Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost
There was a catastrophe. At least not, in the very sense of words, a great scale tragedy-causing doomsday scenario. But those were hours of gloom for an infantile in this game called life. There, where people take a glance at a wooden chest and sip for some cup of coffee, combo with a handful of butong pakwan, then play cards and roll bottles. Grief spilled tears every twilight when the radiance of the sun started to faint. And then until it settled over to the other side of the horizon before the dusk when the white birds called tagak stretched their voyage, elegant and proud, racing, then harboring under the cradle of the Sierra Madre mountains. But then there was a catastrophe.
I am neither an essayist nor a storyteller. This point my mind sought to raise could just settle below the eighty passing mark of an English formal theme. It took five miles of dictionary lines putting all these words together, write, revise, and redraft, revise again, then one day encode inside my very old computer… and now it is here trying to bring back the past and explain the catastrophe I was talking about. That misfortune eventually made my life turned around and took a path I didn’t believe. But here I am, now a believer, a guide to some immature travelers, had not a woman like her came across my path. Oh, I wouldn’t have believed but I’m glad I did.
She was my teacher. I recall that discreet and reserved middle-aged lady with some streak of gray hair who used to stand in front of our chalkboard. She read and reread her set of test for our review and then called me to take her place. I gladly took it, of course, and resume throwing questions to my classmates who would usually get bored and would show me their lethargic and mocking gestures – “It’s you again, Einstein!”
Why me? Well, I was not her protégé. I was not her favorite either. Those were the times I was contending for a chance to compete in a Science quiz bee or at least in any competition for the first time in my life. Apparently, she had already chosen somebody more intelligent than me but rather surprisingly, alas, the heavens heard my prayers. At last, I was selected for a competition and now she told that I must define my goal. She didn’t know that right there and then I started a new kind of lessons, practical lessons, which I’ll be using in my entire life.
She used to say to me during review sessions that my mind should focus to a definite goal. That goal is a hard earned prize because not all people have goals in life. There might be a dream but not always a goal. What usually makes human suffer is not poverty, not even an enemy but the lack of goal. It took time for some to set it right, easy for others and ridiculously hard for most.
My teacher didn’t know but these lessons were what she rooted to me and later cultivate and have fruits. She would add that I should think purposely for what I desire and perform my entire capacity to acquire it. Being too young then, I couldn’t grasp what she meant. So I purposely imagine for a dream toy robot or the newest line of video game consoles. So, what could I do to get those? Not in the world would I commit crime. Also, not in the world would my parents buy me one!
The message was obvious when she said that I should focus to a goal. A goal which eventually became clearer as my teacher’s paradigm explained it. As the old adage says that the older I get, the more intelligent older people becomes. That goal changed me even more as my life started to emerge in its most grueling stages of adolescence. Much more when I entered into adulthood. Her words became reality when after some attempts for a rightful place under the sun I finally got a scratch for my ego when I captured a feather on my cap! I learned that the goal she was talking about was not concerning robots and computers but about hard work, will-power, perseverance, success and victory. She made me aspire for an exit point with my head unbowed. She set my mind into thinking that there is always a light at the end of a tunnel - a real-life tunnel at which I must pass for most of the time.
When she explained things about goals, she added that we must not be contented with just a bowl of aspirations parked inside our brains. She said that the path to our goal must be chosen accordingly to avoid qualms if we choose the path where the losers set off. She fancied Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken with its eminent line: two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. With that in her mind, she was referring for an alternative that we might take in order to reach our goals. One road would lead to demise and the other would lead to redemption. We might choose to take the easy road where we can pass through as if nothing has changed or to take the narrow road and emerged as a new person – a winning person. We might walk on a road without effort of getting out, or we might stride and even climb a dark, treacherous road, struggle to get out of that passage in a savage bridleway, and still emerge victorious.
Our context gives us the competence to carry our beliefs and so as our future success. She added that if we just expand the limits of our context to take greater challenges, our capacity to carry any burden will also expand. Just like her story about a drinking glass. She told us that if we are to put a pitcher-full of water into a small drinking glass, most of its liquid would eventually dispense out. Just like our context. If it would be as small as the drinking glass, we could never carry huge pitcher-full of struggles in life.
All of those lessons were wholeheartedly enlightened to me by my teacher. Though I didn’t take very seriously during those times, now I am using those lessons to fuel my success in my chosen endeavor. How can I ever forget a person whose words of encouragement taught me how to hurdle burdens and throw emotional anxieties away? I can never forget her presence during the trying moments of crisis as an adolescent. Her guiding examples put so much impact to my personality that is why I easily avoided common struggles of the youth.
Until I went to college, when most of her words became clearer, I was still using her lessons in my quest for triumph. Inside my head I can hear her speak with kind words telling me about my context, my goals and my success. In my imagination, I can hear her explain about the decisions that I will make must depend on my choice of roads. Perhaps, she would be delighted to see me succeed as I planned inviting her on my graduation. I just wanted to rejoice my initial lifetime triumph with her.
But I didn’t realized how those celebrations would turn to mourning. The hours of gloom for the once puerile as I was. There, where people take a glance at a wooden casket and sip coffees, play cards and roll bottles until the sun nestled to the other side of the horizon. When in the afternoon the white birds stretched their voyage, harboring under the cradle of the Sierra Madre. All of these became a catastrophe when I saw her face I never thought would be the last. No more the lessons but only the recollections. No more the stories but the memories. That pale face I couldn’t look at inside that cold, wooden coffin.
I don’t know about inspirations but my teacher, Madam Rosita Pagado, will be one of the very reasons for my continuous quest for success. I am now a professional teacher and her guiding examples will always be my steering controls even when I walk into a savage bridleway where the hard trail to success defines victory.
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