Dear Graduates...

I will tell you honestly that I was quite surprised to get a phone call from Monica asking me to speak at Pinoy Grad. Being only five years removed from the place where you are all at right now, I consider myself a "nobody" in the Pilipino-American community. At past graduation ceremonies, we have been graced with the likes of university professors and community action leaders...Pilipino-American men and women who have had a wealth of experience to glean from.

And me? Hmm...I'm just like you. A little older, yes, but with much in common as far as having hopes inspiring me for the future and fears that sometimes haunt me. I can attempt to show you a world that I have lived in through the lenses I have worn since I graduated, but today I think it may be more helpful to you that I focus on something that we all share...and that, my brothers and sisters, is called a story.

A story. Everybody has one. They have many of the same elements - birth, death, success, failure, love, rejection, joy, sorrow. We have all experienced glorious triumphs and suffered the woundedness in a broken heart. There are characters in our stories who have supported us along our journey and others who have consciously or unconsciously undermined our worth. Some were minor characters that walked with us for only a little while, and there are those who were given major roles to play in our growth as individuals.

I want you to take a moment and think of your own story. In your mind's eye, picture the settings in which the development of your story took place and continue to provide the environment for you to be both nurtured and challenged. Recall the people who reached out to you...who taught you how to love, how to serve, how to believe, how to forgive. Draw from within your heart the conflicts that strengthened you and the resolutions that your greatest life lessons came from. Be thankful for it all because every aspect has brought you to this place.

And in this moment, take the time to appreciate the fact that you also are a part of the stories of those you encounter everyday. Reflect on how you are teaching others as you learn...how you are touching the lives of your family and friends by just sitting here in your cap and gown, being an inspiration to those who see something in you that they deeply admire. Most importantly, know that you are so very loved, and through the light that shines within your soul, love pours out of you.

Now just as every story has a conclusion, so will yours as well. People's stories have ended in a number of different ways - some victorious, some tragic, some peaceful, some chaotic - but each had a moral in his or her story. There is always an opportunity for insight - a lesson to be learned from the life of a person. As you go on to write the rest of your story, what kind of a legacy will you leave behind? Will people want to pass these lessons on? What about your life can encourage those who walk a similar path and face the same obstacles you have?

I mentioned when I first got up here that I'm not much different from all of you, at least in the sense that there is still much in my own life that I need to figure out. At times I'm almost afraid to make choices because I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake and be fully responsible for what I chose for myself. But last night my sister threw a quote at me that I had underlined in a book of mine called "The Purpose Driven Life", and it goes like this: "You may choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, and many other parts in your life, but you don't get to choose your purpose."

Your life's purpose - my life's purpose - is something that we DISCOVER. We meet people and it is they who often tell us through their gratitude and positive feedback that there is a reason why we were placed in their lives...a reason why we are where we are. And this is why it is so valuable to me to, in a sense, "reread" my story...to go back and to see how it has unfolded over the years and led me to this point...to this second as I'm standing here before you on the campus where I spent some of the best and most difficult years of my life. I look at your faces and see the ones who have been written into the pages of my book...the ones who add color and meaning to my experiences. I stand here and I am grateful for you who I do not know but are working so hard to carry on dreams that I had ten years ago when I began my early years as a college student in PAC and Kappa Psi Epsilon. Thanks to you, this journey has been - and continues to be - absolutely amazing.

As you start a new chapter in your lives, I'd like to leave you with a passage that I believe sums up the essence of our stories. I saw this taped to the wall in my brother's room soon after my dad passed away under a picture of the two of them. I was immediately moved by it because it showed how my father had unknowingly played such an important role in Albert's growth as a person despite the often strained relationship they had before he died.

"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can do, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it. For I shall never pass this way again."

As an author sometimes never sees the fruit of his work as it is borne in the hearts of his readers, you may never in this lifetime witness the influence that your story has on the people who are touched by it. So I ask you to be patient with yourself as you live it out - this story of yours - because there is a time and a season for everything. And move forward with the knowledge that you only have one draft to submit that is being read as you write it, so for the sake of all who could someday be changed by it, either positively or negatively, make it a good one.