Hello Everyone! Hurray it’s graduation day!
I wish to say hello and thank you for having me here today, this is a bit of a cliché but moments like this really do make me understand the words “honored” and “proud”.
I guess the every one has received much of the thanks they deserved, so I guess I would start my thanks to God. Thank you. I hope these two words reach the heavens above.
And I would like to say Thank You to my parents, and oh my mother is here, for this great experience… from growing up after World War 2, having literally nothing, washing dishes, washing someone else’s laundry, to becoming a strong and smart person who had a vision, started a home interiors business…
After studying in one of the best private university in the Philippines, and now at 21 years old, I’m here in Switzerland.
Literally, I will not be here today, if she just watched television all day for years, but her vision was not television, her vision was to achieve more, it has been a long journey for you, I thought you deserved at least some 30 seconds of fame, So, everyone could you please do me a favor and give her a round of applause.
Fellow graduates, we have all been in different classes, we have all done the exams, finished the reports, written, printed and stapled the papers, and we completed everything.
To some of us its all over, but to people like me and to the rest of the PG Class, Oooh my God. we still need to do internship! Yeah
Okay okay, everyone we all deserve to be here today, we.. are.. graduates. Congratulations to us.
The student life here in HIM has been a truly amazing experience, the place is something I can say is great, safe environment, beautiful lake, and in this school - I meet people from all over the world.-
And these are the people who I meet in the campus, and of course my classmates.
Looking on where I stand right now, I can say that when I will look back in time,
I can look back on great things which I can honor.
This is what I’m talking about… At the beginning, I can remember, it was just an awkward situation, everybody is more or less like this – “Oh hello, I’m Angelo Reyes, from the Philippines, uhh, where you from?” – “Oh, uhm sorry, where did you come from again?” – but great things happen as weeks pass by.
Inside the classroom, its nice to see how people from all over the world interact, voicing out each other’s opinion but still having that’s sense of friendship.
During our practical service day – the day we work in the school restaurant, dressed up as servers wearing brown or black aprons – during this day, it’s really amazing to see people working together, just being helpful to one another, its just a moment of teamwork.
What I see now is a group of people who become and grow as better persons and enjoys each other company,
the relationship is great
the people who are usually more reluctant to talk to people - (including me) – grow up and are now 8000x more confident. Aren’t we?
Looking back on where we started, we were just small fragments of personalities, but now I find it so great that people can work together as a team, have a great time and grow as better persons.
As I step out of the school, I can say that I have a firm belief that I can use everything I learned to achieve what we all want, Success.
It was a great experience to sit down in class once more and learn from our teachers. Hello Teachers! I know that it is your job but… But all those moments, the funny moments, etcetera, combined with theory and learning experience just made us learn more.
Putting all these things together, and as I said, things like these, when I look back, I can look back on great things I can honor.
But whatever I said, all these are now memories, are now just part of history, as I was watching Kung Fu Panda a few days ago, I heard this line which my mother always say to me, it says: “Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, but Today is a Gift.” Whatever happened, already is a part of history so there’s nothing we do about it, right? Tomorrow is a mystery which we will try to conquer and be successful of. And since tomorrow is a mystery, we have today as a gift to prepare, Right?
So let me give everyone an advice about how realize tomorrow’s success. I decided to say this to everyone, because it’s exactly what I also need for myself.
I realized – although this is obvious, I just had to tell myself this – me and you will never find true success in things, we will not find success in money. Because if you try to and use this as a measure, wouldn’t you always look around and see someone who has more? And besides, if you loose them, how would you look at yourself? In this hall right now, people, let me ask you one more thing, who has ever said “I have too much”, isn’t it always “I don’t have enough”?
Me I always say I don’t have enough, go ask my mom right there if you want.
In my opinion, I guess to better define our success is by looking at what we have become and the respect that people have on us.
Listen. Awards, medals, honors like these are really nice, really nice decorations for the house, but these will not make sense to me if everybody of you will disagree that I deserve it – I mean people going like --- “Oh that guy cheats so much, oh that guy is so snobbish, is this, is that. But if people like my teachers, people like you… if people think of me as respectable and honorable not because of my shiny red car, but because of what I am, and what I did “Okay, this is success, and it feels damn great”.
And that’s the lesson to myself, shared to you. I mean – my parents – I respect them just because they give me allowance but more on what they are and what they did. The memory of this school, the experience, the teamwork, the relationship of my class, I don’t honor them so I can write a book and make money out of it. But because it made me as a better person.
For everything you will do, and for everything I will do, that respect will be grounded in everybody’s mind, In the hospitality industry and in any other industry,
The respect I will earn is not for sale, and neither is yours. Right? Right.
So let me say, merci beaucoup, gracias, grazie, spasiba, hvala ti, hsieh hsieh, terima kasih, danke, naani, salamat, thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment