Life for me is a journey on a long, winding and unfamiliar road with many crossroads and forks along the way. My journey started one day in November, twenty-six years ago in the city of Butuan as the eldest of a brood of four girls. Everyday of my life, I am taking a step forward in this journey, not knowing what lies on the road ahead. Because of the uncertainties of the future, I treat everyday as a gift. I have plans for the days to come, yet, I am aware that I could never know what life has in store for me. Be it joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, comfort or hardship, I learn to welcome any circumstance and accept it as part of life that is meant to mold me into the kind of person that I really am.
Each of us has our own journey to take. It is our own choice which road to follow. Nevertheless, we are not traveling alone for there are people who are meant to be with us in some points of our journey. My families, friends, loves, acquaintances and all those people who have touched my life in one way or another, came into my life either to stay or to walk out of it eventually, to teach me to learn life’s lessons and appreciate it, break my heart or mend it, bring out the best in me or the worst and make me happy or miserable. Their presence makes life worth living and never the same again.
We are not given the privilege to choose the kind of life we want to live or the kind of family we want to belong to because it is all part of God’s plan. Being baptized and raised as a Christian, I believe in the existence of the Supreme Being. God, as the source of my life, the giver of my every breath, has already laid out my life’s journey in the palm of His hands even before I was conceived. He knows and always has in mind the best for me, even though I may not understand some of His ways. Nevertheless, it’s comforting to know that even His eyes are on the sparrow, how much more for me who was created in His image and likeness.
It is said that life is a learning journey. According to Abigail Adams, “Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended with diligence.” We have so many questions as we walk along the way, some of which have answers that we immediately find and some remain unanswered for a long time. We can only learn each of the answers as we go through life and once we find an answer to a question, it doesn’t end there because another question will arise. As John Locke said, our mind is a tabula rasa when we were born, a blank slate, which gets filled as we grow and experience life day by day. Aside from our experiences, the social environment, our parents, family, teachers, and classmates contribute to our learning both informally and formally. When I was five, I had my first formal education in a nursery school just a walking distance from our house. I looked forward in going to school everyday not just because my mother always prepared my favorite snack of biscuit and milk or sometimes soda. There was one time when it rained very hard and my classmates were all absent. I was the only one who showed up in the class and my teacher probably gave importance to my presence that she still taught me the day’s lesson. It was also in kindergarten when I first delivered a speech during our graduation. My father was the one who helped me memorize the valedictory speech and my teacher trained me how to properly deliver and pronounce the words. Since then, I believed that the sweetest reward for any achievement is not the medal or ribbon but the learning that one gets from the experience and the happiness that it will give to one’s family and friends.
One of life’s greatest gifts is love. In the first place, love is the reason why we’re in this world. We should learn to love ourselves before we can love other people. To borrow the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “Nemo dat quod non habet” (We could not give it if we don’t have).” In this life we experience varieties of love -- love for God, for our family, friends, for our significant others or even for an object or an idea. Whatever it is, we can say that we are human beings and are apart from the other members of the animal kingdom because we feel love. I believe that we don’t find love or rush it because it will just come to us in its own time or when we least expect it. Loving also means letting go, sacrificing one’s happiness and losing our selfish interest for the sake of the happiness of the one we love. We tend to forget and set aside our needs, our selfish desires, because we would want to please the one we love. Sometimes, when it is necessary for the situation, we have to let go of the person, no matter how painful it is for us to do so. However, letting go doesn’t mean we stop loving that person; rather we only let the person find his own happiness, without expecting him/her to come back to us. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXVI, which goes, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom”, tells us that true love surpasses the tests of time, distance and circumstances. No matter how long two persons have been together or even apart from each other, if it is true love that they feel for each other, their relationship will stay and remain strong in spite of the difficulties and changes we all go through in life. Nevertheless, we should not let our hearts run our lives. We still need to be sensible and let our minds speak for itself by listening not only to our feelings but to reason as well.
In life, we have decisions to make. It is either we step forward into risk and growth or step back into our comfort zone. Making a choice is usually a difficult assignment but all through life we must take them. Some choices are insignificant, but others are far reaching in their consequences. We have to choose wisely, because when we don’t take risks, we realize that we are risking even more. I took a risk when I resigned from my work and decided to take a second course of nursing. There were those who understood and supported my decision but there were also those who questioned and doubted my choice to leave the work that I’ve been doing for five years. Whatever they would think, all I know at that time was that I wanted to pursue another field of career, one that offers a bigger opportunity for employment locally and internationally. I know that there are people who didn’t seem to understand but I could only say to them that at least I tried, stepped forward in spite of the risk. I read in a book somewhere, “to try and fail is at least to learn but to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been”.
Within the twenty six years of living on this earth, I can say that people should not just settle for merely a comfortable life. We need to explore and dream, otherwise we stagnate. Let us imagine ourselves as the grapes of the earth, kneaded by life’s circumstances to produce wine; fermented by time to become the finest.
****This article was submitted as a requirement for the subject Philosophy of Man
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