For the last six months I have been on pins and needles waiting for the results of the 2004 Bar Exams. I poured my heart and soul into every one of the eight subjects involved, and so the gravity of my financial, intellectual, and emotional investment has weighed upon me every day. This week could well be the payoff; it could be this Friday that I find out that after six years of studying, a failed attempt at passing the bar, thousands of man hours spent studying and thousands of pesos, I finally get to become a lawyer.
The other day, though, I read something that got me thinking. A friend of mine posted a comment about me in our barkada's blog about how I was one of the few people who actually had the stones to express my problem with authority rather than resorting to the usual cliches like smoking or hiding my long bangs or rat-tails. I actually look back rather fondly on those days. I remember how my classmates (not a whole lot of them) restrained me as I made a sincere attempt to flag Fr. Cruz down for making an illegal u-turn in the Ateneo High parking lot. I remember flinging the cap I was wearing into the air and whooping with unmasked contempt at the end of one of Fr. Cruz's obnoxious speeches (not homilies, mind you) about afterburners. I remember sarcastically referring to Fr. Macayan, apparently the only man ever to experience menopause, as "your worship" or something like that and being punished for it. And now...here I am anxiously awaiting the day I become a lawyer, sworn to uphold the legal and judicial system which many swear are tools of oppression. There has got to be some kind of irony here.
I suppose it's a common enough thing to have the so-called badboys and miscreants of high school do 180-degree turns-around (say that over in your heads, and you'll realize I'm right) from rebels without a cause to obscenely paid slaves of the system. After all, or many of us rebelliousness is a natural phase of childhood. It's part of the whole hormonal thing.
But I wonder if any of us have really lost it completely? I'm not inviting people to pour out into the streets and topple the government, but I sincerely believe that the deep seated contempt for authority that many of us had in high school can translate into something a little more constructive as we move on into the best years of our adulthood, like the refusal to take things at face value and to try to act as our conscience dictates us, assuming we still have them.
No, I won't spend much longer on my soapbox, but I would like to give a tip of the hat to the lawyers who joined NGOs when they could have joined law firms, to the doctors (and nurses) who've stayed here in the country when they could have gone elsewhere. You know how it goes. I just hope that I can remember to keep alive in me the spirit that's obviously guiding your paths in life. I hope to strike the balance between being able to look after and provide for my wife and kids and doing the right thing.
I wish that we all feel this kind of motivation, or at least something like it...
3 comments:
you voiced what everybody else (or at least those with brains) was thinking.
i back you 100%.
however, i am not affected so much by someone flaunting traffic rules (because for me it doesn't directly negatively impact a person) but i am angered by arrogance of authority in the form of direct power tripping by people who should be examples. the 4th year math teacher was incompetent and a liar, and oracion lacked integrity & was a bully.
i believe macayan to be a misguided soul who never grew up.
sure these people were human but they had no place in the educational system.
you know, I'm really...really...REALLY courting trouble by talking about someone who's dead, but I honestly found Fr. Cruz a little TOO sanctimonious and a tad hypocritical at times. I realize that many of us enrolled there were self-absorbed brats, but the guy WAS supposed to set an example...(I'm waiting for lightning to strike)...
Well, I figured that it's all a matter of survival. In high school, we didn't have any choice and just went with the flow. In UP (you know this Jim), you try to get the best teachers or if not, the least assholic.
Hmmm... back on topic, how does that count me since I never really cared one way or another for any of our teachers? (Except for Troy but that was because I never really saw him as our teacher, more of an excuse to stretch our legs in 4X.)
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