Readers

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Going against the current. Worldwide, there are tens of millions of bloggers who post their writings in the net everyday. Topics range from the mundane to the life-changing. However way  you want to look at it, blogging has become a convenient way of empowering the individual to have a voice in this vast, and often alienating, world.

They say that a group survives because its members share among themselves the angst, frustrations, fears, happiness, love, anger, and all other possible gamuts of human emotions.

I once read a speech delivered by an 18th century orator; although I forgot the exact wording, I paraphrased it as follows:

A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men and women whom timidity prevented from making a first effort; who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great length in the career of fame. The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks and adjusting nice changes; it did very well before the Flood, when man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for hundred and fifty years, and still live to enjoy the success afterwards; but at present, a man waits and doubts, and consult his brother, and his particular friends, till one day he finds he is sixty years old and that he has lost so much time in consulting cousins and friends that he has no time remaining to follow their advice.

I always believe in the power of the twenty-somethings to create change around them. This stage in our lives when we experience what they say as the “quarter-life crisis” should never be a reason for us to fear. We seem lost, okay maybe not, just lacking a sense of direction. Some of us are fresh out of college working our asses off (I apologize for the language, but who cares) for some multi-national companies, volunteering for an NGO, teaching, looking for work, scared to graduate, or just looking for a place under the sun (which is a euphemism for bumming, sometimes, hahaha). We search for that sense of purpose, something that will define our being in a way that we want it to be or in a way that we want the society to perceive us.

We saw ourselves failing several times, still we tried and failed, and tried and failed. Still we must go on because we do not have any choice but to succeed. I have so much trust in the Filipino youth. If only we can risk and do something that has never been tried before. We are in such a perfect time to commit mistakes for we can always reason out “hey! I’m only twenty-something”. So why don’t we risk, commit mistake for we are in the best time of our life to learn lessons from flops done and still get away with it with a smile.

While we’re at the prime of our youth, at a time when things are so difficult, at a time when 200 pesos will not anymore be enough for a daily allowance, at a time when sex is as accessible as a cell phone load, at a time when the only work available is a job at a call center, at a time when goverment is spelled as c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n, at a time when the best state university in the country can only accept students whose family’s annual income is half a million or higher, at a time of living dangerously, we the twenty-somethings should…

…think out of the box

…look beyond the mountains

…fly higher than an eagle

…defy gravity

…question the norms

…trash cliches

and go against the current.

https://johnryanrecabar.wordpress.com

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,