by
EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
I am turning fifty-eight years old today. My father recently passed on at the age of eighty, and his own father (my Lolo Nap) passed away at the age of eighty-eight. Both of them died of natural causes. If those who claim that longevity has a genetic basis are correct, there is a big chance that I will still have twenty-two years to live, and perhaps even thirty years if my paternal grandfather’s genes will have the upper hand. But, my maternal grandfather (my Lolo Santiago) died in his sleep when he was only thirty-seven. On the basis of the same genetic theory of longevity, there is an equal chance that I will take after my maternal grandfather and not really live very long. On top of that, of course, I can actually die anytime (even within the next hour, in fact) on account of an accident, a heart attack, a stroke, a COVID-19 complication, or some other unforeseen cause. After all, life can be taken away from us anytime, anywhere – often in ways, and under circumstances, we least expect.
Not only is our life in constant danger of being taken away from us, it is also painfully short. In some sense, things have a much longer “life span” than us. In my sojourns and travels abroad, I have seen monuments and edifices that have remained standing after thousands of years, surviving earthquakes and fires and wars and what have you. Compared to the “life span” of things, ours is but a drop in the bucket. To borrow the words of the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, things “will endure beyond our vanishing.”**
Life is short. Time flies fast. Life can be gone anytime. Yet it is precisely for these reasons that we must consider life the most precious gift we have ever received. It is a gift because it is not something we earned a right to, in some previous life. None of us was “entitled” to be born. God was in no way obliged to allow our birth into this world. We were born simply because God wanted to share with us the gift of being alive. And since the Giver of that gift can take it back from us anytime, the value of such a gift is literally beyond measure. For what value is there in something that we know we will never lose, no matter what we do, no matter what happens? But if we know that something can be taken away from us anytime, and that we will only have it for a limited period, and that that period is fast running out, then there will be no doubt in our mind as to the worth of that something.
That’s, for me, the most important lesson I have learned in the course of my fifty-eight journey in this world: that life is a priceless gift. It might have been given to us in a “package” that we think was “less attractive” than that in which the gift of life had been given to others. We may think that the potentialities and opportunities we were endowed with at birth were not as “advantageous” as those of our neighbor. But we will only be partially right if we adopt that line of thought. For the truth is: it is not what we have been given at birth that shall determine what we shall become later on. Rather, it is what we do with what we have been given at birth that shall shape the kind of person we shall turn out to be.
But there is more. When God decided to allow us to be born, He gave us exactly what we would need to fulfill a unique mission He would like us to accomplish in this life. Contrary to what existentialist philosophers claim (that we were merely “thrown” into a “meaningless world” and it is then up to us to “create” a meaning for our own lives), nothing about the circumstances of our birth was accidental. Everything – including the apparent “disadvantages” we had to begin our life with – was placed there for a purpose. We will not be able to see the purpose (or purposes) right away. But, at some point in the future, we will understand why God placed them there, and then we will appreciate the awesome wisdom behind it all.
Which brings me to the next important lesson I have learned in my journey so far: our fundamental stance towards life should be one of gratitude. Life is something we should always be grateful for. We should thank God first and foremost, but immediately afterwards -- we should thank our parents for being the channels through which we were given this most precious of gifts. Our parents may not be perfect; but then, where can we find a perfect parent in this imperfect world? All parents are imperfect simply because all of them are human beings like the rest of us. Yet most of them, despite their imperfections, sincerely want to do their best as parents. So if we think our parents have done us wrong at some point in our lives, we would do well to assume that much of it was probably unintentional (a case of good intentions gone awry). We will also eventually find that even the emotional hurts that our parents have unintentionally inflicted on us as children, even the mistakes which we think they have committed against us, have actually done us good in some way, if we will but look more closely at how our lives have unfolded as a result thereof.
Other people have also touched our lives in some other way and helped us become better persons: our siblings and friends, our teachers and mentors, people we hardly know but whose hidden and unrecognized deeds have made it possible for us to continue on our journey. We ought to be grateful to them as well. Our spouses, of course, deserve a special place in our hearts’ hymn of gratitude, for the Divine Potter’s hands often make use of them to mold us into the persons He wants us to become.
But gratitude is not just a matter of saying “Thank you.” Neither is it just a matter of feeling thankful. Gratitude – especially, gratitude for the gift of life – must be concretized. And the way to show our gratitude for life is by spending it in furtherance of the unique mission God wants us to carry out in this world. Each of us, as we said, has a mission that no one else (not even those who appear to be smarter or more powerful than us) can accomplish. That mission is something broader than the conventional careers, professions and vocations that society offers us to choose from. It is a lot more than choosing to become a doctor, or an engineer, or a businessman. Yes, choosing to heed one of these “callings” is often part of the process of fulfilling our unique mission. But – and I must underline this – these callings are just the implements by which we can accomplish our true mission in life.
No one is in a better position to tell us what our unique mission from God is than we ourselves. At best, our parents, our teachers, our parish priest, our spiritual director, and our friends can only offer us their opinions as to what our mission might be. They often mean well when they give us their opinions, so it will not hurt us if we listen to their opinions and give them some thought. Sometimes, in fact, their opinions may turn out to be the marks on the road that God uses to lead us to where our mission is. But, at the end of the day, we must realize that we – and we alone – will know exactly what our mission is.
Some of us discover our life’s mission early enough. Some take a longer time to discover it. Others think they have finally found it, only to realize later on that they have to resume their search. Not a few have to try one or two paths first before they finally find the right one. But, whether we discover our life’s mission right away or only after a long search, it is important to remember that every stage of that discovery, every moment of that journey – including those that appear to be the “wrong turns” we have made along the way – forms an essential part of our personal odyssey. Not a bit of it has been a waste of time. Every detour, every U-turn, every flat tire, and every tank that suddenly runs out of gas and forces us to stop and delay our trip, is essential. Although, of course, we can only say this if we have consciously embarked on the journey of discovering our life’s mission with a view to carrying it out. If we have not, then everything has been a waste of time. Living life without a clear idea of where one is going is like riding on a rudderless ship that moves everywhere but arrives nowhere.
Speaking of life-missions, ours may not necessarily be a grand one by earthly standards. Not everyone has been charged by God with the task of changing the world by means of some history-shaping act or some paradigm-shifting intellectual discovery. Our life’s mission may simply be to make a difference in a particular person’s life (one’s spouse) or in the life of a particular family (one’s own), by means of words and deeds that probably mean little to other persons. But, in God’s grand design, that mission is by no means less significant than the other missions that appear more remarkable in the world’s eyes. No one else can fulfill that mission but we; and it cannot be fulfilled if we do not agree to carry it out. And whether our mission is to make a difference in one person’s life or in an entire nation’s life; whether it is to come up with a better way of teaching basic math to schoolchildren or to construct a philosophical paradigm that will change an entire generation’s way of looking at things; whether it is to be the head of a small household or to be the head of a huge organization, we must never doubt that each mission is important in God’s eyes, because each plays an indispensable role in the gradual unfolding of His divine plan.
I must forthwith add, however, that although God allowed us to be born into this world in order to fulfill a unique mission, it does not mean we have to go through life “laboring” for the sake of that mission. God is not a taskmaster whose eyes are focused mainly on the efforts we are exerting to carry out our mission. On the contrary, He wants us to enjoy the journey of life itself and not to preoccupy ourselves too much with the destination. He wants us to relish every moment of that journey -- the joys and pains of loving, the excitement of trying and failing and trying again, the adventure of winning or losing and bouncing back. And as regards the mission He wants us to accomplish, I have learned that He wants us to enjoy that too, and that the key to enjoying our mission is to love the things that God wants us to do. Or perhaps, the better way to put it is: to do what God asks us to do -- for and with love. The moment we do things with that motivation and attitude, even the most thankless task required by our mission, even the most boring part of what we have to do becomes a source of joy.
Finally, today, as I look back on the life I have thus far lived, there is one other lesson that fills my heart with profound awe: God’s patience, understanding and mercy literally know no bounds. There had been times in my journey when the marks that God placed on the road to guide my way were quite clear and easy to understand. Yet, I chose to ignore them. I would have lost my way altogether if God did not persist in (as it were) reconfiguring, again and again, the geography of my life so that, whatever road I took, I would ultimately find my way back to where I should be going.
____________________
*Written in October 2020, in celebration of my 58th birthday.
**Jorge
Luis Borges, “Things” in Collected Poems,
ed. Alexander Coleman (London: Penguin
Books, 2000), 277.
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