’s life has allowed me to do a lot of both, and for the past few months I’ve been jotting down a few of the things that might be relevant advice to you all on graduation day.

Lesson #1 is very simple. As the writer Dan Pink noted in New York Times just yesterday, it is a piece of advice that graduation speakers all over the land will be giving to graduates today, and it goes like this: Do what you love. But the reason that advice is no longer, what Pink called “warm and gooey career advice’” but actually a very “hard-headed’” survival strategy, is because, as I like to put it, the world is getting flat. Yes, mom and dad, you have paid tens of thousands of dollars to have your child get a Williams education only to have their graduation speaker declare on their last day on campus that the world is flat.

“Gaining speed, she went on: ‘You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder, I make them question, I make them criticize, I make them apologize and mean it, I make them write and I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.’ Susan then stopped and cleared her throat. ‘I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart. And if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make in money, you pay them no attention.’”

What is flattening the world is our ability to automate more work with computers and software and to transmit that work anywhere in the world that it can be done more efficiently or cheaply thanks to the new global fiber optic network. The flatter the world gets, the more essential it is that you do what you love, because, as Pink notes, all the boring, repetitive jobs are going to be automated or outsourced in a flat world. The good jobs that will remain will be those that cannot be automated or outsourced; they will be the jobs that demand or encourage some uniquely human creative flair, passion and imagination. In other words, jobs that can only be done by people who love what they do.

You see, when the world gets flat everyone should want to be an untouchable. Untouchables in my lexicon are people whose jobs cannot be outsourced or automated. They cannot be shipped to India or done by a machine. So who are the untouchables? Well, first they are people who are really special — Michael Jordan or Barbra Streisand. Their talents can never be automated or outsourced. Second are people who are really specialized — brain surgeons, designers, consultants or artists. Third are people who are anchored and whose jobs have to be done in a specific location — from nurses to hairdressers to chefs — and lastly, and this is going to apply to many of us, people who are really adaptable — people can change with changing times and changing industries.

There is a much better chance that you will make yourself special, specialized or adaptable, a much better chance that you will bring that something extra, what Dan Pink called “a sense of curiosity, aesthetics, and joyfulness’” to your work, if do you what you love and love what you do.

I learned that quite by accident by becoming a journalist. It all started when I was in 10th grade. First, I took a journalism class from a legendary teacher at my high school, named Hattie Steinberg, who had more influence on me than any adult other than my parents. Under Hattie’s inspiration, journalism just grabbed my imagination. Hattie was a single woman nearing 60 years old by the time I had her as a teacher. She was the polar opposite of cool. But she sure got us all excited about writing, and we hung around her classroom like it was the malt shop and she was the disc jockey “Wolfman Jack.” To this day, her 10th grade journalism class in Room 313 was the only journalism class I have ever taken. The other thing that happened to me in 10th grade, though, was that my parents took me to Israel over the Christmas break. And from that moment on I fell in love with the Middle East. One of the first articles I ever published in my Minnesota high school paper was in 10th grade, in 1969. It was an interview with an Israeli general who had been a major figure in the ’67 war. He had come to give a lecture at the University of Minnesota; his name was Ariel Sharon. Little did I know how many times our paths would cross in the years to come.

Anyway, by the time 10th grade was over, I still wasn’t quite sure what career I wanted, but I sure knew what I loved: I loved journalism and I loved the Middle East. Now growing up in Minnesota at that time, in a middle-class household, I never thought about going away to college. Like all my friends, I enrolled at the University of Minnesota. But unlike my friends, I decided to major in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. There were not a lot of kids at the University of Minnesota studying Arabic back then. Norwegian, yes; Swedish, yes; Arabic, no. But I loved it; my parents didn’t mind; they could see I enjoyed it. But if I had a dime for every time one of my parents’ friends said to me, “Say Tom, your Dad says you’re studying Arabic; what are you going to do with that?” Well, frankly, it beat the heck out of me. But this was what I loved and it just seemed that that was what college was for.

I eventually graduated from Brandeis with a degree in Mediterranean studies and went onto graduate school at Oxford. During my first year in England — this was 1975 — I was walking down the street with my then-girlfriend and now-wife, Ann, and I noticed a front-page headline from the Evening Standard tabloid. It said, “President Carter to Jews: If Elected I Promise to Fire Dr. K.” I thought, “Isn’t that interesting?” Jimmy Carter is running against Gerald Ford for president, and in order to get elected, he’s trying to win Jewish votes by promising to fire the first-ever Jewish Secretary of State. I thought about how odd that was and what might be behind it. And for some reason, I went back to my dorm room in London and wrote a short essay about it. No one asked me to, I just did it. Well, my then-girlfriend, now-wife’s family knew the editorial-page editor of the Des Moines Register, and my then-girlfriend, now-wife brought the article over to him when she was home for spring break. He liked it, printed it, and paid me $50 for it. And I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole world. I was walking down the street, I had an idea, I wrote it down, and someone gave me $50. I’ve been hooked ever since. A journalist was born and I never looked back.

So whatever you plan to do, whether you plan to travel the world next year, go to graduate school, join the workforce, or take some time off to think, don’t just listen to your head. Listen to your heart. It’s the best career counselor there is. Do what you really love to do and if you don’t know quite what that is yet, well, keep searching, because if you find it, you’ll bring that something extra to your work that will help ensure you will not be automated or outsourced. It help make you an untouchable radiologist, an untouchable engineer, or an untouchable teacher.

Indeed, let me close this point with a toned down version of a poem that was written by the slam poet Taylor Mali. A friend sent it to my wife, who’s a schoolteacher. It is called: “What Teachers Make.” It contains some wisdom that I think belongs in every graduation speech. It goes like this: “The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued this way. ‘What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher? You know, it’s true what they say about teachers: ‘Those who can do, do; those who can’t do, teach.’ To corroborate his statement he said to another guest, ‘Hey, Susan, you’re a teacher. Be honest, what do you make?’

“Susan, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness, replied, ‘You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could and I can make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence. I can make a C-plus feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor and an A feel like a slap in the face if the student didn’t do his or her very best.’ Susan continued, ‘I can make parents tremble when I call home or feel almost like they won the lottery when I tell them how well their child is progressing.’ Gaining speed, she went on: ‘You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder, I make them question, I make them criticize, I make them apologize and mean it, I make them write and I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.’ Susan then stopped and cleared her throat. ‘I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart. And if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make in money, you pay them no attention.’ Susan then paused. ‘You want to know what I make?’ she said. ‘I make a difference. What about you?’”

Lesson #2. The second lesson I learned from journalim is that being a good listener is one of the great keys to life. My friend and colleague, Bob Schieffer of CBS News used to say to me, “The biggest stories I missed as a journalist happened because I was talking when I should have been listening.” The ability to be a good listener is one of the most under-appreciated talents a person or a country can have. People often ask me how I, an American Jew, have been able operate in the Arab/Muslim world for 20 years, and my answer to them is always the same. The secret is to be a good listener. It has never failed me. You can get away with really disagreeing with people as long as you show them the respect of really listening to what they have to say and taking it into account when and if it makes sense. Indeed, the most important part of listening is that it is a sign of respect. It’s not just what you hear by listening that is important. It is what you say by listening that is important. It’s amazing how you can diffuse a whole roomful of angry people by just starting your answer to a question with the phrase, “You’re making a legitimate point” or “I hear what you say” and really meaning it. Never underestimate how much people just want to feel that they have been heard, and once you have given them that chance they will hear you.

I went to Saudi Arabia after 9/11 after having written a series of extremely critical columns about the Saudi regime. And I was always struck by how Saudis received me, Saudis who weren’t prepped to receive me. The encounter would often go something like this:
“Hi, I’m Tom Friedman.”
“The Tom Friedman who writes for The New York Times?”
“Yes, that Tom Friedman.”
“You’re here?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“They gave you a visa?”
“Yes, I didn’t come illegally.”
“You know, I hate everything you write. Would you come to my house for dinner so I could get some friends together to talk to you?”

If you really want to get through to people as a journalist, you first have to open their ears, and the best way to open their ears is to first open your own — show them the respect of listening, it’s amazing what they will let you say after that, and it is amazing what you might learn.

Lesson #3 is that the most enduring skill you can bring to the workplace is also one of the most important skills you always had to bring to reporting — and that is the ability to learn how to learn. I have always thought that the greatest thing about being a reporter was that you just get to keep getting Master’s degrees. Each time I took a new beat, from Beirut to Jerusalem to Diplomacy to the White House to the Treasury I got to get the equivalent of a Master’s degree in each of those subjects — just by reporting on them for an extended period.

So while I hope that you all came out of here with some specialty, I hope even more that you came out of here having learned how to learn. That too is going to be really important if you want to be an untouchable, because jobs are going to change faster and faster in a flat world. Believe me, I know. You see, about 18 months ago I went to Bangalore, India to do a documentary about outsourcing. We shot about 60 hours of film in ten days, and across those ten days I got progressively sicker and sicker. Because somewhere between the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to write my new software from Bangalore and one who wanted to read my X-rays from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to trace my lost luggage on Delta airlines from Bangalore, I realized that people were doing things I could not explain or understand. I realized that my own intellectual software needed updating. I came home and told my editors I need to go on leave immediately. That is why I wrote “The World is Flat.” I was retooling myself. None of us is immune from that.

Now, while I have been on book tour these few months talking about the flat world, several parents have come up to me and said, “Mr. Friedman, my daughter is studying Chinese, she’s going to be OK, right?” As if this was going to be the new key to lifetime employment.
Well, not exactly. I think it is great to study Chinese, I told them, but the enduring skill you really need in a flat world is an ability to learn how to learn. The ability to learn how to learn is what enables you to adapt and stay special or specialized. Well then, a ninth grader in St. Paul asked me, how do you learn how to learn?

“Wow,” I said to him, “that’s a really good question.” I told him that I think the best way to learn how to learn is to go around and ask all your friends who are the best teachers in your school and then just take their classes, whether it is Greek Mythology or physics. Because I think probably the best way to learn how to learn is to love learning. When I think back on my favorite teachers, I am not sure I remember much anymore of what they taught me, but I sure remember enjoying learning it.

Lesson #4 is: Don’t get carried away with the gadgets. I started as a reporter in Beirut working on an Adler manual typewriter. I can tell you that the stories I wrote for the New York Times on that manual typewriter are still some of my favorites. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not about the skis. In this age of laptops and PDAs, the Internet and Google, mp3s and iPods, remember one thing: all these tools might make you smarter, but they sure won’t make you smart, they might extend your reach, but they will never tell you what to say to your neighbor over the fence, or how to comfort a friend in need, or how to write a lead that sings or how to imagine a breakthrough in science or literature. You cannot download passion, imagination, zest and creativity — all that stuff that will make you untouchable. You have to upload it, the old fashioned way, under the olive tree, with reading, writing and arithmetic, travel, study, reflection, museum visits and human interaction.

Look, no one is more interested in technology than I am, but the rumor is true: I was the last person in my family and on my block to get a mobile phone, and I still only use it for outgoing calls. Otherwise, as my daughters will tell you, I never keep it on. And don’t leave me a message, because I still don’t know how to retrieve them and I have no intention of learning. Because I can’t concentrate if people are constantly pinging me. You may also have noticed, I do not put my email address on my column. Unless readers go through all the trouble to call the paper to get my web address, if they want to communicate with me, they have to sit down and write me a letter. That is mail without an “e.” And yes, I only converted to Microsoft Word when I started my latest book a year ago and that is because Xywrite, the stone-age writing program I have been using since the 1980s, just couldn’t interface anymore with my new laptop. I am not a Luddite, per se, but I am a deliberately late adopter. I prefer to keep my tools simple, so I focus as much of my energy on the listening, writing and problem solving — not on the gadgets. That is also why if I had one fervent wish it would be that every modem sold in America would come with a warning label from the surgeon general, and that warning would simply say: “Judgment Not Included.”

Lesson #5 is this: Always remember, there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Too many journalists, and too many of our politicians, have lost sight of that boundary line. I learned that lesson very early in my career. In 1982, I was working in the Business section of The Times and was befriended by a young editor there named Nathaniel Nash. Nathaniel was a gentle soul and a born again Christian. He liked to come by and talk to me about Israel and the Holyland. In April 1982, The Times assigned me to cover the Lebanese civil war, and at my office goodbye party Nathaniel whispered to me: “I’m going to pray for your safety.” I never forgot that. I always considered his prayers my good luck charm, and when I walked out of Beirut in one piece three years later, one of the first things I did was thank Nathaniel for keeping watch over me. He liked that a lot.

I only wish I could have returned the favor. You see a few years later Nathaniel gave up editing and became a reporter himself, first in Argentina and then later as the Times business reporter in Europe, based in Germany. Nathaniel was a wonderful reporter, who was one of the most un-cynical people I ever knew. Indeed, the book on Nathaniel as a reporter was that he was too nice. His colleagues always doubted that anyone that nice could ever succeed in journalism, but somehow he triumphed over this handicap and went from one successful assignment to another. It was because Nathaniel intuitively understood that there was a big difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible, but always being open to being persuaded of a new fact or angle. Cynicism is about already having the answers — or thinking you do — answers about a person or an event. The skeptic says, “I don’t think that’s true; I’m going to check it out.” The cynic says: “I know that’s not true. It couldn’t be. I’m going to slam him.” Nathaniel always honored that line.

Unfortunately, Nathaniel Nash, at age 44, was the sole American reporter traveling on U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s airplane when it crashed into a Croatian hillside in 1996. Always remember, real journalists are not those loud mouth talking heads you see on cable television. Real journalists are reporters, like Nathaniel Nash, who go off to uncomfortable and often dangerous places like Croatia and get on a military plane to chase after a visiting dignitary, without giving it a second thought — all to get a few fresh quotes, maybe a scoop, or even just a paragraph of color that no one else had. My prayers were too late for Nathaniel, but he was such a good soul, I am certain that right now he is sitting at God’s elbow — taking notes, with skepticism not cynicism. So be a skeptic, not a cynic. We have more than enough of those in our country already, and so much more creative juice comes from skepticism, not cynicism.

Lesson #6. Nathaniel’s untimely death only reinforced for me the final lesson I am going to impart to you this afternoon. It’s very brief. It’s “Call Your Mama.” For me, the most searing images and stories of 9/11 were the tales of all those people who managed to use a cell phone to call their loved ones to say a last goodbye from a hijacked airplane or a burning tower. But think of the hundreds of others who never got a chance to say goodbye or a final “I love you.”
When you were just in elementary school there was a legendary football coach at the University of Alabama named Bear Bryant. And late in his career, after his mother had died, Bell South Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial. As best I can piece together from the news reports, the commercial was supposed to be very simple — just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough coach’s voice, “Have you called your Mama today?” On the day of the filming, though, when it came time for Coach Bryant to recite his simple line, he decided to ad lib something. He looked into the camera and said, “Have you called your Mama today? I sure wish I could call mine.” That was how the commercial ran, and it got a huge response from audiences. My father died when I was 19. He never got to see me do what I love. I sure wish I could call him. My mom is 86 years old and lives in a home for people with dementia. She doesn’t remember so well anymore, but she still remembers that my column runs twice a week. She doesn’t quite remember the days, so every day she goes through The New York Times, and if she finds my column, she often photocopies it and passes it out to the other dementia patients in her nursery home. If you think that isn’t important to me than you don’t know what is important.

Your parents love you more than you will ever know. So if you take one lesson away from this talk, take this one: Call your Mama, regularly. And your Papa. You will always be glad you did.

Well, class of 2005, that about does it for me. I’m fresh out of material. I guess what I have been trying to say here this afternoon can be summed up by the old adage that “happiness is a journey, not a destination.” Bringing joy and passion and optimism to your work is not what you get to do when you get to the top. It is HOW you get to the top. If I have had any success as a journalist since I was sitting down there where you are 30 years ago, it’s because I found a way to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. I had almost as much fun as a cub reporter doing the overnight shift at UPI, as I did traveling with Secretary of State Baker, as I do now as a columnist. Oh yes, I have had my dull moments and bad seasons — believe me, I have. But more often than not I found ways to learn from, and enjoy, some part of each job. You can’t bet your whole life on some destination. You’ve got to make the journey work too. And that is why I leave you with some wit and wisdom attributed to Mark Twain: Always work like you don’t need the money. Always fall in love like you’ve never been hurt. Always dance like nobody is watching. And always — always — live like it’s heaven on earth.
Thank you.

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Thomas L. Friedman won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times. He became the paper’s foreign-affairs columnist in 1995. Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent. In 2005, Mr. Friedman was elected as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 Mr. Friedman was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel).
Mr. Friedman’s latest book, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” was released in April 2005. His book, “From Beirut to Jerusalem” (1989), won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1989 and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” (2000) won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy and has been published in 27 languages. Mr. Friedman also wrote “Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism” (2002) and the text accompanying Micha Bar-Am’s book, “Israel: A Photobiography.”

Born in Minneapolis on July 20, 1953, Mr. Friedman received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford. Mr. Friedman is married and has two daughters.