alas-tres na ng madaling araw pero gising na gising pa rin ako. bakit hindi? walang pasok bukas dahil araw ng pagdiriwang ng mga manggagawa sa buong mundo.
pagkatapos ng 4 na taon ng pagtatrabaho, ano ang dapat kong ipagdiwang?
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dahil ipit ang lunes sa dalawang araw na walang pasok, halos walang tao kanina sa opisina. tahimik! masaya haha minsan lang kasi maging tahimik sa opisina. madalas maingay! ewan ko ba, ang lalakas ng boses ng mga tao dun. malalaman mo kung ano ang pinag-uusapan nila ng nasa kabilang linya ng telepono. feeling mo tuloy nakikipakinig ka kahit hindi naman. tsismosa!
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ina and i were talking about mikaela fudolig's speech this afternoon. she responded to the forwarded email i sent to the group, with a note that reads: i guess the idea is not just for UP people but for every Filipino youth.
she said she had goosebumps while reading the speech. well, who wont? as usual, we had one of those (pa)profound discussions about idealism, adulthood and life. i dont know why but whenever we chat, we usually end up discussing about serious things in life.
told her that i loved the speech because its so young and so idealist. i remember that i once read an article written by a parent who has a kid who graduated from ateneo. she (or he, i couldnt remember if it was a father or a mother) noticed how the valedictory speech seemed like a rhetoric. she was a bit disappointed because she didnt see the youthful idealism that she expected to see from a person who is fresh from school and who is supposed to have fresh perspectives about the world. and she was asking, was an expensive atenean education worth it? i dont mean any offense because i know that there are a lot of idealist ateneans out there, who might be more idealist than me, but that article just came back to my mind while reading mikaela's speech. maybe if the mother could read mikaela's article now, she wont lose hope in the youth.
anyway, ina and i were talking about how idealism, in a way, gradually wears off during adulthood (at least in our experience). when youre fresh from college, you have these dreams about making a change, about holding on to the values you learned from college, about living a principled life, about defying the norm in the interest of truth, about serving your country, serving the people who sent you through school, about giving back to society. but as you work and live in a dynamic environment wherein people's minds are not as easy to understand and couldnt be explained by a single theory, you learn about a new concept, that of compromise. as you meddle with people who 'have been there', you learn that somehow, you need to reorient yourself in order to survive, that somehow, you have to sometimes 'relax' your personal rules a bit and you'll have new sets of principles. and as you immerse yourself longer, you slowly realize that the idealism is waning, that youre becoming more pragmatic. not that its a bad thing but sometimes, the guilt is there.
she was telling me that this kind of idealism is peculiar of up. that in la salle, people were more self-absorbed. that social consciousness is not a norm. i couldnt react because i dont have any friends from la salle aside from her and cams. and she said she also does not have friends from up aside from jen, dangs and me. and so we appreciate the interaction, the exchange of thoughts, the sharing of perspectives.
sometimes i feel shame for myself. nahihiya ako sa nakababatang sarili ko. i always dream about change and talk with my friends about making a change but it ends there. i always talk about wanting to volunteer for some NGO but that remains unrealized up to now. i dont have the bravery that mikaela is talking about. i cant defy the pressure to lead a comfortable life. im not making new roads. im not a trailblazer. im just a part of the mob, the majority who walks through the clean, cemented path built before me.
maybe its maslow's hierarchy of needs working here. maybe not. maybe using maslow is just a good justification of my actions but the truth is im on my way to failing my younger, idealist self from its dreams. i dont know. maybe. i hope not.
i really want to go back to school now.
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