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Saturday, September 29, 2007

A Change Is Gonna Come

“If along the way, you act like you're someone you're not, pretty soon that’s who you become.”
~High School Musical 2

I'm sure you’ve heard of the cliché “the only thing constant in the world is change”, yada yada yada. But has anyone – whether a friend, a family or a mere former acquaintance – actually told you, “Uy, anlaki na ng pinagbago mo!?”

In order not to sound too preachy or condescending about this ‘topic’, I asked two good friends to identify what changes I have undergone as a person throughout the years. Here’s a summary of what they’ve told me.

STUDENT ACHIEVER. No doubt, this is one of the biggest changes I’ve undergone over the years. According to my friend, I epitomized the dream student a teacher could ever ask for. But now, not so much, haha! I am not the academic juggernaut anymore. Early on in college life, I realized that there are far more important things in life than good grades. But, not being able to do my best is a different matter.

PRUDENT AND PENNY-WISE. Well, I wasn’t exactly what you would brand as “kuripot”. But I owe my early fiscal maturity to my Mom who let me have my own ATM account at the age of 14. Not that there’s lot of money in it to splurge with, haha! She always emphasized about having at least a few savings for emergency purposes. I don’t get my allowance on a per-gimik basis – I get a regular monthly amount instead. The setup is still the same these days, but now I feel like I am too impulsive when it comes to buying – even on grocery items, haha!

A BRAT NO MORE. We use to call him “RK”. Oh well, actually, he is, up to now, a rich kid minus the “brattiness”. I still remember him pouting and brandishing his gloomy face in the house when he can’t have what he wants right away, may it be a cellphone or a laptop. Back then, he even had a better cellphone than us. What a brat! Now I know he has realized already that he cannot have everything right away. More than that, I know he now understands that he cannot have everything. These are the exact words of my friend. Her words say it all.

COMPUTING ATTITUDE. I remember having a fight with a good friend over a favor he asked of me which I didn’t give because for some reason beyond me, “it was unfair”. I guess that rift was the turning point of my ‘computing attitude or in Tagalog, ‘pagiging makwenta’. So these days, I am the ever giving friend and Kuya for my little brothers and sisters. Naks, parang ambait ko talaga, haha!

CHORES GALORE. I used to be the bunso of our apartment so I had room to be carefree. But not anymore. I am practically the landlord, bossing around my young housemates to accomplish their tasks, with deadly threats to boot for any failure to do so, haha! Quite ironic really, for when I am back at our home in Pampanga, I regress back to my childhood days, back when Mom would continually nag me to clean my room.

IN SUMMARY. The ranting and brat Rex has long been gone. He’s going through a lot but he chose to be silent about it and face it head on.

So what’s my personal assessment of myself? Well, I would like to think I am wiser these days. (Sige, na, pagbigyan niyo na ako na magyabang, haha!) In fact, for guy my age, I feel like I have experienced a lot of stuff an ordinary 22-year-old wouldn’t have experienced yet. And to think I haven’t had my heart seriously broken yet! (You see, I feel that at my age, having one’s heart broken should be the most painful experience of one’s life so far, and not be dismissed from college for up to 4 times, hehe!).

For me, it’s the stuff that we go through that changes us. (Okay fine, this realization is pretty obvious, haha!). I am just lucky (credits to my parents who definitely raised me well, I think, haha!) that despite the big stash of bad experiences I’ve had, I emerged a better person each time.

But that is not to say that right now, I am the best that I can be (waw, Mutya Buena’s song just started ringing through my ears). For I have yet to emerge the ultimate survivor completely. The ideal process would be to continually change and improve, for life never runs out of tests and experiences that shake us out of our comfort zones.

“Change… We don't like it, we fear it. But we can't stop it from coming. We either adapt to change, or we get left behind. It hurts to grow and anybody who tells you it doesn't is lying. But here's the truth: sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And sometimes, oh sometimes, change is good. Sometimes, change is everything.”
~Grey’s Anatomy, Season 4, Episode 1

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