Nothing Fancy
It’s strange, but as the week of February 22 to 24 drew to a close, the feeling of finality and freedom became curiously tangible. Harried seniors passed each other on the halls and spoke in an implicitly understood language: questions like “Ilan ka na lang?” or “Malaya ka na ba?” were common, and were sure to elicit encouragement, envy, or enthusiastic congratulations.
Forgive the seniors if you see them posting dramatic messages on Facebook or going around campus on their sentimental walks. For the seniors—myself included—the Ateneo is to us as Hogwarts is to Harry: home. We’ve weathered oral exam after oral exam, crammed to the best of our abilities, and questioned our life choices while we labored over thesis. We’ve pursued our passions and learned to grow and be part of a community in our organizations. Para sa karamihan sa amin, nagtaya kami nang lubos. At ito ang dahilan kung bakit mahirap bumitaw.
It doesn’t help that in between our academic requirements and org work, we’re also confronted with the reality that we’d have to find work soon. Maybe this is an easy choice for some people, but even the best of us are confronted with competing sentiments. There are those who trained for the corporate world but whose hearts lie in the poor communities of Payatas; there are some whose passions can’t sustain the demands of their lifestyles; and then there are the seniors who are expected by their families to pursue a particular line of work.
We’d like to think that we picked up a thing or two about hope and idealism in our philosophy and theology classes, but it gets increasingly harder to reconcile these when confronted with the “real world.” Grow up, get real, life doesn’t really work out that way—we’ve all heard these lines before. At some point, I guess even the most hardcore idealist in our batch will worry that their idealism has no place in a world concerned with personal success, profit, and how best to make a living instead of a life.
COA President Ken Abante puts it best when he says that Ateneans struggling with this dilemma often find themselves in a “paralysis of fear.” Being up on an ivory tower limits the way we see things. Too often, we get boxed inside the idea that our majors lead to only one sure path. It doesn’t really have to be that way.
At some point, maybe we’ll get to find—or create, even—the ideal in the real. The world does not owe us anything; it doesn’t offer us one straight path to a singular goal. It’s precisely because of this that we are free: to be creative, to defy the pessimism of society, to have hope in who we are and what we do, to strive to pursue our passions. As Fr. Arrupe would say, “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
This is what I will sorely miss about the Ateneo and Batch 2012: we hope, we dream, we despair, and we find strength in each other. This is the year we make life-changing decisions and mistakes. But I will hope. As Marcel would put it—in that long, 60-page essay some of us never bothered to read—I hope in Thee for us.
