Life has been unfolding on its regular pace, with all of its ups and downs, high and lows, triumphs and losses, energy and fatigue, laughters and tears triggering moments. Despite all of life´s happenings, the human spirit is heroic.
As life´s events and circumstances take place in my very eye, I am in awe with man´s resilience, willingness to survive, capability to fight, hopeful faith.. heroic courage. And this is the focus of this personal post, an appreciation, recognition of the stories of courage that I have witnessed in the last months.
Courage is defined as the ability to do something that frightens one; it is a manifestation of bravery or it is the strength in the face of pain or grief. It´s a trait that we display when the going gets tough, when we are outside our comfort zone, when we are facing changes and situations which are beyond our control.
And here are some of the worth mentioning accounts of courage that I witnessed these past few months.
1. My Courageous Son: During school year 2023-2024, my son was in the sophomore year of secondary education. This was the first school year that he had real, serious, threatening challenges with his grades. With all of his hormonal/ puberty changes, very demanding and busy academic schedule and personal activities such as dental appointments and extra curricular activities, my son experienced a wild roller coaster ride of emotions. He had his fair share of fit of temper moments caused by longer hours spent on doing school activities and reworking on his assignments until the basic, minimum requirement is met. More than the moments that he had his outbursts, what struck me the most was my son´s commitment to turn the tables around to pass 2nd year middle school. His sense of accountability and responsibility was evident as he pushed himself to review and prepare for his exams and eventually obtain passing marks. He also improved the quality of his homeworks and assignments by paying special attention on the criteria, requirements of the teachers. My son also stepped up by accommodating our request for additional reinforcement, tutorial sessions on Maths. My son took to his heart our pieces of advice and the feedback of his teachers. He changed his review method by dedicating quality time on the more difficult subjects. He did his best to become more independent as doing his homeworks on his own increased his confidence and capability. Despite all of these difficult and confusing moments in his growing up world, my son just showed up. As a result, my son passed the sophomore year! This school year 2024-2025, he will be entering junior high/3rd year middle school! Congratulations, son! All of your hard work paid off!! I am the proudest as your mom!
2. My Tenacious Husband: My husband is the most patient person in my universe, in my books. I am the sweetest person but in a split second, I am angry, I am pissed off with the slightest detail. My temper is outrageous. And my son acquired my personality, the mood swings, the temper, the outbursts. Our household is generally peaceful except on the occassional moments that my son and I exchange in verbal discussions. My husband is a very busy person. He loves his job. We are all professionals to the highest standards even if the situations are not the most likeable. Imagine my husband in a conference call and then all of a sudden hearing my son and I in a verbal argument in the background... Or my husband deeply focused on his job then all of a sudden, I barge into his home office blabbering about my thoughts, conversations with my family from the Philippines of which he didn´t have any idea. Most of the time, he would give me a blank look. Or that moment when all of a sudden, our son would go to his home office to seek help on some of his homeworks. As much as he would like to attend to my son, he can either be tinkering his laptop or in a conference call. My husband had his fair share of challenging personal situations, but he just showed up. One of the best showing up moments of my husband was when he took the initiative to retool, upgrade his skills. He was a pioneer in his team, organization to express solid interest on AI. He completed his post graduate, master degree on AI and that led to his new role as a successful Data Scientist! Way to go dad! We love you and I, your wife, am the proudest!
3. My Strong Mother: My mother is one of idols. The other is my father :) My mother is a selfless, loving, hardworking, always present, generous and strong woman! Quick background: My mother finished her AB English degree but became a full time homemaker when my brother, her 3rd child was born. She is the foundation of our 8 member household (2 parents and 6 children). She lost her husband, our father 22 years ago and she made sure that my youngest siblings earned their university degree. I am proud and very grateful to say that my mother administered very well the financial earnings and pension of my father. Now my mom is in her early 70s, she is diabetic, with hypertension, had both of her eyes undergo cataract operation, had a foot operation and recently this Q2 2024, had a cyst removal which was categorized as a major operation. In all of these life changing, life threatening moments, my dearest mother just showed up. Prior to her operation, she was required to go through a series of medical laboratories and medical sessions with her cardiologist, general medicine specialist, nephrologist and gynecologist/surgeon. Those sessions, aligning the opinions of her medical team to mitigate risks during her operation seemed endless.With my mother´s can do, courageous disposition and the mercy of the Lord, her operation went well, the cyst was successfully removed and my mom is fully healed, though she still needs to be careful. She´s now back to her regular programming and she now attends to her regular medical appointments to monitor her diabetes.
4. My headstrong friend: I witnessed a very good friend of mine lost her mother to cancer. Prior to her mom´s passing, my friend had to juggle being a mom to her son, delivering her work commitments and taking care of her sick mother. I kept in close contact with my friend. I wanted her to know that my prayers are with her and that I am around if she needed a shoulder to cry on. Her mother already passed away (and may she rest in peace). During the time that my friend had to take care of her mom while mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually preparing herself for the worst, my friend just showed up. It was a very taxing and sad period but with the grace and love of God which clothed my friend and her loved ones, they are getting by, Losing a loved one, death is an experience that you will never recover from. As the days, months and years go by, you go on with your life, the pain comes and goes but the longing for the departed loved one is always there.
5. My lionhearted former team manager: I know that on a professional level, colleagues, people come and go. But when a colleague is asked to leave the company, is terminated without clear reasons, I felt the injustice. It was not my call, I am fully responsible for my actions but not on the actions other people.I trust that decisions were made based on criteria. My former team manager upon learning about his termination talked to us/his team and told us to move forward. Even if he was confused about the manner he was terminated, he took it with a positive, moving forward disposition. On the 1st week that my former manager was terminated, his father passed away. And during these difficult personal and professional moments, my former manager just showed up even if he was hurting. I sincerely believe that there is always a silver lining and that things happen for a reason. More importantly, life goes on. For sure, something good will come out of this as good things happen to good people.
5. Our indomitable spirit (my siblings and I): I would like to dedicate my last account of courage account to the indomitable spirit of my siblings and I! We are 6 children who grew up in a working middle class family in the Philippines.I am very proud of my siblings. We have collective unity, indomitable spirit, a life based on experiences and prayers that help make things happen even if they seem impossible. God has been and is very generous and good to me and my family. We lost our father at a young age, we have had our share of difficulties in life but we just showed up. I am very grateful that my younger brother´s resilience, grit for better opportunities paved the way for his work outside the Philippines. My brother´s focus, prayerful habits and strong desires and wishes were his partners in making this dream a reality. My eldest sister is like a second mom and a financial advisor to us. She is hardworking, devout and resolute. She mobilized us, her younger siblings to financially, spiritually and mentally prepare for our mother´s recent operation. Together with our youngest sister, they took turns in the conversations with the doctors and the nurses and providing updates to the rest of the siblings. All of these while both of my sisters were doing their daytime jobs and my eldest sister being a full time mom and homemaker. Resilience is evident as well in my brothers R&RB. We are living adult lives now. And even if there are not so good days at work, even if we are terribly exhausted, even if there seems to be endless activities to do, even when there appears to be seeming injustice or when days are good, we feel better, we just show up. It is our commitment to life, to our respective families, to our community and our love and gratitude to the Lord Almighty that allow us to show up, be good people and navigate through life.
I know that these accounts maybe nothing compared to what the world is going through. But there are no small or big success and courageous stories. We all earned our spot and there is a place for everybody. These inspiring stories of courage are not stand-alone. They took place with the mercy, compassion, blessings, interventions and graces of our Lord. In this lifetime, it is imperative that we do good and we pray. For when man prays, God works! And whatever difficult situation, we are going through, just keep swimming, just show up. Always, the man who shows up, wins!!
