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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Passion
By Jeanne Tan-Te
Flavors
LAST Saturday, I bumped into a high school classmate and her adolescent daughter. Gee! Seeing someone from way back teenage years, and now alongside her teenage daughter, did remind me that time does fly - and fast. After a few hi's, hello's, how's it been, she told me that she's now an agency manager for an insurance company. I was a little surprised. For one thing, she didn't seem to be the salesperson type during high school. I mean, she wasn't outspoken or eloquent. She was not a student leader. If she did run for student council, I don't even remember. It even took me two days to recall her name. In other words, she was not remarkable. (Or... I'm just getting older than I would like to believe. Hehe.) For another, I thought that she took up B.S. Nursing in college. How in the world did she end up in insurance sales? That incident really got me pondering over the weekend. I began recalling other classmates, schoolmates, and friends.
Chinette. I remember Chin-chin. She was smart and blessed with articulate speech. She had the makings of a good broadcaster. In fact, she was always tasked to be the emcee in many of our high school occasions. In college, though, she took up medical technology. But, as she was much comfortable with communications, she worked as FM radio disc jockey while studying. After college, she continued working as a DJ, and then became a college teacher. Years after, we met and got into talking about our lives. That was when she confided how broadcasting has always been her passion. And to finally fulfill her yearning, even at the age of 31, she tried her luck in Manila. Months later, the "call center era" was born. She was one of those first batches of faceless, charming, proficient sounding voices whom one would mistake as genuinely American. I never saw her appear on TV, though.
Was it too late for Chin-chin to live her dreams?
Wilma. The wife of a college friend used to work in the bank and even became a branch officer-in-charge at the age of 30. I had the impression that her career was really going well. But Wilma quit her job because - I hope I understood it right - she wasn't happy with her work anymore. About a year after she resigned, she left her two small kids with her husband in order to work as a governess in the Middle East. When she came home, they opened a small but modest restaurant. She swore she would never go back to her foreign employer. OFW life was much too difficult for a fifty thousand pesos monthly salary.
I don't know if she's finally happy now, running her own restaurant. I never got a chance to ask her. We're not that close.
Andie. If there's one thing that I would never forget about Andie, it's her voice. She always won in the school and interschool singing contests. Those were elementary years. We met in the gym later when we were already both married. She was in town for a few weeks break from her singing engagements abroad so she took the chance of shedding off her extra bulges by attending the aerobics class. She and her husband, another gifted musician, were working from country to country as band singer-musicians.
Based on our conversations, she seemed to be enjoying her singing career. She looked fulfilled. What she wasn't happy about, was her weight.
Jeri, Jay, and Joyce. At age three, I knew that my eldest son, Jeri, has an artistic flair. He could draw a dog before he could even learn how to write the alphabet. Bond papers and cardboard cut outs always scatter around the house.
Jay has autism but as he has recently progressed, he has been showing special interests in reading books. We always have a stack of books by the bed or on the table.
My youngest, Joyce, could sing at two years old - even before she could talk straight. At bedtime, and especially during brownouts, we would sing theme songs from television series.
Parents know where their kids excel best. But more importantly, parents know best what makes their kids really happy. There are certain things that we need to learn and learn them best inside the classroom. But there are also other things that are as much important that we will only learn when we live them. And by living them, they spell our essence and make us complete. But they often get buried as we grow older, by either lack of confidence or economic needs. The worst thing though, is when parents do not encourage them. We often call them, passion.
(March 22, 2006 issue)
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