What matters most

How is it to swim in waters you are not familiar with? Simple: You call on all your experiences, dig deep into your heart, connect with people and then proceed with only the best of intentions. It pays to always start the day with blessings from whomever it is your faith seeks these from.

I have it from one of the country’s top entrepreneurs, no less than John Gokongwei Jr. (in his son Lance’s book “Lessons from Dad, John Gokongwei, Jr.”).

In the section “Find your Passion,” Lance wrote about her sister Hope recalling their dad telling her that learning from experience is better than any education.

“He told her, ‘You don’t like math, don’t take a business course.’ So she learned business on her own, learning it on the job, the way Dad did,” the book reads.

This brought to mind a recent conversation I had with friends in the academe and how the academe is so competitive ... in their titles, in their tiny kingdoms made up of hierarchical PhDs.

This also brought me back to a conversation I had with a fellow journalist who was being offered a free masters course of his choice by a local university. Agonizing over what course to choose, I told him: “Just don’t take a communications course.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“You will resent it because you will be made to listen and earn grades from people with doctorates but without long years of experience in communication outside writing boring dissertations,” I replied.

That floored him.

I’m not looking down on those who have doctorates, I’m looking down on the culture that brandishes doctorates like a badge that should be praised to high heavens and to whom unworthy baccalaureate graduates have to bow down to. And then they busy themselves with their papers that no one even wants to read because all these were written for compliance and approved and given passing nods by those who came before them.

The appreciative nods of course are more enthusiastic for those who have the makings of continuing with the tradition of snobbery. Sad.

I’m sorry if this sounds offensive to some. But I challenge you, step back, view yourself and your kingdom with a naughty eye, and laugh at yourself.

Remember that “Doctor” whose story was shared over and over through social media because she demanded that she be referred to as “Doctor” and got offended when she wasn’t? Yes, that is exactly the kind of culture I’m referring to. Titles do not make a person.

Bottomline: Experience will teach you that humility and integrity matter more.

Papers and titles and pride in one’s titles will not earn you respect nor the ability to impart real knowledge. In everything, it’s the heart that matters.

It matters more if your heart is constantly laughing at yourself.--from SunStar Davao