MANILA: Whenever a senior Filipino professional leaves to work abroad, alarm bells ring out and panic reigns across the land. “There goes the talent, woe unto us!” people cry out.

The debate about brain drain has been around for decades. In the meantime, millions of other professionals stay, but people panic all the same. It’s like brain drain will gobble us all up like some kind of mysterious blob.

When the dictator Ferdinand Marcos finally gave up and agreed to a helicopter ride out of the Palace in February 1986, ushering in the Cory Aquino era, I was living in the United States. The good news rang out all over the world.

At work, a senior colleague from India who had been a mentor to me came to my office. “I know what you’re thinking, young man,” he started, then added: “You want to rush home to help your countrymen rebuild your nation. No need to do that. There are a lot of capable people there to do it.”

Of course, he was right. There were a lot of capable people to do it.

That’s exactly the point here: There’s another way of looking at the so-called brain drain. Today, people are lamenting the departure for greener pastures of senior weather forecasters at Pagasa, the national weather bureau. In the past, it was doctors, pilots, and other senior professionals.

Instead of panicking and feeling abandoned, we should be feeling happy for those who are given an opportunity to practise their craft abroad, get paid well, and live prosperous lives. Isn’t that the goal of every professional, to be able to be really good at one’s career and be paid well for it? Why begrudge those who are able to reach their personal peak of success and enjoy the fruits of their labour?

Instead of worrying about the loss of such professionals, we should look at their passage as an opportunity to train others to attain the same elevated status and give them their turn to be useful to the country.

There is no reason to rue the departure of senior specialists because there are many others waiting in the wings to take their places.

Thousands of professionals come out of universities every year, champing at the bit to practise what they’ve learned and contribute to nation-building.

There seems to be a sense in the country that those who leave for greener pastures are traitors to the nation, that by going abroad, they’re abandoning the country.

Professionals must grow in their careers. And when they’ve attained a certain degree of success, they need to move up, they need to move on. To move up and on, they must, like water, find their own level. And where is that? If it’s not in the country, then find it elsewhere.

Professionals should be given all the opportunity they need to improve themselves, to attain a certain level of prosperity and comfort, and be the best that they can be. Nothing and no one should stand in their way.

Except, of course, in times when their particular expertise is sorely needed by the country. That is a given.

But, as it stands today, the country has a plentiful supply – an oversupply, really – of professionals from various fields. Doctors, nurses, accountants, teachers, you name it. Why not let them be successful where that is possible?

What we should be doing is improving further the levels of instruction at our schools in order to produce outstanding graduates. So that if they graduate as tea­chers, they should be hired as tea­chers and not as domestic helpers.

Then President Gloria Arroyo once made the startling statement that we should train our womenfolk who go abroad so that they can be “supermaids”. That was a bizarre and insulting statement. Why not train them instead to be superteachers, superaccountants, superengineers, and so on?

We have a surplus of skilled people. Let’s not waste it by discouraging our countrymen from practising their professions abroad and getting paid well for it. Let’s not look at Filipinos going abroad as a loss; let’s look at them as a plus instead of a minus.

Frankly, when we say there’s brain drain, we insult those who have stayed or come back home.