Marginal Notes on Lolo's Manuscript

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

I was still a seminarian when my late grandfather first told me about the autobiography he was writing. He said it like it was a big secret he was letting me in on, because he knew that I shared his passion for reading and writing. Whether or not I was indeed the only one who had been told about his secret project (besides my Lola, of course), I am not too sure now. But, at that time, that was how he made me feel. “Someday, I am going to let you read it,” he assured me under his breath.

Lolo did show me the first pages of his manuscript sometime after his revelation. I remember how impressed I was not only by the eloquence of his writing style, but also by the elegance of his handwriting. In fact, I was so awed by his classical longhand that I soon found myself trying to imitate it--but to no avail. (My handwriting even got worse as a result!)

For one reason or another, Lolo did not show me the succeeding pages of his manuscript. Once or twice I asked him how it was going and he replied that he was still working on it. Meantime, the years passed and I soon got lost in the adventure of living my own life.

Lolo died in 1996 at the age of 88. Among the things he left behind was a three-volume autobiography consisting of more than 400 typewritten pages. At the time of his death, I had other concerns on my mind – matters that I felt were more urgent than reading an old man’s life story. But when my Lola died around nine years later, bringing with her to the grave the memories of her life and Lolo’s, I felt that I owed it to them as their grandson to read Lolo’s autobiography and perhaps even prepare it for possible publication. Fortunately, my father and aunt didn’t think twice about bequeathing Lolo’s old manuscript to me when I asked for it.

Lolo entitled his autobiography “A Destiny.” The quotation that he used as a prologue to his book summed up the philosophical framework from which he viewed his life:

"You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education, and compel it to point to the star which provides over poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free, the needle flies back to its own star." [1]

Lolo was a Mason and a Methodist, if his religious affiliation has to be given a name. But, at heart, he was actually a “religious liberal.” His ideas about God and human life were quite progressive for his age; and I remember that that was one of the things I admired most about him.

Yet, when one reads his autobiography, one realizes that as he grew older, he became more and more fascinated by the idea that God has destined each of us for a certain role in this life, and that no matter how we try to stray from that predetermined path, we will eventually end up where God has meant us to be in the first place. Somehow, this idea gave Lolo a lynchpin with which he could hold together the seemingly unrelated fragments of his life. Who knows, it probably even gave him a way to come to terms with his inability to fulfill some of his original dreams.

As a young man, Lolo dreamt of becoming what he called a “professional” someday--a lawyer perhaps, or a certified public accountant. He excelled in academics, graduating salutatorian of his high school class. (He should have been valedictorian, were it not for a technicality which disqualified him from receiving the top honors.) So he had high hopes for himself when the time to proceed to college came. But, poverty, sickness, and his life’s other twists and turns somehow led him away from his intended path until he found himself in a field that he least wanted (originally, that is): education. He became an educator, as we say, “by force of circumstances.” To his credit, however, it did not take long before he developed a genuine passion for this field. In time, he excelled so well as an educator that he became, at various points, dean of several colleges in Dagupan City (quite a feat, if I may say so, once one takes into account the many obstacles he had to surmount in order to get there).

To serve God and His people as an educator was his destiny--this is the theme that runs through the 400 pages or so of Lolo’s manuscript. For a time, he tried to point his life’s needle in other directions. But it soon found its way to its “north star.” Lolo’s ultimate triumph lay in his recognition, acceptance and celebration of the destiny that God had given him.

I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool existentialist at heart. I used to believe that the direction our life depends entirely on how we steer the wheel of our existence. We are what we make of ourselves and not just the passive products of our circumstances. We can be whatever we want to be--this is both our privilege and duty as human beings. Of course, circumstances and external events can have a bearing on the kind and number of options we can choose from. But their impact cannot and must not be exaggerated. Human freedom is far stronger than the strongest of our life’s circumstances. I lived by this doctrine for many years, like a blue-blooded existentialist must.

Surprisingly though, the older I get, the more I realize--like Lolo--that a vast sphere of our life actually lies beyond our ability to control and manipulate. Contrary to what the leading existentialists proclaim, “fate” (or however else you wish to call it) somehow plays a huge role in our existence. More often than we are willing to admit, our life is shaped not so much by our conscious choices but by the steps our circumstances somehow constrain us to take. There is, in short, a limit to what our free will can do by way of “constructing” our life. Lolo called the synthesis that results from this dialectic between our choices and our circumstances our “destiny.” Although I am strongly reluctant to accept such an idea, the lessons I have so far learned about life have made me realize that it may not be such a strange thought after all.

I remember an entry which Dag Hammarskjold wrote in his diary: “We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.” [2] Lolo must have arrived at the same realization sometime in his life. And I feel proud of what he was able to build within the limits of his destiny’s frame.

NOTES

*A tribute to my paternal grandfather, Dean Napoleon R. Fernandez, Sr.
1. Lolo excerpted the quotation from a book entitled Human Fate. Unfortunately, he failed to name the author and give the other details of the book.
2. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, trans. Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), 45.

Copyright © 2015 Emmanuel R. Fernandez