ONE MONTH OF LEARNING
POSTED AT 08:23 PM

hephaestus

The month of June is coming to an end, and I am looking forward to another month of excitement and adventure waiting for me around the corners.  I will never forget this month of June of 2009...

This is the month of a new beginning for my career.  Who would have thought that after four years of staying in Nueva Ecija after college graduation, I would step again on the fertile soil of Laguna.  Being here is like coming home from a very long journey.  My energy is renewed and I feel great.  I don't know how this feeling will last but I am just happy walking around the campus with my good old backpack, retracing my footsteps ten years ago.  Imagine, exactly ten years ago I was a freshman student in this campus and now I am teaching Chemistry to freshman students.

This is a month of greater wisdom.  I learned that to have your heart broken is a better feeling than not to have learned how to love.  We learn through experience.  Do you really think we learned to avoid fire because someone told us not to touch it?  No.  We learned to avoid fire because once in our life, we burned our fingers on a stove or a candle.  And yet, we did not fear fire.  We learned to tame it, use it for our own sake.  It's like falling in love.  We may get hurt in the process but we learn from what went wrong.  When someone breaks our heart, we should pick up the large pieces and try to move on.  Do not wait for someone to pick the pieces up.  Save your dignity.  But never pick the small ones because even if you cut yourself and bleed picking every last little piece, you can never make your heart whole again.  But I believe that as we move on with our life carrying those large chunks, someone is destined to eventually put them back together.  It may not look as perfect as before but at least you have the best pieces saved for that person to hold on to.

This is a month of new crossroads.  If you meet a person once, that is normal.  To meet again the second time, it's coincidence.  A third one is sheer luck.  Above that, think again.  People call it destiny.  Others call it fate.  I call it extraordinary.  Because I believe people are like falling stars, eventually they fall and then disappear in the horizon.  They will never cross the night sky twice.  People come and go.  So to constantly bump on someone for more than five times now, it's quite extraordinary.  I really find it weird and amusing at the same time.  I believe that we cross paths for a reason.  It's friendship no doubt.  But of what kind?  For a reason?  For a season?  Or for a lifetime?

This is a month of enduring friendships.  We just celebrated our ten years of being friends, my college friends and I.  Though we are not complete, I think the message is clear, friends are persons you can always count on.  But sometimes there are things we tend to forget.  Friends are also persons.  They can feel pain and sadness.  I once read in a small note that we should visit our friends' house often because weeds can block an uncrossed path.  I also learned that friends are the worst of enemies.  This often leads to misinterpretations.  When it says enemies, I don't think it means our friends hate us so much they can never forgive us for our wrongdoings.  I believe true friends are forgiving.  Not tolerant but forgiving.  True friends do not tolerate grave misconducts.  Friends are mirrors of our soul.  If we did something wrong, our friends would let us know.  So looking back at the ten years of friendship, I think we have come a long way and I am still looking forward to another decade of enduring friendship.