Living (Thoughts on Turning 58)*

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

 

          I am turning fifty-eight years old today.  My father recently passed on at the age of eighty, and his own father (my Lolo Nap) passed away at the age of eighty-eight.  Both of them died of natural causes.  If those who claim that longevity has a genetic basis are correct, there is a big chance that I will still have twenty-two years to live, and perhaps even thirty years if my paternal grandfather’s genes will have the upper hand.  But, my maternal grandfather (my Lolo Santiago) died in his sleep when he was only thirty-seven.  On the basis of the same genetic theory of longevity, there is an equal chance that I will take after my maternal grandfather and not really live very long.  On top of that, of course, I can actually die anytime (even within the next hour, in fact) on account of an accident, a heart attack, a stroke, a COVID-19 complication, or some other unforeseen cause.  After all, life can be taken away from us anytime, anywhere – often in ways, and under circumstances, we least expect.        

          Not only is our life in constant danger of being taken away from us, it is also painfully short.  In some sense, things have a much longer “life span” than us.  In my sojourns and travels abroad, I have seen monuments and edifices that have remained standing after thousands of years, surviving earthquakes and fires and wars and what have you.  Compared to the “life span” of things, ours is but a drop in the bucket. To borrow the words of the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, things “will endure beyond our vanishing.”** 

Life is short.  Time flies fast.  Life can be gone anytime. Yet it is precisely for these reasons that we must consider life the most precious gift we have ever received.  It is a gift because it is not something we earned a right to, in some previous life. None of us was “entitled” to be born.  God was in no way obliged to allow our birth into this world. We were born simply because God wanted to share with us the gift of being alive. And since the Giver of that gift can take it back from us anytime, the value of such a gift is literally beyond measure.  For what value is there in something that we know we will never lose, no matter what we do, no matter what happens?  But if we know that something can be taken away from us anytime, and that we will only have it for a limited period, and that that period is fast running out, then there will be no doubt in our mind as to the worth of that something.  

That’s, for me, the most important lesson I have learned in the course of my fifty-eight journey in this world: that life is a priceless gift.  It might have been given to us in a “package” that we think was “less attractive” than that in which the gift of life had been given to others.  We may think that the potentialities and opportunities we were endowed with at birth were not as “advantageous” as those of our neighbor. But we will only be partially right if we adopt that line of thought.  For the truth is:  it is not what we have been given at birth that shall determine what we shall become later on.  Rather, it is what we do with what we have been given at birth that shall shape the kind of person we shall turn out to be. 

But there is more.  When God decided to allow us to be born, He gave us exactly what we would need to fulfill a unique mission He would like us to accomplish in this life.  Contrary to what existentialist philosophers claim (that we were merely “thrown” into a “meaningless world” and it is then up to us to “create” a meaning for our own lives), nothing about the circumstances of our birth was accidental.  Everything – including the apparent “disadvantages” we had to begin our life with – was placed there for a purpose.  We will not be able to see the purpose (or purposes) right away.  But, at some point in the future, we will understand why God placed them there, and then we will appreciate the awesome wisdom behind it all.  

Which brings me to the next important lesson I have learned in my journey so far:  our fundamental stance towards life should be one of gratitude.  Life is something we should always be grateful for. We should thank God first and foremost, but immediately afterwards -- we should thank our parents for being the channels through which we were given this most precious of gifts.  Our parents may not be perfect; but then, where can we find a perfect parent in this imperfect world?  All parents are imperfect simply because all of them are human beings like the rest of us.  Yet most of them, despite their imperfections, sincerely want to do their best as parents.   So if we think our parents have done us wrong at some point in our lives, we would do well to assume that much of it was probably unintentional (a case of good intentions gone awry).  We will also eventually find that even the emotional hurts that our parents have unintentionally inflicted on us as children, even the mistakes which we think they have committed against us, have actually done us good in some way, if we will but look more closely at how our lives have unfolded as a result thereof.  

Other people have also touched our lives in some other way and helped us become better persons: our siblings and friends, our teachers and mentors, people we hardly know but whose hidden and unrecognized deeds have made it possible for us to continue on our journey.  We ought to be grateful to them as well.  Our spouses, of course, deserve a special place in our hearts’ hymn of gratitude, for the Divine Potter’s hands often make use of them to mold us into the persons He wants us to become. 

But gratitude is not just a matter of saying “Thank you.”  Neither is it just a matter of feeling thankful.  Gratitude – especially, gratitude for the gift of life – must be concretized.  And the way to show our gratitude for life is by spending it in furtherance of the unique mission God wants us to carry out in this world.  Each of us, as we said, has a mission that no one else (not even those who appear to be smarter or more powerful than us) can accomplish.  That mission is something broader than the conventional careers, professions and vocations that society offers us to choose from.  It is a lot more than choosing to become a doctor, or an engineer, or a businessman.  Yes, choosing to heed one of these “callings” is often part of the process of fulfilling our unique mission.  But – and I must underline this – these callings are just the implements by which we can accomplish our true mission in life. 

No one is in a better position to tell us what our unique mission from God is than we ourselves.  At best, our parents, our teachers, our parish priest, our spiritual director, and our friends can only offer us their opinions as to what our mission might be.  They often mean well when they give us their opinions, so it will not hurt us if we listen to their opinions and give them some thought.  Sometimes, in fact, their opinions may turn out to be the marks on the road that God uses to lead us to where our mission is.  But, at the end of the day, we must realize that we – and we alone – will know exactly what our mission is. 

Some of us discover our life’s mission early enough.  Some take a longer time to discover it.  Others think they have finally found it, only to realize later on that they have to resume their search.  Not a few have to try one or two paths first before they finally find the right one.  But, whether we discover our life’s mission right away or only after a long search, it is important to remember that every stage of that discovery, every moment of that journey – including those that appear to be the “wrong turns” we have made along the way – forms an essential part of our personal odyssey.  Not a bit of it has been a waste of time.  Every detour, every U-turn, every flat tire, and every tank that suddenly runs out of gas and forces us to stop and delay our trip, is essential.  Although, of course, we can only say this if we have consciously embarked on the journey of discovering our life’s mission with a view to carrying it out.  If we have not, then everything has been a waste of time. Living life without a clear idea of where one is going is like riding on a rudderless ship that moves everywhere but arrives nowhere. 

Speaking of life-missions, ours may not necessarily be a grand one by earthly standards.  Not everyone has been charged by God with the task of changing the world by means of some history-shaping act or some paradigm-shifting intellectual discovery.  Our life’s mission may simply be to make a difference in a particular person’s life (one’s spouse) or in the life of a particular family (one’s own), by means of words and deeds that probably mean little to other persons. But, in God’s grand design, that mission is by no means less significant than the other missions that appear more remarkable in the world’s eyes.  No one else can fulfill that mission but we; and it cannot be fulfilled if we do not agree to carry it out.  And whether our mission is to make a difference in one person’s life or in an entire nation’s life; whether it is to come up with a better way of teaching basic math to schoolchildren or to construct a philosophical paradigm that will change an entire generation’s way of looking at things; whether it is to be the head of a small household or to be the head of a huge organization, we must never doubt that each mission is important in God’s eyes, because each plays an indispensable role in the gradual unfolding of His divine plan. 

I must forthwith add, however, that although God allowed us to be born into this world in order to fulfill a unique mission, it does not mean we have to go through life “laboring” for the sake of that mission.  God is not a taskmaster whose eyes are focused mainly on the efforts we are exerting to carry out our mission.  On the contrary, He wants us to enjoy the journey of life itself and not to preoccupy ourselves too much with the destination. He wants us to relish every moment of that journey -- the joys and pains of loving, the excitement of trying and failing and trying again, the adventure of winning or losing and bouncing back.  And as regards the mission He wants us to accomplish, I have learned that He wants us to enjoy that too, and that the key to enjoying our mission is to love the things that God wants us to do. Or perhaps, the better way to put it is:  to do what God asks us to do -- for and with love.  The moment we do things with that motivation and attitude, even the most thankless task required by our mission, even the most boring part of what we have to do becomes a source of joy. 

Finally, today, as I look back on the life I have thus far lived, there is one other lesson that fills my heart with profound awe:  God’s patience, understanding and mercy literally know no bounds. There had been times in my journey when the marks that God placed on the road to guide my way were quite clear and easy to understand.  Yet, I chose to ignore them. I would have lost my way altogether if God did not persist in (as it were)  reconfiguring, again and again, the geography of my life so that, whatever road I took, I would ultimately find my way back to where I should be going. 

____________________ 

            *Written in October 2020, in celebration of my 58^th birthday. 

**Jorge Luis Borges, “Things” in Collected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman (London:  Penguin Books, 2000), 277.

Remembering Father Viktor Holobrady, SVD

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

Describing the late Father Viktor Holobrady as a “terror teacher” would be like describing a tiger as “a large cat.”  It would be a correct description (for tigers do belong to the family of cats), but it would be an understatement of the highest order. Father Holobrady -- the Czechoslovakian missionary-priest of the Society of the Divine Word who served as Rector, Procurator and English grammar teacher of the Mary Help of Christians Minor Seminary in Binmaley, Pangasinan for many decades -- was not your typical “terror teacher.”  The moment Father Holobrady stepped inside the classroom, he transmogrified into Terror itself – in the flesh!

His classes always had a graded recitation portion which never failed to make our small palms sweat and our young hearts palpitate.  For if you gave the wrong answer (or worse, if you did not know the answer) to the questions he asked, you would get both a rebuke and a punishment.  The rebuke would come in the form of a one-word insult:  he would call you “bagoong” (the Filipino word for the native shrimp paste, famous for its good taste and its rather peculiar smell), and he would say this with a look that would make you feel like you were the dumbest boy in the neighborhood.  The punishment, on the other hand, would depend on the gravity of your mistake, and it usually consisted of writing down the correct answer from ten to fifty to a hundred times or even more on a piece of paper.  The whole thing does not look that terrifying to me now, but back then when my classmates and I were young boys aged between eleven and twelve, being called “bagoong” in front of one’s classmates and having to write down the correct answer up to a hundred times were prospects we dreaded each time we stepped inside his classroom. 

            Yet, Fr. Holo (as he was called for short) was a totally different person outside the classroom. He was soft-spoken, he had a shy but warm smile, and despite the fact that he had an imposing height (he was more than six feet tall) and that as the Rector he was actually the highest official of the minor seminary at that time, he was as lovable as one’s favorite grandfather.  In fact, you could joke around with him just before he stepped inside the classroom and he would not mind it at all.  The skin on both his elbows sagged from age, and I remember that some of my classmates used to pull the skin playfully while he waited for the bell to ring for the start of his grammar class.  I don’t remember a time when he took offense at that.  On the contrary, he always laughed when they did it. 

            But the best time to be with Father Holo was on Wednesday nights.  Being the night before Thursday (which was our free day in the minor seminary, in lieu of Saturday), we seminarians were allowed to watch TV, play indoor games or engage in any other form of legitimate recreation every Wednesday night.  In addition, Father Holo’s office was also open for those seminarians who would prefer to sit and read while listening to classical music.  Father Holo himself would be reclining on his grandfather’s chair reading a book, and from the corner of one’s eye one could see him happily waving his pencil like a baton every time he heard a musical phrase that he liked on his record player. 

            On other days, however, Father Holo’s office was a clinic of sorts where one went to for all kinds of medical concerns.  I do not recall hearing that Father Holo ever went to medical or nursing school.  But he was an infirmarian, and an excellent one at that!  He had a cure for anything, from the common cold to ringworm to what have you.  Even those of us who had a difficult time growing taller swore that Father Holo had a cure for that too.  I was not one of those who availed of his much-talked about growth-boosting injections, but many of those who did claimed that it really worked. 

            But the medical procedure that Father Holo was most famous for was the “lavativa” (or the edema, as those who want to sound more medical prefer to call it).  For some reason other than its obvious health benefits, it was widely believed by minor seminarians in those days that one had to undergo the “lavativa” at least once during one’s stay in the minor seminary.  It was an initiation of sorts. Somehow, you were not considered a full-fledged minor seminarian if you had not had it at least once.  

            Nevertheless, Father Holo was not only an excellent infirmarian.  He was also a musician who taught us how to sing all those Latin hymns that we still remember so well up to now; a seasoned seminary formator who helped train many future priests for the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan; and a dedicated missionary who left his home in Czechoslovakia to spread God’s word in a foreign country several thousand miles away from his own. 

            In 1993, following the Fall of Communism, Czechoslovakia (which used to be a part of the Communist Bloc) was split into two sovereign states:  the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia.  I do not know on which side of the divided Czechoslovakia Father Holo’s birthplace is now located.  But when I visited the Czech Republic for the first time in 2015, I could not get Father Holo out of my mind.  As I walked Prague’s ancient streets and crossed the renowned Charles Bridge, I imagined the young Father Holo walking the same beautiful streets and crossing the same spectacular bridge, and I began to wonder what made him decide to become a priest, to leave his homeland and become a missionary in the Philippines, to spend a large part of his life in Binmaley, Pangasinan teaching English grammar to young seminarians like myself who both feared and loved him at the same time.  And I realized how amazing indeed is the manner in which God makes people’s lives converge, oftentimes in very surprising ways, for reasons that they will begin to understand only so much later.  God, The Divine Weaver, makes the threads of our lives intersect so He could bring to fruition His wonderful designs for us and for humanity as a whole. At the moment, we may not understand what His hands are up to.  But later we shall be given a glimpse of the finished Tapestry, and we shall finally understand the whys and wherefores of our lives’ unexpected interfaces.  As young seminarians, we dreaded Father Holo’s grammar classes.  We feared his rebukes and the punishments he imposed if we did not study our lessons well.  Yet, many years later, we all began to realize how immensely fortunate we were to be the taught the rudiments of English grammar by an exacting teacher who expected nothing less than the best from each of us.  

            Father Holo literally served the Mary Help of Christians Minor Seminary until his health made it impossible for him to continue doing so.  In the early nineties, he suffered a stroke and was brought to a place at the Christ the King Seminary in Quezon City where elderly SVD priests are cared for.  He died shortly afterwards, leaving behind countless priests and ex-seminarians who swear that they owe the better parts of who they are to the formation they received from the unforgettable Father Viktor Holobrady.

Book of Regrets

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

 

     One Saturday afternoon, during my diplomatic posting in Jordan, I decided to while away the sweltering summer hours in the English language section of a bookstore inside a mall near our neighborhood.  There, I stumbled upon a little book whose title immediately caught my attention – The Book of Regrets:  Thoughts, Memories and Revelations from a Celebrated Cast  by Juliet Solomon.  It was a compilation of the regrets of a number of famous people that included writers, politicians, captains of industry, sports and showbiz celebrities.  Their regrets were varied and immensely interesting.  I finished browsing over the book with the comforting realization that even people you least expect to have regrets do have their own regrets.

     The truth is, most of us keep, inside some secret vault in our hearts, our own little “book of regrets.”   In our moments of solitude, we struggle to overcome some regrets, or try our best to live with them at least.  Allow me to share with you some lessons I have learned over the years about dealing with regrets.

     I learned that the first thing to do when dealing with regrets is to determine exactly what kind of regret is it that we are dealing with.  Is it a regret about something we have done, or is it a regret about something we have failed to do?  If it is about the latter, then we would do well to remember that it is never too late to try doing it at last.  We have all heard about senior citizens who decided to go back to school in their retirement years to pursue the course that they really wanted to take when they were young, but which they had to forego for one reason or another.  We have also heard about mid-career executives who opted to quit their high-paying jobs in order to indulge in full their true passions for music, for writing, or for the fine arts. If they could do it, so can each of us -- if we are courageous enough to lose sight of the shore in order to discover new oceans (to paraphrase what the French writer Andre Gide once said).

     If the regret we are dealing with is about something we have done in the past, then we must ask ourselves if there is still something we can do about it.  Chances are, there is no longer anything we can do at this point to “undo” it.  All we can do is to find a way to repair the damage it has done to us and to other people, ask for the latter’s forgiveness, make amends, and help them (and ourselves) move on.

     Second, for both kinds of regret, it would help us if we called to mind that our decision to do or not to do something in the past (which is now the cause of our regret) was actually “the best decision” we could make at that time.  From the standpoint of the present, our past decision now appears unwise, irresponsible and wrong.  But we must remember that our past decision did not appear to us that way at the time we made it.  On the contrary, we probably had all the reasons to believe at that time that it was the best thing to do, and that it was right for us to do it.  Maybe other people believed otherwise.  But we still went ahead with the decision because our personal paradigm at that time had convinced us that, all things considered, it was indeed the best thing for us to do.  Given the same set of circumstances, we would probably be making the very same decision that we made then.  It would, therefore, be unfair for us to condemn and ceaselessly punish the young man we once were for something he honestly believed was the best thing for him to do at that time.

     Third, we could cushion the impact of our regret if we helped ourselves realize that, in fact, we could have done worse things than the ones we now regret having done. Human nature being what it is, there is literally no limit to the bad decisions we could have made in our past life.  If we regret the fact that we got married too young, long before we were ready for the responsibilities of having a wife and children, let us remember that we could have done worse things than that.  We could have become irredeemably hooked on a vice when we were young, or we could have done something that really ruined our young lives beyond repair.  That we did not go that far is reason enough to be grateful, and to be kinder to ourselves when making an assessment of our past lives.

     Finally, we must learn how to extract the gold inside the ore of our past mistakes.  The things we did or did not do in the past, which we now regret, must have inadvertently affected someone’s life (including our own) in a positive way. Even the pain that resulted from our mistakes has probably made us better persons, in ways we have neither intended nor have hitherto been aware of.  Our actions can have (to borrow a term popularized by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton) “unanticipated consequences.”   Even negative actions can have unintended positive consequences.  More importantly, we must remind ourselves that ours is a God who can write straight with crooked lines.  He can help us turn our past mistakes into stepping stones to a   better life. We just have to be open and attentive to His silent promptings.  In fact, He has probably done exactly that many times in the past without our knowing it.  He has woven our mistakes into the fabric of our life in such a way that instead of ruining it, they have made it even more sturdy and more beautiful to behold.

     Several years ago, young lovers in Rome had a very interesting way of sealing their love for each other.  They would go to an old bridge in the city called Ponte Milvio bringing with them a lock with their names written on it.  They would then attach the lock to one of the lampposts of the bridge and throw away the key into the Tiber River underneath. It was their way of saying that the love they had sealed would never be unlocked, because they had both made a decision to let go of the key for all eternity. The practice became so popular that the lampposts eventually collapsed on account of the weight of the locks (which were fondly called lucchetti d’amore or “locks of love” by the locals).  After I left Rome for good in 2009, I heard that the city government eventually penalized the practice because of the danger it posed to the old bridge.  But I also heard that young Italians, being the hopeless romantics that they are, still continue to do it despite the ban.

     We can adopt the same practice when dealing with our regrets.  After exhausting all the possible ways of overcoming them, or at least of coming to terms with them, we can make a conscious decision to lock them out of our minds and throw away the key for good.  After all, there is indeed no use crying over spilled milk. No amount of wishing that we could turn back the hands of time and redo things the right way can bring the past back.  At some point, we need to achieve closure from whatever we did yesterday, forgive ourselves and move on. Of course, even after having made such a decision, some of our regrets can still find a way to come back and haunt us.  For even lovers who have thrown away the key to their locks of love into the Tiber River can still be visited afterwards by doubts about their love.  But lovers who remind each other of the lock they have closed and the key they have thrown away eventually manage to triumph over their doubts.  So too shall we triumph over our lingering regrets if we remind ourselves of the lock we have closed and the key we have decided to hurl away into the flowing river beyond our minds. 

A Pathway to Diplomacy

The following is the author’s introduction to his book, A Pathway to Diplomacy, which has recently been published by the UST Publishing House.  Copies are now available at selected branches of National Book Store and Powerbooks.  They may also be directly obtained from:

The UST Publishing House

Beato Angelico Bldg.

University of Santo Tomas, Manila
PHILIPPINES

(+632) 406-1611 loc. 8252 / 8278; (+632) 731-3522 (telefax)
publishing@mnl.ust.edu.ph (email)

http://facebook.com/USTPublishingHouse

 

            There is no single pathway to diplomacy.  In the Philippines, as in many other parts of the world, one who wishes to pursue a diplomatic career is not required to arrive at his destination via a standard (much less, an obligatory) route.  There are, rather, many possible roads he can take to reach his goal.  In fact, he can even create his own path to diplomacy. 

For one, an aspiring diplomat is not required to earn a specific university degree in order to qualify for the annual Foreign Service Officers’ Examination (or FSO Exam).  Unlike the bar and board exams, which can only be taken by those in possession of a specific university degree,  the FSO Exam can be taken by anyone---regardless of his university degree---as long as he fulfills all the other non-academic requirements for the exam.  Having a degree in foreign service or in international relations can, of course, be an advantage; but it is definitely not a must.  Any university degree will do.  What matters is that the aspirant can show, through his performance in the FSO Exam, that he has the intellectual, emotional, psychological, moral and practical ability to represent his country abroad, and to advance his country’s interests in bilateral, regional and international fora.  

            It should hardly come as a surprise, therefore, that career diplomats literally come in all shapes and sizes.  The Philippine foreign service, for example, is made up of men and women with the most diverse academic and professional backgrounds imaginable.  Its corps of officers consists of erstwhile academicians, journalists, writers, lawyers, certified public accountants, bankers, economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, social workers, military officers, architects, engineers, schooled musicians, priests, philosophers and poets, to name but a few.   There is probably no other field in both the public and the private sectors that can equally pride itself with the immense diversity of its talents.  

But this vast multiplicity of talents is not the only consequence of the foreign service’s “openness” as far as academic and professional backgrounds are concerned.  The other is that, since the FSO Exam does not require of the aspirant a prior education or training in diplomacy, a career diplomat literally has to learn the ropes of his profession as he goes along.  He acquires his craft not before he sets about his work, but while doing it.   He is, in the truest sense, trained to be a diplomat on-the-job.  He is, of course, given a formal training in diplomacy at the start of his career.  After passing the FSO Exam, he is made to undergo what is called in the Department’s parlance the “cadetship program,” wherein he will be trained in diplomacy from its most rudimentary skills to its most profound theories.  But his education as a diplomat does not end there.  In fact, it can be said that his real education in diplomacy begins when he steps out of the Department’s Foreign Service Institute (where the cadetship program is held) and joins one of the Department’s various offices.  

            My own on-the-job training as a diplomat started at the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs, where I was assigned shortly after finishing the cadetship program in mid-2000.  It swung into high gear during the six and a half years that I spent in Rome as Third Secretary and Vice Consul, and later, as Second Secretary and Consul of our Embassy to the Italian Republic.

            The Philippine Embassy in Rome (Rome PE) is not an easy assignment.  Italy has one of the largest Filipino communities in the whole of Europe.   In addition,   the city of Rome hosts the headquarters of several U.N. bodies and other international organizations. Serving as an Alternate Representative to these international organizations is part of the functions of a Filipino diplomat assigned in Rome, over and above his usual bilateral diplomatic tasks. 

            Fortunately, I enjoyed a peculiar advantage during my posting there:  for the greater part of my sojourn in Rome, I was a single man who had all the time to myself the moment I got home.  Unencumbered by the responsibilities that go with having a wife and children, I had more than enough opportunity to reflect on and write about the things I experienced and about the issues that engaged my mind during my stay there. The essays in this collection were the fruits of those solitary hours.  They were written between 2005 to 2008, on weekends when I did not have to leave the house to attend a community affair or take care of an urgent assistance-to-nationals (ATN) case.  Naturally, the themes and topics of these essays reflect my interests and preoccupations at that time:  the theory and practice of diplomacy; the lives and ideas of the leaders and thinkers who had, in one way or another, shaped my own life and thoughts; art and literature; and an assortment of subjects that I tried to understand better by putting my thoughts on paper.

            Yet, varied as their themes and topics may be, a common thread actually runs through these essays:  They constitute a written record of the insights I came upon and the lessons I learned in the course of my first foreign posting as a fledgling diplomat.   They are, as it were, the jottings I wrote down on my maiden voyage in the challenging but exciting world of diplomacy. 

            They say that our first experience in any area of life exerts a lasting impact upon us.  In fact, it usually sets the tone and shapes the character of our subsequent engagements in that particular sphere.  My maiden posting in Rome has taught me lessons and given me insights which, I am sure, will continue to stand me in good stead in the years ahead.  If other diplomats can find something useful for themselves among the varied thoughts that these essays contain, then writing them shall have been worth it many times over.  

            But the publication of this book was inspired not only by the desire to share with my colleagues in the foreign service the lessons and insights I gained during my first posting in Rome. It was also stirred by the desire to offer something useful to the thousands of young men and women who dream of becoming career diplomats someday. There are a lot of highly romanticized ideas about diplomacy and the diplomatic life that are floating around in university campuses, and many young people have been attracted to the foreign service largely on account of these glamorized notions of the diplomatic career. Unfortunately, the actual work and lifestyle of the diplomatic profession do not exactly match their idealized representations.  The essays in this book can help aspiring diplomats acquire a more realistic picture of what they would be getting into, should they decide to join the diplomatic service. 

            Diplomacy is by no means an easy calling.  But, as I hope these essays will reveal, it is definitely one of the most fitting vocations for anyone who genuinely wishes to serve his country and, in some way, make a difference in our world.

 

 

Meeting Ted Sorensen

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     It would not have pleased either men if I called Theodore C. Sorensen “JFK’s speechwriter.”  Neither would it have been a fair and accurate description of the working relationship between the two.

     The word “speechwriter” conjures, for a lot of people, the image of someone (usually anonymous and unacknowledged) who writes a speech for some public figure who merely delivers what the former has written.  Sorensen has always asserted that that was not how it was between him and John F. Kennedy.  Neither men denied that they worked together on JFK’s speeches.  But, as Sorensen himself clarified, Kennedy “would never blindly accept or blandly deliver a text he had not seen and edited.  We always discussed the topic, the approach and the conclusion in advance.  He always had quotations or historical allusions to include.  Sometimes he would review an outline.  And he always, upon receiving my draft, altered, deleted or added phrases, paragraphs or pages.  Some drafts he rejected entirely.”¹ 

   Hired by Kennedy, on a trial basis, as his number two legislative assistant when he was still a freshman Senator from Massachusetts, Sorensen (then twenty-four) gradually rose to become Kennedy’s most trusted and most influential aide.  He had been called Kennedy’s “intellectual blood-bank,” “top policy aide” and “alter ego.”²  So significant was Sorensen’s role in the crafting of Kennedy’s speeches and writings that, soon after JFK won a Pulitzer prize for his second book, Profiles in Courage, rumors began to circulate in some circles that it was Sorensen, not Kennedy, who actually wrote the book, or at least, the bulk of it.  A columnist, Drew Pearson, soon made a public claim to that effect on ABC television’s Mike Wallace Show.   “Of all the abuse he would receive throughout his life,” Sorensen would later write, “ none would make him more angry than the charge a few months later that he had not written his own book…  On Sunday afternoon the Senator called me in an unusual state of high agitation and anger.  He talked, as he had never done before, of lawyers and lawsuits.  ‘We might as well quit if we let this stand,’ he said when I counseled caution.  ‘This challenges my ability to write the book, my honesty in signing it and my integrity in accepting the Pulitzer Prize.’”³   Throughout the controversy, Sorensen maintained that the charge was utterly false.  He did not deny the important role he played in the book’s making – a fact that Kennedy himself admitted in his book’s Preface.⁴ But he strongly defended Kennedy’s authorship of the book, going so far as to issue a sworn statement that he himself was not the author and that he had never claimed authorship of the book.  After a series of cross-examinations and arguments between the Kennedy camp and ABC executives, ABC television later made a complete statement of retraction and apology for airing Pearson’s false allegation.⁵

     I first learned about Theodore Sorensen through an English composition textbook which I stumbled upon during my college years.  I can no longer recall the author and the exact title of the textbook.  But I remember that it contained an excerpt from Sorensen’s best-selling book on Kennedy.  The excerpt was on the way JFK’s speeches were written.⁶ 

   Until then, I never considered speech-writing an art form, much less a literary form in its own right.  But reading Sorensen’s description of how he and JFK wrote the latter’s speeches made me realize that speech-writing can indeed be considered a literary form.  It requires imagination, creativity, skill and dedication, as much as any other literary form.  It is a testament to JFK’s singular talent as a speaker that the speeches he and Sorensen wrote sounded exceptionally well when he delivered them.  But it is likewise a testament to Sorensen’s unusual gift as a speech-writer that, even when they are merely read as words on a page, the texts of JFK’s speeches have a beauty and worth of their own.   My continuing appreciation of speech-writing as a literary art owes its conception to that excerpt from Sorensen’s book.  

     I, therefore, considered it a genuine privilege to finally meet Sorensen in person in November 2003.  He was in Rome, along with JFK’s other former aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and JFK’s sisters Jean Kennedy Smith and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, to participate in the city’s commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of JFK’s demise.  One of the activities organized for the occasion was a panel discussion dubbed “Quarant’anni dopo:  le frontiere del Kennedismo” (“Forty Years After:  The Frontiers of Kennedyism”).   Members of the diplomatic corps had been invited to the affair, which was held at the Aula di Giulio Cesare in the Campidoglio (Rome’s city hall).   Sorensen was one of the panelists.

     We had to listen to several speakers before finally hearing Sorensen speak.  But the wait was well worth it.  Sorensen’s speech stood out from everyone else’s (including Schlesinger’s) on account of the warmth, the fondness, the undiminished respect and admiration with which he talked about JFK.   He began his speech by asking why we were there; what it was about JFK that continued to captivate the interest and admiration of people even forty years after his assassination.   He then spoke about what personally drew him to Kennedy and what he believed was Kennedy’s unique legacy to America and to the world at large.  It was hardly a surprise that Sorensen’s speech won the warmest applause that day.

     When the event ended and everyone rose to leave the hall, I approached Sorensen and introduced myself.  After the pleasantries, I said, “I genuinely admire your speeches, Mr. Sorensen.”   For a few seconds, I sensed that he inwardly wondered what I meant by “your speeches.”  Was I referring to the speeches he co-wrote with JFK, or to the speeches he himself wrote and delivered after JFK’s demise?  (In the years following JFK’s assassination, Sorensen distinguished himself as an international law expert, a best-selling author and a widely-sought speaker in his own right.)  Then he smiled and modestly said, “Thank you very much.”  

     In his classic work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli underlined the importance for a prince to choose his ministers well for, he argued,  “the first estimate of [a prince’s] intelligence will be based upon the character of the men he keeps about him.”⁷

     That  brief encounter with Sorensen further increased my estimate of the leader whose company he once kept.

NOTES

     ¹Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York:  Bantam Books, 1966), 66-67.

     ²Ibid., p. 882.

     ³Ibid., p. 76.

     ⁴See John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, memorial edition (New York:  Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 17.

     ⁵Sorensen, op. cit., 77-78.  Some JFK biographers like Thomas C. Reeves still maintain that Sorensen was the real author of the book.  Reeves argues for that position in his book A Question of Character:  A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York:  The Free Press, 1991), 127-128. 

     ⁶Upon acquiring my own copy of Sorensen’s book Kennedy many years later,  I found that the excerpt comes from pages 66 to 72 of said book.

     ⁷Daniel Donno, trans.  (New York:  Bantam Books, 1981), 79.

Journeys Without Encores

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

 

     One of the advantages of being assigned to a European post is the vast opportunity it offers for traveling.   This is especially true if you are posted to a European country that belongs to the so-called Schengen zone – a group of European countries that have agreed, among other things, to do away with visa requirements as far as the cross-border travels of their citizens are concerned.   In the case of those assigned to Italy, for instance, possession of the carta d’identita (identity card) issued by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is enough, if you wish to travel to other Schengen countries such as France, Spain or The Netherlands.   You no longer need to apply for a visa to enter these countries.  Showing your carta d’identita to their border police or their immigration officers would suffice.  

 

     Not only that, low-budget airlines offer airfares that are so cheap, traveling from Italy to Spain or France can actually cost less than treating a couple of friends to dinner at a typical Italian restaurant.

 

     Yet, while in Rome, one does not even have to look beyond the borders of Italy to satisfy one’s desire to travel and see new places.  Every Italian region (nay, every province within a region) has something unique to offer;  it deserves to be visited at least once.

 

     Aware that my term in Italy would not last forever (the normal length of a foreign assignment being six years) and that it might take a while before I get assigned again to a European country, I tried my best to avail of every opportunity to travel both inside and outside Italy during my sojourn there.  I took the chance to visit Paris, Cannes, Nice, Monaco, Lourdes, Barcelona, Montserrat, Madrid, Amsterdam, Geneva, London, Athens, Milan, Turin, Venice, Verona, Padova, Pisa, Cremona, Florence, Naples, Taranto, Sorrento, Pompeii, Palermo, Reggio di Calabria,  and a number of other Italian destinations, thanks to the ease and economy of traveling while in Europe. 

     It is often said that traveling broadens one’s horizons.  Indeed, being exposed to ways of thinking and living which differ from one’s own expands the range of one’s perspectives.   As a result, one becomes more flexible in one’s views and more tolerant of other people’s divergent opinions and beliefs.   No wonder, a lot of people claim that traveling is a form of education.  In fact, many people suggest that traveling should complement one’s formal education, for there are certain things that one will learn from traveling which one will never learn within the four walls of a classroom.

     My own limited experience in traveling has certainly pushed back the frontiers of my understanding in no small way.   But it has done one other important thing besides.  

     I have noticed that every time I travel to a place which I feel I may never have the chance to visit again,  I literally make every effort to ensure that it is going to be a most enjoyable and unforgettable journey.   Days before I actually take the plane or the train for my intended destination, I try to read every literature I can get hold of regarding the place I am going to see.   I try to learn about its history, its culture, its current economic, political, social and religious conditions.   I even try to learn a little of its language within the limited time I have before the actual journey.   Aside from the obvious practical advantages of knowing how to say “Where is the washroom?” or “How do I find my way back to the train station?”  a little knowledge of a people’s language will enable one to view the world through their eyes, so to speak.

 

     Moreover, as soon as I board the plane or the train, all my senses become more attuned to their surroundings than they would normally be.  It is as if my eyes, my ears, my nose, and even my mouth and skin would like to absorb every particle of the journey I am undertaking.   I notice sights, sounds, smells, and tastes I would have been oblivious to, had I encountered them along the roads of my everyday life.

     Finally, in my desire to make the most of the journey, I would not, if I could help it, allow anything to spoil the fun.  Snags and glitches that would have disturbed my balance under normal circumstances become petty and forgettable while I’m on the road.   I would not permit such “small problems” to ruin my trip.   I always remind myself:  I may never get the chance to undertake this journey again.  I want to be able to remember this moment, many years from now, with a smile on my face and the sound of laughter in my heart.

 

     The metaphor of life as a journey has been used for so long, it has become hopelessly trite for a lot of people.   Yet my travels have taught me that, hackneyed as it may be, the metaphor remains a good one; and it is worth keeping the image in mind as we undertake this “journey without an encore” – this “trip” we will surely not have the chance to take again after our time on earth is done.  I am, of course, speaking of the life you and I have been granted the privilege to live for a given number of years.

     We only live once, and we will not live forever.   Yet how often do many of us live as if life were a reel of tape we could rewind and fast-forward at will?   We often take the hours and days of our life for granted.  And we throw away the joy of the present moment by wasting our time regretting our past mistakes and worrying about the future.  Before we know it, our chance to journey through life is over.  And we realize with sadness that we have barely enjoyed the trip.

     Not so long ago, I came upon the following poem attributed to a fifth century Indian poet and playwright named Kalidasa:

 

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the verities

and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendor of beauty;

For yesterday is but a dream,

And tomorrow is only a vision;

But today, well lived, makes every

yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

     If we’ve forgotten how to relish the irretrievable moments of our journey through life, it’s never too late to relearn it.