A Life That Matters

Ready or not, some day it will come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten,
Will be passed to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, to-do-list will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from,
Or on what side of the tracks you live at the end.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?
What will matter is not what you bought,
BUT HOW YOU BUILT.
Not what you got,
But WHAT YOU GAVE.

What will matter is not your success, but YOUR SIGNIFICANCE.
What will matter is not what you learned, but what YOU TAUGHT.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage,
Or sacrifice that will enrich, empower, or encourage others
To emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but YOUR CHARACTER.
What will matter is not how many people you knew.
But how many will feel a LASTING LOSS WHEN YOU'RE GONE.
What will matter is
HOW LONG YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED,

BY WHOM AND FOR WHAT.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.
It's not a matter of circumstance but of CHOICE.
Choose to live a life that matters.

--

I love this poem. ♥ Not an original, btw. :)

Finding love, finding God

Okay, so despite the fact that I think I'm about to crack, I'll just maximize my energies to send GV to everyone. Life has been a bit of an adventure recently, and somehow I got taken aback by how fast everything has happened. I actually regret not being able to really focus on my thesis, though. I'm still feeling a bit confused about it and maybe the next few days can help me clarify my thoughts.

I've also had my fair share of frustrations for the past few months. I hope not to dwell on them, but it's quite difficult. Yes, I easily get anxious and so I get caught up in things I should not even think about. I don't know, I'm just a magnet for these sorts of things.

Anyway, I should get back to the topic.

So yesterday, happened to be invited to the Iftar Dinner by the LSPO. I did not expect myself to be there because I did not put it in my calendar. Yes, I'm quite terrible at these things. I doubted if I should have even been present there. I went anyway. I happened to be sat at the table with a Shiite scholar and some of his colleagues. Br. Ricky was also at that table. At one point, they were discussing the context of faith in this generation of believers. One of the main points raised was that we should always think about how to deliver God's message to the youth.

It sort of set off so many thoughts in my mind, but I preferred to sit and just listen. I think what struck me the most is the point where they said, the youth today find God, sometimes, in the strangest of places. Yes, I do agree. I am a person who believes that God manifests his love through different ways. To me, I feel privileged that I get to do the work I love the most. I have a passion for development (and maybe planning. Haha!) and one of the greatest gifts I have received is working at GK DLSU as a Coordinator. Yes, the work is stressful (sometimes) and I have traded it for heaps of security and comfort that my old work place probably gave me.

Then again, when I think about it, it's all worth it. Yes,  I have to put off many luxuries so that I can do more with what I am given. But nothing compares the experience of finding God in the poor. Most of the time, it is a real struggle to work with them, especially when you're not on the same plane. It is difficult to extend love to them because they are not exactly my family. I find comfort in working with them because I know that life as a wannabe nation-builder makes sense because they are there. They are armed with hopes and dreams and they are ready to fight for a better future. Their ambitions are even greater than what we think. In so many ways, I respect so many poor people more than academics. Many of them have experience that even the smartest people in the world would never even have. They are my inspiration because working with them has enabled me to dream beyond myself and beyond what I thought I was capable of.

Working with them is like going to the wellspring of life to get rejuvenated. I have found my raison d'etre because of the nature of my work with them. They have taught me so many things that my professors in Development Policy never taught me, and I couldn't be more thankful. My faith makes sense because they always give me a reason to put it into action. Solidarity with the poor makes sense because they have opened up themselves to me and made me feel welcome. I have found God's kingdom. I have found my vocation as a nation-builder. Thank God and praise Him, I have found love in the strangest of places.

07/29: On multiplying the loaves and fish.

Today's gospel reading is about the miracle of the feeding of 5,000. 

This is not new. In fact, this was a topic in almost every religion class I took at St. Theresa's College. But I think that the first time I gained an appreciation for this story was during the sixth grade. Mrs. Turla, my  Christian Living teacher then, asked the question, "What do you think was the miracle there?" Naturally, for many of us, we responded, "the multiplication of loaves." She went on to explain that it was when Jesus turned the hearts of people from stone to gold as his prayer was for them to share what they already had. They ended up having a surplus of food.

I regained my appreciation of that gospel today. Br. Mike Broughton, very often has teaching moments with me. I don't know why, but this morning at mass, tears were streaming down my cheeks as he spoke about the gospel. Maybe whatever he said struck a cord with me. This was the gospel story that inspired his vocation. The main lesson I got from his sharing was that we all have gifts that God has given to us. These gifts are meant to be shared with others. When we choose to share our gifts, God finds a way to multiply it so that it makes an impact. In the gospel, the boy who shared what little he brought to help feed the five thousand was God's instrument. His choice to use what little he can became the cause for the miracle to be performed.

In the past few months, I've been having "inner tensions" if I'm really doing things right at GK DLSU.  It has been easier for me to think of giving up on an idea when it was difficult. In fact, my work has been hit or miss lately, I think, and not so much of really striving to do well. When I heard the sharing yesterday, I realized that I should not even entertain the thought of giving less than what I can because many people whom I am called to serve do not deserve that.

Instead, I should follow the example of the boy in the gospel. I should ask myself more often: What am I capable of giving? Am I a witness to God's love and generosity to the last, the lost, and the least? Am I a witness to God's grace to the people I meet? How much have I given of the gifts I have to see God's plan work? Have I shared enough so that God can work miracles not only for me, but also for those who have been entrusted to my care?

In our society today, many people continue to suffer from poverty. So many injustices have been brought about by the lack of caring and sharing among people. In the Philippines alone, poverty in all forms has become a plague. But this is not to say that we are living in a society that has no hope. Like the boy who has generously shared what little he had to start feeding the 5,000, we who have been blessed with the gift of education are also called to use our gifts to make our country a better place. 

"For the rich and educated, there is no quality of life, no dignity for them if they don't share their excellence and creativity with those who by virtue of birth have been deprived of these." -Tony Meloto

As a development major, I am called to use what I have learned in the classroom to help raise the dignity of many Filipinos. I know enough to be able to start change in the lives of many poor Filipinos. My energies and creative juices are maximized when I use them to benefit others. I am so blessed that God has given me the opportunity to multiply the use of what he has given to me through my service in Gawad Kalinga. This has been God's way of telling me that there are so many ways for us Filipinos to turn this country into one that we all deserve. Furthermore, this can become a platform for many other nations in the world to rise from their poverty.

The only way for it to work is for us to give. The more we give as we serve, the bigger the space that God has to work his miracles. We don't have to become superheroes, but through the simple use of our talents, we all contribute to creating a society that God has planned for us.

Sense, sensitivity and sensibility.

I am not sure if I will make sense, but I will attempt to do so.

For the past months, I have failed to put everything that has been happening into words. Writer's block, maybe. Or maybe I have not taken any time out to just push that pause button. My life has become an organized mess in the past months, and at times, many things just drove me up the wall. But maybe that is why life hands you lemons -- so that you can make the most out of it: lemonade, lemon curd, lemon meringue, lemon pie... and the list goes on.

Over the past week, I have been able to take time to finally push that pause button. Of course, this could have been because I spent at least two days of my life in transit, and that just allowed me to stop thinking about the many things that I have been preoccupied with. It allowed me some detachment from everything. Although I wanted to do some work while I was on the airplane, there was that voice inside me that just told me to let go.

I had to look back at the months that have passed and make sense of it.

I am no stranger to suffering, and this is something that I have had to deal with for most of my life. Sometimes, I get caught up in my own crosses that I forget that more people suffer more than I. And this is something many of us take for granted -- that if we were to measure our life against others, our sufferings would pale in comparison with others who have to eat it for breakfast and stare it at the face almost everyday of their lives. And this is where I began thinking, we have been talking about the impeachment of the Chief (In)justice of the Philippines, but is he really THE Chief Injustice?

This just slapped me right in the face. Over the past month, I have heard from many people how people have objectified the poor as recipients of charity and loose change, and it struck me when it came from a KB leader in Baseco. For many years and months, we say we are going to do something for the poor but the truth is we just did something  because it makes us feel good. And there are many who use the term "poverty" so loosely in academics. In my field alone, I could not count how many research have been published for the sake of being published that criticize existing policies. I do not even want to begin yapping about the readings I have had to do throughout the course of my studies in Masters.

And because the term has been used so loosely, some people have become indifferent about the issue. It has become a given to the point that we have lived with it. We have talked so extensively about what causes poverty that we have stopped when we found out why people were poor in the first place. And this, to me, is where injustices start -- when those who have been endowed so much can give so less than they could and  those who are at the bottom of the pyramid stay there because they have had to settle with what little we could give them.

I just felt a twinge in my heart when I began to realize how much we have let the poor down when we failed to genuinely looked into their concerns. Many times, I have become unjust to them myself because I looked at my own limits and settled for my limitations. In many ways, I have become part of a system that continues to pervade the problems that we try to respond to.

Just last week, I went to Toronto for five days. Yes, you've read it right. And in the midst of fighting the jet lag and attending the Summit, I realized how much work needs to be done. We cannot remain still. We cannot rely on theories to provide answers to our question. We will get left behind if the knowledge we continue to produce is the kind that is manufactured from a laptop and based on empirical data that we cannot make sense of by ourselves. The action is on the ground and real learning takes place there. And if we get stuck, we will never find answers. We will be laggard. We will not be excellent.

It's not too late. No, not at all. Epiphanies or breakthroughs exist for a reason. We have to make sense of what is going on in society so that we can awaken our sensitivities to the many problems that plague society and bring some sensibility to the patchwork of solutions that we develop.