Words of Courage

The struggle started already. I had faced a lot of difficulties. I bid a hard farewell. I surpass them all. I know I can surpass the next to come. I believe. I believe I can. Funny to say but I will say. ‘I love difficulties after the bidding of goodbye’. Haha. Why not, di bala? Difficulties won’t let you down. It will make you a better person in preparation for a harder adulthood. Goodbye is a two-sided element. Though you feel the agony, yet in exchange to it is gratification.

The essence of the existence of problems is not to make people hopeless or make them feel the agony of the consequences. Agony is neither the end of everything nor the start of the end. It is part of what we call LIFE. When you feel you’re in great despair, just go on, as what the song ‘Pagsubok’ uttered in its lyrics: ‘Pagkabigo’t alinlangan gumugulo sa isipan, mga pagsubok lamang yan, huwag mong itigil ang laban. Huwag mong isuko. Iyong laban.’ That is what life wants you to feel first because after the suffering and pain is gratification. Here is a practical question: ‘What do you want to feel first, pain or joy?’ It is somewhat the same in asking ‘What kind of ending do you like?’ See? Do not feel bad when you are suffering. No one is to be blamed. Just face anything.

Since I love difficulties, I, Joy James Saguino, officially declare that MY LIFE IS NOT DIFFICULT.

Loving Others' Kite

Difficult. There is guilt (sometimes). Doing what you don't like is risky and challenging, yet if you look at the other side of the paradigm, it is prudent. Why? I looked more on the needs of others, especially my family, before mine.

If you can still remember on one of my reflection papers, on the book Like the “Flowing River” by Paulo Coehlo, there is a part in there entitled “Flying Others Kite”. I stated my struggle in giving up my passion for my family's sake.

I do not want my parents to get disappointed. They have great expectations on me. Honestly, I am still having confusions regarding the 'degree' issue now. There will always come a point that 'What if I shift course?', 'No James! Do not do that! Think of your family!' Haaay. . .

I love my family. Everyone, perhaps, does. Everyone, also perhaps, wants the best for his or her family. Everyone will do his or her best to shun and overcome any ordeal that they will encounter.

I learned in my Economics 11 class last year about ‘opportunity costs’ and that nothing is free. The concept of opportunity costs states that something is earned when another thing is given up in exchange to what you got. In accounting, it is not always cash inflow. There will always be cash outflows in the form of expenses for operating, financing and investing activities in a company.

You cannot own two things at a time, especially that one is willed to be given up. Unfortunate for me that what I should give up is my ‘happiness’.

Give up. Give up. Give up. I may often think that life is all about giving up.

True. Life is a quest of your happiness. Happiness is not about what makes ‘you’ happy. The epitome of this pursuit is not egocentric. It focuses on how you make yourself as a tool in making other people’s happiness come true.

I don’t want to be an accountant. I want to be a journalist. Irony: I am taking Accountancy, not Journalism.

Acceptance is the hardest part of all. “I am flying my parents’ kite — the kite they made for me.” This kind of acceptance is mediocre. Love is the missing element here. For you to show and justify that you made the right decision, you have to face and accept its consequences. You may not expect what these are, but what I am trying to say is preparing oneself to anything. Love is its prerequisite.

I am learning to love Accountancy now despite the fact that I still wanted to be a journalist someday. I learned that being a ‘journalist’ does not need to take a journalism course. If there is a will, there will always be a way. I am doing this for a purpose — for my family. I can do it!

Reason for Living

I was in my third year in high school. 21st century was the start of the global financial crisis. I thought it will only be the elite who will be affected. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Crisis chose no class.

The rubber industry in our place was in great crisis. Rubber price and value went down rapidly. Since most of our customers are rubber farmers, our bakery is also affected. Sales were also dropping rapidly.

Our bakery is small. It's just about a quarter or one third of a classroom (classrooms here at UPVCM) ― with a big baking oven in a corner and some wooden cabinets attached on the walls. Consuming approximately 2-4 sacks of wheat flour daily for baking, our family can surpass a day with enough food in our stomach.
Since the start of the crisis, I have been decisive to take part of my family's predicament. I planned to do this and that. I looked forward that on that certain time, I will have this and that and etc. I really wanted to help and I know that finishing a degree and having a stable job is the answer. From then on, I've been torn between two choices of degree to take ― whether Accountancy, which is my parents' top choice, or Journalism, which is mine. I ended up no choice at all but to take what my parents and other close people advised me. I took it, despite the fact that I don't like the field I am taking.

Gratitude to Mamang and Papang (A Flsahback)

“Dong! Pagmata na mo oy! Udto na intawong dako!” (Dong! Wake up now! It's late in the morning already!)

That was the wake up call of my mother. She was the bell of the home every morning. Six o' clock to be exact, and that is late for her. We are surely awaken of this call. Ikaw ba naman ang hindi magising sa lakas ng boses ni Mamang. Dishes, done! Bed, fixed! Floor, swept! Breakfast, cooked! My Ate and I are doing different chores simultaneously to manage our time well.

Mamang and Papang are awake already at four. They are already working in the bakery that early since there are four other bakery in our locality to compete with. I really enjoyed a lot, especially every summer. Since there's no class, we were awake already around three in the morning. We were helping our parents in the bakery and after the pan de sal were baked, around 4:30, we wander and roam in our barrio and in the nearby barangays to sell hot pan de sal putted inside a 'karton'. “Pan de sal ni Cedie! Pan de sal ni Pedie!” (Cedie and Pedie are the nicknames of my mother and father, respectively.) Together with my older sister, we shout these phrases to inform the community that 'Hot Pan de Sal from Saguino Mini-Bakeshop is available now.'

We were doing this for almost eight years since 1999. I was Grade 2 that time. My sister was only with me doing this when she was 13 because she is really weak before, She was admitted in hospital. She is anemic. Thank God that she was cured early or else, she might end up having anemia. I was not alone doing this before. I invited my childhood friends and my cousins to come with me in selling pan de sal. Some agreed. Some didn't. Anyhow, I had companions.

I am very grateful. Mamang and Papang are very responsible and dedicated to provide us our needs and, I am happy to say that, I also become a part of their hardships. Their perspirations, tears, blood, sickness and exhaustion became our papers, ballpens, pencils and bags in school, and most of all, the learning that we absorb from them. Although my parents were not able to finish their studies (my father only reached Grade 5 and my mother graduated from high and then stopped.) My parents are the most intelligent people I have met.

Now, I am trying to walk alone but bringing the thoughts and principles my parents have taught me. It is so sad knowing and always remembering that, somehow at some point, I am leaving the people who had contributed a big part of your social development; I am leaving my family who, at the point of our obscurity, needs me very much. Why am I doing these? I can be happier, perhaps, if I would stay with my parents and just study in the nearby college who presented a very overwhelming offer than going in Iloilo (which is very far from Zamboanga).

Woe and Guilt

I can still remember the day, almost two years ago, the first time I left my family. I was inside the van. My mother is three meters away from the van. The van's window was closed. I looked at her. It was quite a long moment of stare. I felt doubts. I felt guilt. Am I conceited?

“Why am I leaving them? I am a bad son. I should stay to help them. Papang has kidney problems. Mamang has goiter. My older sister is anemic and weak. My two younger siblings were just 11 and 9 years old. I should have been the breed winner of the family. Yes! I am conceited! Though my farewell is for them, I cannot swallow the fact that I could have helped them without leaving.”

These were the subtexts that entered my mind few moments before the van left. I was thinking of recanting my decision of studying at UP — go outside the van, take my big bags out, ask the van driver for a fare refund and go back home. I thought of a very dramatic scenario. I remembered my fifteen years of stay with them. I remembered the child that once in the arms of his mother, now trying to live in his own arms. . .

Agony of Goodbye Introduction

Introduction

“Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it —then life is no longer difficult.”


People tend to live the simplest way possible. Life, for them, is a “choice-ful” thing. They even ask “Why do you let yourself suffer where in the first place, there is an easy way out?” I say to myself “Yeah right! It has a point. . .BUT does everything really has an easy choice? Is choosing the easy choice can make things better and can make you a better person?”

This may be a relative thing. It will depend on the person's perspective. “Making life easy is simple. Just choose the easy choice!” What if I choose the other way? Is choosing the difficult thing will make my life miserable? For me, life is about taking risks. The more you risk, the stronger you are and this will make yourself prepare for more and bigger risks along your quest of life. The more you shun these risks, the more you take a piece of yourself away from you. I mean, risks are complement and not those that would degrade you or put you down.

People who tend to live life the simplest way possible know that life is difficult, very difficult. Everybody knows it. The difference is the taking of risks and challenges. Isn't it a good thing that even though you know that life is difficult, yet you still face its difficulties? Isn't it a good thing that even though you know that life is difficult and you think that you cannot make, yet you made it?

The 'Agony of Goodbye' is a compilation of real life stories — stories that are engraved in my mind and shall be my strength in the next stories to come. It will justify that taking risks is what life tells you to do so. Life, indeed, is difficult but once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it —then life is no longer difficult.

Books:

Introduction

Woe and Guilt

Gratitude to Mamang and Papang

Reason for Living

Loving Others' Kite

Words of Courage