AGAIN, it’s weekend!
What I like about weekends is that I don’t have to be highly technical in my column. This is my breather as I set aside politics and let my readers have a peek on my personal adventures here and there.
My friends would know that I love the night life. It is my way of defusing whatever stress I get from a day’s work. But while I have been identified as a party guy, at one point I almost became a priest. Let me share with you my vocation story.
Fifteen years ago, Bernard Steed (an Irish priest) visited my high school with his magic bag. From it, he took lots of stuff, each of which he shared a story of young men who crossed boundaries to experience the adventures of their lives. I couldn’t help but be drawn to the spirit in him as he passionately narrated how his friends broke the boundaries of language and culture and found happiness at the far flung areas of the world.
A few months later, the experience shook me enough to change my career plans that I have prepared for years, to my dad’s disappointment. I left my family to join Bernard’s society, the Missionary Society of Saint Columban. There, I saw and experienced what Bernard shared in his stories; I had a good run.
For a year I worked with mental patients at Vicente Sotto psychiatric ward in Cebu. I was dead scared when I started, I thought one of those patients in there could choke me to death or knock me down with single blow. Things like those happen there. To top it, I had nothing to offer them other than crowding their already overcrowded ward. Yet as days passed, I gained friends who I get to talk with in their lucid times.
There was also a year where I worked with street children. In Cebu, the city government does not like children wandering around the streets because it is not good for tourism. Well, of course, it’s better that way too because no kid really belongs to the streets; not only that, it’s dangerous and they’re supposed to be with their families. Anyway, I would meet them at a drop-in center in Pari-an. Again, I really had nothing to give them other than my time which I spent mostly in playing basketball. I could still remember going home so dirty and so stinky, but the smiles of those kids were just priceless.
My most challenging year was when I worked with the deaf-mute community. There, I was silenced. A simple “how are you” would take me forever to respond. While everybody could understand each other, I was always lost in translation. What moved me was their patience to teach me their language and their eagerness to make me part of their world.
I also worked in a squatter’s area in Bario Luz. I got into the den of thieves and drug pushers. Every time I walked on those narrow streets, people would stare at me with much suspicion. For them I was either a buyer or a cop. Understandably, they had to be paranoid knowing that raids were conducted in that area almost on a monthly basis. Eventually, I became a familiar face and I got their smiles already.
On my last year with the society, I worked in a dumpsite in Tayuman taking care of the dying and the destitute, then I decided to leave the seminary for good.
In those five years, I barely had anything in my pocket, yet I experienced life to the fullest. I witnessed life in its purest sense; a life worthy of celebration. Yes I had nothing, and somehow it was more than enough. I look back to my experience with fond memories. And everytime I am asked whether I regret joining the society or leaving it, I would always say why would I? It taught me the essence of life and it prepared me for a higher calling.
Our society’s patron saint was St. Columban, an Irish missionary who said “Christi simus non nostri” we belong to Christ, not to ourselves.