“Wherever you go, whatever you achieve, you must always remember this above all that I have taught you---you must let your cup overflow.”
Since high school, I have always had the drive to achieve. It has been evident in my consistently good academic performance. I hailed from a middle class family adequately blessed with the necessary resources for subsistence but I believed that with my determination, I can, in the future, acquire for my family what we barely enjoyed. As any typical hardworking Filipino teen would aspire for, I also wanted to get rich. That was what motivated me to persevere in being competent. I hardly considered the admonishing words of my third year social studies teacher in high school. I needed to fill my cup first before thinking about it overflowing. Family first and that was that.
Still, it was in that family and the consequential Catholic upbringing and environment that I learned about a beautiful yet demanding term---service. This, at first, I reluctantly accepted. Similar with any typical teenager, I had personal and esteem issues gravitated by the fact that my parents somehow encouraged extreme modesty because of our modest means of living. I was identified as an introvert, a further excuse for me to turn down any possible invitation to serve but then, I freed myself from the burden of guilt by concentrating on the offering of prayers and sacrifices as an indirect yet recognized means of extending help. It was a service to my God.
That was all I can give and I did not want to be forced to do anything more. I wanted to be of help at a comfortable position and I saw no wrong with such. I carried that mentality until I stepped into college.
“Disturb us Oh Lord”---goes one of the indeed disturbing prayers we have in Ateneo de Naga. I despised Ateneo for importunately urging its students to move out of their comfortable zones. There have been a lot of instances when I was forced to do just that. It was not fair. I already knew my place in this whole business of letting your cup overflow yet there was magis, more, more, more was the persistent call of the school. I have been very critical of this advocacy. I doubted the purity of the intention of those who respond to such call in the institution including my own. I needed a deep grounding, a very good motivation for me to be driven to achieve in this field. The confines of my walls were being shaken vigorously.
Service to Others is Service to God-these were the silent shouts within me. I did not want to listen. I have another justifiable idea of my personal contribution. I am not a “people-person.” Rather, I am a woman of thoughts and words, aptly entitled to a quasi-monastic type of service.
Having the tendency to be obdurate, two notable things made me bend: an utterly new insight from the bible and an unintentional look into the life of former Pres. Cory Aquino after she died. The Lord Jesus, God in Himself, not only came down for our salvation but for our instruction through modeling. As a future teacher, I have come to give a very high regard on teaching by modeling and this He did by communicating the need for Christians, through His healing and preaching ministry, to consider acting as a manifestation of love. Before any Human Rights advocate, He was the pioneer of all humanitarian concerns. The question for me is not anymore on whether the bible is authentic or not but rather, on if it still has a pressing relevance at present---and it does. It has a concrete call to act on faith, love and ideals as in directly do something. Such exacted great effort especially for me but I only had to reflect on the faith and experiences of a simple housewife who set aside her grief and uncertainty to respond to such biblical challenge.
All these reflections which I have been making since my graduation from high school has made me rethink my life’s orientation and motivation. That is the reason why, at the last hour, I made the completely life-changing decision to be a teacher, instead of being someone who is the dream of my old self. With this choice, I made a big yet uncertain YES to SERVICE and to the promise to transform myself for the betterment of the people outside my immediate concern.
I have allowed the voices within me and Ateneo’s prayer to disturb me because the Lord Himself disturbed Himself with such and has expected His followers to do the same. Ninoy and Cory also allowed the same. It caused them so much yet it was worth it because a lot of Filipinos are allowing themselves to be disturbed so that the filling of their cups will overflow.
This is the reason why, as busy as I am with the extremely demanding ordeal of college life as a scholar, far from the consolation of family and intimate friends, I also brave the at times uncomfortable and equally demanding life of a volunteer in many of the school’s endeavors to serve. I have learned about the need to maximize one’s personal resources and capacities to identify problems and form solutions which should be acted upon. It exhausts me now but I am contended at the thought that with such outflow of my best held resources, my cup will never be empty.
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