New college graduate?

I am writing this in the hope that I may be of some help to you.

You’ve just left the doors of the institution that sheltered and nurtured you for the past four years. I can imagine your anticipation and exuberance as you awaited the day you’d don that shining black robe and your hands would touch the rolled parchment paper that is the symbol of your dream.

I was once in your shoes with my young dream clutched in my hand and etched in my heart. I’ve carried the dream as I started with my first job and failed. That same dream shared many pitfalls with me as I started over, made more mistakes and failed again and again until finally, I found it – my own little niche where I truly belong.

Now I live the dream. It is not the same dream though. But just as fulfilling. Perhaps even more so.

I would lie to you if I say that the road ahead is a series of orderly routes. It is not. It’s full of twists and turns and many potholes. But I am glad for that. I wouldn’t be what I am today if it wasn’t for the road that wasn’t perfect.

What I am today is my own person – imperfect like the road but made better by the many challenges I have had to deal with in my thirty seven years. I have learned a lot of life’s lessons foremost of which is the acceptance that some things are way beyond my control and that letting go is most liberating. The hardest lesson to learn is letting go of a dream or a part of it for another.

Dreams do come true but somehow those change form through the years.

Money, in all its many faces – high power job, glamorous occupation, eye-popping sports car, magnificent house, travels abroad – is topmost in our dream list. There’s nothing wrong with it as long you know what it truly means to you. If you take away all the trappings and face the mirror and you are the same person who held that rolled parchment paper then money is your friend. It has not taken your identity but rather enhanced it.

The day would come though – I wish it would be sooner than later for you – that the real meaning of a dream-come-true has a far-reaching significance than you could possibly think.

I wrote below an article to somehow describe what I hope a new batch of the Filipino Youth could be.

I AM THE NEW YOUTH

I am the new PINOY and what I want is a good life. A life of freedom. Of choices and options and great possibilities. A life of involvements. Of making a difference.

I want financial freedom that I may contribute to a cause I believe in. To go places in order to learn more, to seek opportunities, to meet my brothers and sisters anywhere in the world and above all to discover myself in the light of everything that God has created.

I want freedom from the limitations set by others whether consciously or unconsciously for I alone can feel the power that breathes within me.

I want the full benefits of education inside our great institutions, beyond them, among the people of the streets and the dynamites of the power corporations and still beyond, among company founders and among those whose skin color is different from mine.

I want to make own my choices and not those that are made available to me. I want the freedom to explore these choices, make my own mistakes in order that I may find out the life for me and for me alone. And to live this life without fear but rather with the knowledge that I am charting my own path and leaving my own footprints.

I want to dress any way I like but not shunning propriety. I want to have my say out loud but always without disrespect to others.

I want to be closer with my family, my friends and all those people I meet along the way. I want to be involved with their lives and them in mine because I care genuinely. But not the kind of involvement that ruins friendships and estranges families but the kind that says “I am there when you need me.”

I’ll seek my own niche and be the best I can be. I’ll follow my dreams never ceasing until I can touch it.

I want a good life. And I will work for it. At the end of the day I’ll have what I want because someone will hold my hand and tells me his life is changed by looking into mine.

I am the new PINOY and that is my dream. To have a good life.  A life I will be proud to own and be glad to look back to when I am old.