Non-negotiables and Character Building February 21, 2013 by Neil Eustaquio submitted to Atty.

Marco Sardillo A Reaction to Passion for Justice by Justice Pompeyo Diaz I am here to celebrate the successful ending of my course in law. I am here so that you may send me on my way to practice the law and earn money to spend for a comfortable lifestyle. I am here for you to send me on my way to bear the name of Ateneo throughout my life so I can use it to get respect I have not earned and access to places of power. Though the words in the previous paragraph are precisely those which Justice Diaz hoped were not in the minds of Ateneo Law students as they graduate, these words seem more real to many than those words Justice Diaz used in his speech entitled Passion for Justice. Life is different for each student. The cards that reality deals are varied for every person. Some may be called to the bench or bar, others to business, to other modes of the practice of law, or otherwise. To date, I still am not sure as to which I am called; but I find this fact immaterial. Whether by action or inaction, deliberate or otherwise, the student will have to react to whatever cards life may deal. What life presents cannot be ignored. I believe that a person cannot decide unilaterally how his life is going to tread out and expect that all will be as he chose. I have learned this when I planned my life during college to a good level of detail. In retrospect, I have found that more than 80% of those plans are not on track, not because of a lack of passion to pursue it, but because reality is better understood. A person gets a better grasp or knowledge of reality over time. Reality cannot be ignored. Life happens, cards are dealt, and the person has to deal with it. Thus, I have ceased from making grand plans, but have come to pursuing learning more about reality. But in learning more about this reality, I found that it is not the cards that reality deals that define a person, by the quality of his response. These responses build what is known as a persons character. To build character, a person must be guided by a moral compass. And since character-building is a life-long process, the compass has to be durable. A moral compass is one of the most important tools in life, but one not found in all students.1 In a Constitutional Law I class conducted by Atty. Chochoy Medina, he passionately shared that the end goal of a lawyer in practice should always be Justice. If it is not Justice, then we have a problem. Justice Diaz shared (a) how his moral compass keeps him in the right direction: Justice is to render to each man what is his due; and (b) the quantum of desire that pushes him to tread that direction: Let Justice be done, though the heavens fall! This principle of Justice is easier said than done. It must be coupled with a passion to consistently choose Justice. Admittedly, I am finding it hard to find the passion to choose Justice. Maybe the cards dealt in my life may yet not have been those that call for a passion for Justice. My life in the practice is still young. The cards may be just about to be dealt. What I believe is important is that I have moral compass and the passion to respond to it.

Justice Diaz attests to this when he shares his experience with self-serving men.

My own moral compass has been a definition of maturity shared to me by a young professor2, i.e., maturity is said to exist in a person when there is the concurrence of self-knowledge, self-control, and self-giving. 3 Among the three, the last is most important.4 And the words of passion that has always stirred me in times of despair have been: Don't let your life be sterile. Be useful. Blaze a trail. Shine forth with the light of your faith and of your love.5 With a moral compass, and a passion to push me through, I have no fear of the cards to be dealt to me by reality. I know that so long as I respond with actions that are filled with fruitful care for others, I know I will have responded in a manner that builds my character. I do not know what life will deal me in the practice of law, but I hope that I would be able to respond in a manner I will not regret in my later days.

Dr. Fernando Lukban of the University of Asia and the Pacific. I understood the first and second to be a requisite in order to act in a manner that exudes the last. 4 See 1 Corinthians 13. 5 SAINT JOSEMARIA ESCRIVA, THE WAY 1 (1st Ed., 1985).
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