There
was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy.
He was strange,
according to some, because he pursued
and took what others did not - ranging from things like his shoes of preference
to the personalities of the friends he made. He was enchanted, enchanted
with the possibilities that awaited him in life, for he wanted to be rich and famous.
All he wanted before was to be rich without working in the corporate
world, instead choosing
the life of the academe. But now, while the latter had remained
firmly in place, something else as important
to him as his biggest interests, had emerged.
The Platonic school of thought
provides that nostalgia, today meaning a sentimental, somewhat lonely longing for past happy memories,
is one’s journeying in search of the Eidos, the Good, whence they came. Because we are bound in our physical
bodies during our earthly life, our souls - our psyche - have been “contained” in our earthly
shells, and, as long as we live on earth, are always longing for its original home of
the Eidos. The boy realized that he was trying to become fully
aware of his own nostalgia.
We shall find out what his nostalgia involves by reading his - still incomplete - story. Perhaps in drawing insights from it, we may even be able to help complete his story, for this is the only thing he requests
of everyone
he meets.
~o~
Dreams
and Self-Discovery
Ever since he was young, he had cringed
at the sight of street children,
beggars, and road vendors, knowing that they should not live that kind of life, that they deserve better than that. But he had never thought
of how he himself
could play a part in it.
He had grown up in a typical
traditional Chinese-Filipino family with their
own family business in shoes, but he had never dreamed
of going to work in that company when he grew up. The very first thing he knew he wanted to become was a doctor - to be more precise, a pediatrician. But he suffers to
this day from mild trypanophobia and hemophobia; while not extreme, these as well as an “eww” feeling in dissecting frogs in elementary school led to his abandoning the dream altogether.
He also had dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien,
hoping to write and publish
a bestselling series of high fantasy novels whose characters and settings he is actually
already working on to this day. This dream still stands, and he is still chasing
it with fervor.
He even harbored secret dreams of becoming a soul siren or pop star, but upon his request, we shall not delve into that.
It was, however,
his love of languages
and traveling that most ensnared him. Since he had been a child, he had always been curious about what things in other languages
meant. He also started self-studying Japanese at thirteen; however, other commitments like academics
led him to stall on this. He became a member of the Spanish club in his last year of high school, and took up French in college,
even going so far as to obtain a minor in
French studies and going on exchange
to France. He dreamed
of studying as many languages as he could - including
all the languages of the Philippines - and working in a very linguistically diverse
place, such as Switzerland.
But one event during his junior year of college
changed that - and him - forever.
It was the break between
the end of the accelerated first term and their departure for their respective host countries
for the Ateneo
de Manila University’s Junior Term Abroad
(JTA) 2011. Within the virtual walls of the JTA Legal Management 2011 Facebook
group, his close friend had left a message with a poster (I should
remind him to thank that friend). It was an invitation to a one-day
exposure trip.
The organizer’s name was Frontline Social Business Development, Inc., and they
were inviting the John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM)
JTA students to visit a certain
place as a pabaon day. (For those who do not understand the term, in standard
Tagalog, the word pabaon means lunch money, or the like. So what Frontline intended
for these blessed exchange students
was that their learnings
from the trip would serve as currency for food - food for thought that would both comfort and inspire them while they presented
their school and their country to the world). Apparently,
three of the exchange
students - one of whom
was going to the same school in Paris as this boy was - were Frontline
members.
So after some consideration, the boy signed up for the event. Two of his block mates were there too. (Today, he is blessed to be very good friends with both of them, thanks to the bonds that would start being forged
on that day.) The day, 1 August
2011. Two weeks before
departure.
Things were never the same afterwards.
Contributed by: Allister Roy Chua
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