One morning 20 years ago, I caught Misty crying in her cubicle. She had just discovered that she was pregnant with her third child and worried about how she and James could afford to raise their growing brood. Both were young new lawyers trying to build a career.
I tried to reassure her with the only advice that one could give under the circumstances: God will provide.
On May 6, 2006, Jana Sofia Hupp was born.
“There was a time when my family of five shared a single bed in a tiny cramped room,” she would recall in an essay that she submitted to Harvard University in support of her application for admission.
“Wooden floors groaned under mismatched furniture, and two cabinets fit all the clothing our family had. Yet, I never felt deprived. Inventiveness was the name of the game, and my parents had just that.
“To us, perspective was wealth. And with a whole entire wall of our tiny room dedicated to just bookshelves with well-worn novels, law books, and vintage shop treasures, I grew up the wealthiest kid in my city. Privilege was metaphysical; in my humble home, big dreams meant more than our current realities.”
James and Misty soon found better-paying jobs. She is currently Prosecutor II at the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office and he, a top lawyer at the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.
“We moved eventually,” Sofie described the transition. “Tiled flooring replaced wooden planks. I now had my own bed. Privilege was no longer something my family had to romanticize ourselves into having.
“We weren’t opulent, but in the do-or-die reality in a developing nation like the Philippines, not living paycheck-to-table felt monumental. As my world expanded, so did an awareness of the invisible scaffolding that had lifted me up. All the while, so many others remained anchored.
“At 12, I started measuring daily luxuries in terms of the Philippine minimum wage. The more I recognized that ‘much’ I had been given, the more it felt like a debt I could never fully repay.
“My loving parents became my first ‘creditors’, and my labor was in the school. Gold medals and teacher praise became my currency of gratitude. When I entered high school a government scholar, the number of benefactors I held in my heart grew more. Suddenly, my education wasn’t just my family’s triumph; it was subsidized by taxpayers, many of whom toiled daily for wages that could scarcely support their own needs.”
Her social conscience awakened, Jana Sofia (“door to wisdom”) soon found herself drawn to activism, beginning with “sweet and innocuous passion projects before stepping into spaces where the stakes were higher and the conversations more complex.”
“One day, I would be at dinner with senators; the next morning, at a project site with fisherfolk.” At her first rally, she remembered “standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers,” holding a sign that trembled in her hands and grappling with the question that had followed her since childhood. “What does it mean to truly deserve what you have?”
It is a question that she continues to grapple with even as she realizes that “the responsibilities of privilege cannot be fulfilled in isolation, nor can they be defined by personal success.”
“The truth is, I never needed to ‘deserve’ a life better than that of sharing one bed with four others. In the end, none of us should have to deserve dignity or a life beyond survival.”
Jana Sofia just finished senior high — with highest honors — at the Philippine Science High School-Central Visayas Campus where she was also the editor of the school paper. She has been granted admission to Yale, Notre Dame and other US universities but has chosen to enrol at Harvard on a full academic scholarship. She is scheduled to interview with the US Embassy later this month for her visa. She describes herself as an “aspiring economist.”
Not bad for the little Sofie who used to climb the stairs to our office for snacks and chocolates after her class at Kumon on the ground floor. May her tribe increase.