Be Humble, Be Honest, Be Honorable

By Dato’ Dr OOI KEE BENG, Speech as Guest of Honour at the Speech Day of St Xavie’’s Institution, 21 November 2024.

IT IS A GREAT HONOUR indeed for me to be here today to not only congratulate the Award-winners, but also everyone here, at the end of the school year.

I remember the strange feeling of being happy that the end-of-year holidays are here, and yet knowing you are going to miss the routines of the day, the camaraderie in class and on the school grounds; and enjoying the company of your peers, and even your teachers, if you are honest.

Both sweet and bitter at the same time.

I left SXI at the end of 1972. I went on to be a journalist here in Penang for about three years, and then I left for Europe. Eight years ago, I came back to my home town, to Penang—exactly 40 years afterwards.

Now, the gist of what I learned after living a whole life in various parts of the world, which I have found to be useful, ethical and meaningful, and which should be useful to impart to the young minds here today as they go out into the world, are these:

1. Be Humble
2. Be Honourable
3. Be Honest

Why should one be humble, honest and honourable? There are a few sides to this, but all interrelated.

1. To be humble is important because it nurtures in you the vital insight and truth that all knowledge is tentative. In the end, one goes through life seeking out what one does not know, rather than boasting about what one knows.

It also lowers the need to compete on a daily basis, which society today wants you to do.

Basically, you are ready to learn more and to be a life-long learner if you stay humble. For one thing, you learn to be a listener. That is an important skill. A humble person realises the importance of listening and contemplating.

Whenever you are not humble, learning new things becomes difficult.

• To be honest… now, I tell my children not to lie, and I tell them that this is not because it is a sin to lie, but because it is self-damaging to lie. You lie often from a position of weakness, and when you lie, you perpetuate that position of weakness. Once you have lied, you have to justify that lying and to defend that lie, to yourself and to everyone else.

You would then have damaged your self-image and your self-respect. It is often not worth it. The damage done by telling a lie, an untruth, lives for a longer time than the trouble you think it saved you from.

Your self-respect depends on you showing the strength to be honest.

• To be honourable is about maintaining consistency not only in how others see you, but how you see yourself. Being honourable is to maintain your self-respect and to know that you deserve the respect of others.

In short, being honourable is to be consistent in your humility and your honesty.

To sum up, I would say that being Humble, being Honest and being Honourable are all about respecting others and respecting yourself. It is an exercise in mutualism, meaning that you realise the epistemic and moral importance of treating one another as equals.

It boils down to empathy, the ability to feel for all things that exist, the ability to be in the shoes of others, the ability to expand your own moral agency.

The ability to integrate meaning in your life and in your actions is your super-power. That’s what integrity means.

You are the meaning-giver. So don’t hide that super-power, and don’t let others intimidate you from using it or developing it. You can make a beneficial difference to people around you, and to the World. That is the Lasallian spirit.

Labor Omnia Vincit— those were the first Latin words I learned. That wisdom has helped me to have hope, to be resilient, and to try to stay humble and honest. In short, it means “Do not be passive!”. Instead, be active, be proactive, and make a difference to the world”.

Thank you all, and good luck out there.