The Beginning of the Journey
It was 1986 - the height of the Philippine Revolution when I embarked on a trip that will change my life forever. I was leaving the land that I know, my family, my friends, and the life that for a quarter of a century was filled with challenges for survival.
My life was a struggle. It wasn't easy being born in poverty. I was the sixth child of eight born to a family that knows the redeeming value of education. Everything that we do revolved around academics. My mother always says, "we only celebrate achievements." It came to no surprise that our lives should be so circumscribed around the very ideal of human upliftment from the clutches of ignorance and vacuous stupidity.
And so my life was a blur until then. It was school and more school --- the very anchor that defined my concept of self. I knew that the ticket out of poverty was to study hard and achieve a level of competence doing something --- anything to put food on the table, bread in my stomach, and enough energy to dream ceaselessly of better things yet to come.
The singular purpose of my life was to get out of poverty and I looked beyond the walls of my home, the confines of my community, the uncertain political and economic terrain of my country to find that dream. I looked towards a journey that will take me to America.
As I sat in the airplane waiting for this journey to begin, I was filled with both dread and excitement. It was my first trip on a plane and I was on my own. I have $500 in my pocket and the clothes in my suitcase. I do not know anyone in America and I've never been alone on a trip this far --- thirteen hours or more away from everything that I knew. A gulf, a lifetime, a dream waiting to be fulfilled. All my life, I dreamed of this journey and at that moment in time, it was like a dream becoming... a reality of fulfillment.
This was my achievement --- to come this far from humble beginnings. I should celebrate but I was paralyzed with fear. The moment of becoming, of transforming is in itself wrought with fear and expectations. The airplane soared to the skies and I was clutching on to my dreams tightly. I closed my eyes and shed a tear. Good-bye Philippines.