Ateneo Essay

“Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?”

    How is it that a thousand words or so are required from this simply stated, broad, “yes-or-no” question that is supposedly the heart of this essay?  Humanly speaking, that is exactly the problem with people during this newfound millennium, or maybe even since the dawn of time – they believe they are what they do. If they go about naively, they are dubbed a child. If they fail, and fail countless times, they are failures. They strongly point to a belief so limited of confidence that it limits belief in potential. They are the type to compare, the type to decline of any success or achievements. They grow up insecure, and unsure of what they will be doing in the future… I myself am part of this majority – the majority that is anxious of what is to be done in the future because the past seemed to have annexed so many wrong decisions. It’s not just because people are collectively fickle-minded, but because we simply don’t know. Like death, not knowing is natural, and yet so crucial to us all.

      However, more important than knowing what one does or will do is knowing who one is as a person in a massive society. Personally, who am I? Although my significant experiences – my failures and my victories – have molded me to an average adolescent who is at the brink of bidding farewell to her high-school life and nearing the transition of a college experience, they do not define me as a person. I believe things that are defined have a living purpose in this withering world. I dare not say I am defined specifically by the things I do, otherwise I am merely a vapor in the wind, constantly changing, from student to worker, worker to wife, wife to retirement, then finally, retirement to death. Although death will do me part from this world sooner or later, I want it to count; I want my death to be filled with purpose, rather than death be my purpose, God forbid. Who am I? Ergo, if I were in a dictionary, how would I be defined?

    Unequivocally, I no longer ask those questions. Moreover, I only stopped struggling with those questions recently. For the most part of my life here on earth, I’ve struggled with an inferiority complex, simply because I never thought myself as an achiever. I spent my first years up to my second year of high-school in a school called Maria Montessori Foundation. Although I could have learned so much, I hardly gave the effort to ever improve. I grew up lethargic, ignorant, unconfident, stagnant, one soul very much prone to failure at any given moment. I didn’t study, but I survived by a hair length. And though I knew the devastation at the time, I never did anything to improve my grades. Finally, I was opened to a realization that I could not survive my remaining years in high-school with such an attitude towards work. I ended up transferring to a school called Philippine Christian School of Tomorrow during the remaining quarter of my second-year high-school life, fearing that I would fail and repeat that same year. During the first day of being in my new school, I felt like a failure. Regardless that I was unconfident of myself, my personality eventually improved. I was a more sociable person, my humor grew, my grades went up, and my writing grew exceptional. People described me as “kind” or “bubbly”-- I was everything opposite from how I was in my old school, everything that I thought were the only things I had to improve… But sooner or later, indifference caught up with me. My personality improved, but my belief in any potential hardly succumbed to anything motivational, and I couldn’t care less about how much I changed for the better. I never knew what it was like to achieve so greatly, because I failed so many times in the past. I can’t say I was wearing a mask over my personality, but I improved only for myself. Purposeless. Who on earth am I?

    As I said, I only stopped asking that question recently. The answer came among all the stress that applying and choosing a college has brought to me. The thought of college scares me, and yet it excites me. My choices seem to be required to revolve around something. They always seem to have the need to be counted for. I feel potential growing in me--potential that I never thought I could achieve. I feel I'm about to undergo a drastic change, and I have to change my outlook on things. From that, I choose not to be insecure of not knowing what I'll be doing, although I know I will come across some choices that will turn out all wrong. I choose not to be overwhelmed by defeat or my past failures, because, like death, not knowing is natural. I choose not for weakness to conquer me, because I know I have some potential. I choose not to cower over the thought of college not because I may not know what I may be doing in the future, but because I know who I naturally am, and I know that I can be more than that. These are the thoughts that motivate me, telling me that I am not my own body, but a human being of potential.  I don’t just want a good college, but I want the best. I don’t just want a good career, I want the most exemplary that satisfies what I earn. I don’t just want to make friends… I want to touch lives. My dear friend who is now in one of the prestigious schools in the Philippines once told me, “It's not a battle between good and bad. The good has already won. It is a battle between good and best.” If I can avoid a devastating future, then I will, and by God’s grace, I will do better than that. And upon saying all that, finally, I will answer the question, who am I?

    Purpose starts from giving something beyond myself. My future is a blur to me, but as my years went by, I’ve learned to give my life and trust my God to bring me wherever He wills me to be. I have nothing but my choices so limited, sometimes I can’t even elaborate. I have my failures reflected from my achievements like any other person. I am temporary -- a body that will be joining the sands of the beach one day. But, above all, I am a work in progress – one with a purpose to empty myself for reasons beyond myself. I may not be an achiever, nor may I say that I am a failure. Who am I? I am a work in progress. I am a conqueror.

19.8.07 12:29