Think about it
Dick Gordon is game – students
By Jun Velasco
IN his huddle with Pangasinan students — more than a thousand of them at the People’s Astrodome — Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon showed that he was just like anyone of them.
Very much unlike the high profile persona he projects on television because he is a “terror” in peeling off the hideous mask of JocJoc Bolante, Dick was like the playmate of any young boy or girl when he came down from the stage of the astrodome to hobnob with the 1, 400 participants of the 2nd regional ICT convention.
What he did in that encounter was teach the young in less than three hours to be their best selves, and not brood on the bashful, slumping and cowardly individuals they were once were. In a booming voice, the former Olongapo mayor goaded his mesmerized audience to show off what they have between their ears, making them believe that they really are well informed and that what’s holding them is their sense of guilt, whatever it is which, more often than not, wasn’t there from the beginning.
The environment — or whatever we have acquired as part of our development — has become a blockade to success, to our ability to compete in an exciting progress-bound world which in point of fact is our birth right.
What was overtly shown in the convention — to give participants the latest in info com technology (ICT), computers, robotics, animation and all that — received a big bonus from Senator Gordon, how to get out the shining gold from the hidden stuff of everyone who heard him and be his best self in the world-arena of competition. Lucky is he who has mastered the art or acquisition and use of information because his “data arsenal” has equipped him with limitless ammunition to defeat his inadequacies.
Dick Gordon gave his delighted audience a good example of how a little or gangling kid grows to become of a master of his destiny — himself— who became town mayor, ConCon Delegate at 25, tourism secretary and senator. He enthused his audience with a powerful appeal that could make each one, without exception, a winning candidate for success in the grand battleground of life, to keep one’s eyes open, sharply open, get organized, have faith, and voraciously absorb the verities and counsel from those who have had a track record in life.
In Dick’s short encounter with the students at the astrodome, the young participants suddenly discovered their “good personas” which have been lying in wait, as if for centuries, before he told them to peel off any bashful covering and unleash their latent genius. There’s but one formula, he said. Use the power of your mind and imagination to construct your best self. That’s all there is to it in effective and successful living, he said.
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The local press club headed by Allan Sison made a good start, having guested two senators — Ping Lacson as induction guest of honor, and Dick Gorden as its kapihan guest.
Our old colleague Rod Rivera who was club prexy in l969 (Vic Tuazon was first president in l968 with the club’s revival) looked impressed with the new energy shown by Allan’s group, particularly by Allan himself. Rod expressed the hope our practitioners brush up with their writing and, oh yes, also with their speaking because there are many intelligent readers and listeners out there. And so we hark back to Dick Gordon’s formula of success. “Master knowledge.” It should be obvious to all that when one writes or speaks in English, the audience will immediately have an idea of who you are by your use of the language. In this sense, media craft is a risky business. We remember one advice given by the late Ermin Garcia Sr., Jun’s erpat, “mediocres have no business hanging around in the industry.”
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