Single Moms

For one of our classes in term 2 of MBA, we were asked to conduct a walkabout wherein we had to do something that is meaningful to us and would take us out of our comfort zones. I had done my walkabout with my classmate and good friend Amit Gupta. He approached me with the proposal of doing a documentary on Single Moms in the Philippines. I really liked the idea as it is a subject that I have a personal interest in. We interviewed several single mothers from different walks of life. At the end of the term, we had to write a reflection paper. My reflection goes like this:

Embarking on a walkabout is something not entirely new to me, I just don’t call it a walkabout, I call it living life to the fullest. Everyday, I find myself being taken out of my comfort zone and doing something that is beyond what I have done before. Life, I find is like that. Everyday is a new day that always brings something different. There is a challenge that goes with going through each day of our lives, to see each day from beginning to end without being bogged down by failures, disappointments, sorrow, anger or weariness. In my life, I have tried new things, tasted sorrow, been angry, was disappointed over and over by myself, my loved ones and my friends, and have been weary from all the hardships that I go through. But at the end of the day, before I go to sleep, I still and will always thank the Lord for the blessings that have come. Because life is to be lived and not to be given up without a fight.

The Walkabout of delving into the lives of the single unwed mothers we had interviewed proved to be one of the emotionally wrought activities I have put myself to. In each interview, these women who are strangers to me poured out one of the most painful episodes in their lives. As I sit with them and listen, I cannot help but be pulled into their lives and feel their pain as they recount the events leading up to their pregnancies. As they told their stories, I find myself forgetting about the written questionnaires Amit and I had prepared. I asked them questions that bore deeper into how they felt in those moments when they found out they had been betrayed by the person they had trusted instead of the formula question of what does the father of your child do for a living. I found myself feeling anger at the duplicity of the men who have taken their pleasure with them but then discarded them when responsibility came.

There is strength and courage in living our lives. This is a must in order to look forward to the beginning of each day. The women we interviewed took living with strength and courage into a different level. The courage and strength they have is not just for themselves, but also for the child(ren) they have brought into the world. These women have been honed by the bitterness of solitude in their most needful moments, by the cruel twist of faith that the men they have trusted have abandoned them in the eleventh hour, and by the necessity of giving life to a child when they themselves have just come out of their childhood.

I have taken a particular empathy with Jane. There was a naivety about her that made listening to her story all the more heavy. She had come to Manila to work, to be the breadwinner of a family that lives in the province. She met a man with whom she had given herself to only to find out, at the most crucial moments, that he was already married. As she told her story, I felt indignant that such men can prey on the naivety of such girls. There were moments when I was talking to Jane and to the other girls with similar stories that I asked myself if there is a gene exclusive to men that made them duplicitous. Of course, it was a feeling I knew to be wrong but those moments were such that I could not have felt anything else. After each interview, I asked Amit why men are like that, and he himself does not know the answer. He told me, coming from the interviews we did, that for more than two thousand years, many men are like this. Of course, I knew for myself that not all men are like this. I have living examples of men who are the most trustworthy. It is through these moments of contradictions that I realize that generalizing everything into a single box is definitely wrong.

Jessica is a girl, who is twenty-two years old, on her third trimester, and is on her second pregnancy. She had her first baby when she was nineteen years old. She came to Manila to work not knowing she was pregnant again. Up until we interviewed her, her parents do not know she is pregnant. Big fat tears kept rolling down her cheeks as I talked to her about her circumstances. There was such pain evident in her being while she recounted to us how she got into the situation she is in now. Looking at her while she exposed her pain to us made me feel small. I was doing a project for a school subject, she was living each day with her pain, and I was asking her to strip herself naked in front of the camera we brought so that we can show her to a roomful of people who do not know her but will see her naked. This was my walkabout. Realizing that what I had done as a walkabout was not really looking into the factors of why there are single women in the Philippines. My walkabout is realizing that in doing this project, I took these women, stripped them of their armors and vestments, and made them vulnerable to me, a complete stranger.

Who am I or Amit to them that they should bare their souls open to us? We were nobody in their lives. We came, we interviewed, we presented. But then what? Do I move on and forget about them? Then their sharing would have been futile and trivial. Doing this walkabout has given me my own quandary. Jane and Jessica are just two of the women we interviewed. These women were the most vulnerable out of all. I see Jane most everyday. I notice that sometimes she doesn’t fully look me in the eye, maybe because she knows I have taken a glimpse of her soul. I want to go to her and reassure her but of what? I have taken her story and told everybody. What would I reassure her of? That I would not tell anybody else? It is I who should not look at her in the eyes for I feel that I have also betrayed her.

We were told that our walkabouts should be something that would have an impact on our lives. That, years down the road, we can look back and remember what our walkabouts have been. I don’t think I will forget any of these women soon. Thirty years down the road, I hope I can still remember them, not their faces, but trust and pain they have shared to me, a stranger. That in the years I am to live from here on, I will take their stories and remember the courage and strength that they live each day, because it is with each day that they live their lives. That in the years that I will live from here on, I will remember to not take the privilege to delve into other people’s pain without also taking the responsibility of doing something about it to ease some of those pain.

I did not learn to be a manager with this walkabout. I learned about being human and being cruel. I learned about seeing raw pain in the eyes of strangers and seeing this pain I learned how to be ruthless. I was ruthless because despite the pain I saw, I still took regardless. It is a lesson for me. I do not like being ruthless. I found that the end really does not justify the means because I have to live myself and to do that, I must ask myself to forgive myself as well. I will not forget but I must forgive. And I hope these women also forgive me. This walkabout has been one of the hardest things I have to face. The walkabout itself is done, but the consequences are those that I must face each day. It has been a walkabout. It has been a rite of passage with me, a passage to a more human me, capable of doing good and cruelty. The difference is now, I know the difference between them and I believe I can now make the choice of choosing not to be cruel.

A Useless Number

I have just turned thirty. I dreaded turning thirty. It seemed to me a verdict of the life I had so far lived and that if I were to stand in front of a panel of judges and defend those thirty years on earth, I would be found lacking and incomplete. In my heart, I felt I lived a life that had so far been shallow, fruitless and myopic. I had nothing to show for it, no career, no money, no husband and little kids, no house of my own, nothing to show for the thirty years I had lived. For two weeks prior to turning this dreaded age, my heart was heavy and energy was flagging. These two weeks had been filled to the brim with events and emotions that further aggravated my already downtrodden heart. I kept saying goodbye to the people with whom I shared the past year of my life with and riding an emotional rollercoaster ride.

I dreaded turning thirty. I felt that after I jump that line between being in the young twenties and into the matronly thirties, that I would no longer be the same person. That there will be expectations of me that I would never be able to satisfy anymore because the time to accomplish those had already passed. That people would look at me, shake their heads, and say, she is already thirty and yet she is not yet married and she will surely be an old maid.

In class, we talked about doing and being. When I started reading about Manuel from Paolo Coehlo's book "Like the Flowing River" and we started talking about doing and being, I felt that an arrow had been shot directly to my heart. That my past had been immersed in the doing the busy things and that I have not achieved any of the elusive dreams that other people deemed to be worthy dreams.

My heart was heavy.

I was sad.

I was a leaky faucet.

On the eve of my birthday, my AIM Filipino friends took me to dinner. EJ kept looking at me and asking me why I so quiet. He said he was not used to my lack of energetic verve in such gatherings. I looked at the faces of my friends and saw their love for me through the conversations we had around the table, through the smiles they have for me, through the gift they gave me, through the touch of their hands when they got up to kiss me and greet me a happy birthday. The burden on my heart somewhat lessened.

At ten minutes before the stroke of midnight when the clock bells would ring to announce the advent of the dreaded birthday, I went down to the poolside. Hari, my can-mate, had emailed the MBA cohorts, to please gather by the pool to celebrate my birthday. When I went down to the pool, I saw so many people my heart began to soften. I saw their smiling faces and the eagerness by which they seem to wait for me to cut the cake. They sang so boisterously and loudly my birthday song. Whistles and shouts seemed to reverberate in my ears as I was cutting the cake. Hari took a piece of cake, fed me a bite and then smeared the rest onto my face. Then they pushed me into the pool.

This was how the Indians usually celebrate the birthday of any Indian classmates we have.

I was the first Filipino in our cohort to celebrate a birthday Indian style. The cheers that greeted me made me feel as if I was also treated as one of them. That they look past my race and consider me one of their own. The burden in my heart somewhat eased.

Afterwards, after all have calmed down, I was talking to one of my very closest AIM Indian friend. He told me, and I will never forget this, KT, why are you sad? You have so many people who love you. Do you see how many people were concerned this past two weeks that you were looking down and sad? Do you realize the number of people who came to wish you happy birthday and how happy they were to greet you? How many people came to you to give you comfort because they saw you looking sad? Why are you sad? You should be happy because of this. What are you worried about? All these inconsequential things that are muddying up your mind, these are things you can accomplish at any age. But you should not be sad because you have reached an age where you have so many people caring for you and loving you. At that moment, when he told me this, the burden in my heart eased.

I have come to a realization of my own. That the angst I had about turning thirty was nothing but vanity on my part. That I was preoccupied with the doing. I forgot to remember that I have much to be grateful for because in the past thirty years, I was BEING. I am being the daughter my parents wanted me to be, the sister who took care and loved her siblings, the friend, the lover, the confidant, the mischief, the teacher and the student. Throughout my life, I have lived in the moment, with the past not tainting my enthusiasm in being at that moment, with the expectations of the future not hindering me from taking the joy of being in the moment, and the present reminding me of how joyful it is to be alive. I have never held a grudge against anyone nor have I ever let my anger to linger for more that a few hours. I hold the laughter to the last moment in my heart to prolong the happiness it brings. I perpetually think the glass is half full. I wake up each day and thank God that another morning has come.

And now that I am thirty, I feel as if I am free. Free to be who I am regardless of how old I am because I have always been, and hope to always be, a person who is BEING.

In being, I must not forget who I am inside and to continue to search for myself. Because I am not static. I continue to evolve, develop and grow. Comparing me to an onion is not a bad analogy. I have layers upon layers of me. But unlike an onion, that only when you peel the outer layers can you begin to see what is inside, I feel that in the values I hold dear, the motivations and desires that I have, the strengths and weaknesses that make me a part of humanity, are reflections and a testimony to the true me.

I do not deny that I do have my defensive walls to keep my heart from being battered by the indisputably cruel world we have, but neither do I insulate myself from the pain that living life gives. I find that for all the pain that I go through, after each ordeal, trial or tribulation, I will find myself waking up one morning and seeing the sunshine in my life. And I know that the storm has made me appreciate that there is warmth in the sunlight, that light has chased away the shadows, and that life will continue in manner even better than before because the storm has washed and cleansed the spirit.

I take joy in listening to music and singing. I am an off-key singer, but then it does not hinder me from singing joyfully in the shower nor does it prevent me from the peace singing hymns in church gives me. All these emotions come from my heart. I say this because I know it to be true. My eyes water when I hear the hymns singing to my heart and I feel a tugging pain in my chest when I see someone hurting.

I take a look at who I am. I see myself full of shortcomings. From my vanity, to my ego, to my selfishness, to my laziness, to my meanness and to my greediness, I see how these things influence how I act, react and be. On the other side of the coin, I know myself to be caring, compassionate and loving. I take at who I am and I accept myself. I look in the mirror and know that despite these shortcomings, the good far outweighs the bad. I know this because I know I am loved.

Knowing myself and accepting myself directs me to my true north. I don’t know where it is. But I believe that the true north is not the destination. It is the journey. The readings say that the true north is my fixed point, that it represents what is most important to me, what my passions, motivations and sources of satisfaction are, my fixed point, my values and the commitment of a lifetime of learning. My true north is the lifetime of mistakes that I have committed, the heartaches I have endured and given, and the difficulties I lived through and dished out. My true north is the happiness I gave my parents, the sharing with my siblings, the self I gave to my friends, the passion with which I worked and played and the earnestness of the decisions I have made. I say these are my true north because in every mistake, pain, difficulty, happiness, sharing, passion and earnestness, there within each is the essence of my being. And that is founded on the belief that God loves me and that I am in His hands, continually being molded and that I am allowed to make mistakes because only through them can I learn and grow. My true north is my faith.

It is not easy to always live an upright, ethical and righteous life all the time. There are so many temptations that come our way and it is so easy to succumb and most of the time I do succumb. But my true north dictates that even through moments of weakness, to never forget that I am who I am and that my sojourn into temptation can be overcome.

I take stock of who I am now, today.

I no longer find myself lacking. The past year has been an action packed year. I learned so much, met so many incredible people, experienced such highs and lows, went through turmoil and euphoria, and most of all lived. Through the busy doing, assignments, projects, presentations, cases, I found myself being. And this is manifest in the friends who were there in my lowest moments as well as the highest. I find it evident in the confidence and regard they give me in the capacity of being one of the section’s presidents. I get approached more often than I can remember by people who want their concerns and issues taken to the admin or faculty. Despite this position, people still look at me as friend and not just someone they can ask for a favor from. I learned a lot about leadership in the past one year. I learned that in order to lead anybody, may it be just one person or an entire group of people; one must first recognize that you and the people you are leading are no different from each other. Both have the same desires, concerns, issues and wants. When you know how they feel, then you know how to show them the way or at least to walk with them towards the goals, resolutions and objectives.

Thirty. A number that does not define who I am. I now have no heaviness in my heart nor a cringe on my mouth when I think of my age. I have been on a journey of being and for that brief period of time I was bogged down by the illusory thought of me just doing. I am happy I cleared my mind and heart from the fog of this illusion. I understand myself more now and I accept myself more. I know that as I continue to age, I will face crossroads upon crossroads that will render my heart and soul in two, but I know that the decisions I will make will ultimately be the right decision because I have lived my life being. In my continued journey, I know I will keep myself in doing and doing, mundane busy things that play up to the perception of others, but it won’t pull me down anymore because I know I also take joy in doing because doing does not keep me from being. I learned that there is no final destination or ultimate success in life. Each day is a success because each day we ran the gamut of emotions from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep. From each disappointment or hurt that I experience everyday, I know there is a corresponding joy and triumph all the more sweeter because of those pains and difficulties.

Money, career, properties, these are all good indicators of the material success that one can have. I would love to have these. But then, I am no longer overwhelmed with the need to make these things the ultimate measurement of my success. As I turned thirty and looked at the faces of the people who celebrated with me, I realized that success is accumulating the love and regard your fellow man has for you. For their love will show you how you have become successful as a human being.

Hello Confidant

I've never had a blog before. I have had numerous attempts at keeping a diary, a journal or even just a calendar but it seems after an enthusiastic start, the desire to write about the mundane everyday things that happen in my life start to wane. I guess it is the ordinariness of the everyday life that I have found boring to write about. So, why start writing in a blog all of a sudden?

Why indeed.

Everyone seems to have this perception of me as an outgoing person, someone who has a lot of friends and who is carefree and who seems to not have too much problems in the world. I tend to show a happy go lucky persona when I am out in the public. I consider myself a good friend to those who give their friendship to me. I listen sincerely to the confidences they impart with me and give out my sympathy or advise or both as needed by the circumstances.

I listen and listen. But when I go home at the end of the day, I find myself alone with my thoughts and feelings. Anything that might have troubled me deeply or have impacted me one way or another, I keep to myself. I have only emotions roiling inside my heart. If asked what is bothering me, I find I cannot verbalize and put into words. There is a disconnect between what my heart is feeling and articulating these feelings.

And so the blog. It is always easier to write than to talk. So, unlike my previous forays into writing, I won't use this medium to record the mundane everyday boring things that happen to me. Instead, this blog will be my new confidant. Somewhere I can put the emotions and feelings and unarticulated thoughts that churn inside of me.

So, hello new friend. Thank you for listening.