Can Darkness Remind Us to Have Hope the Way Light Does?

 As a city girl, I used to observe the glimmer of city lights at night while I made my way home from the university. Some of them are frustrating just like the slow, flowing river of lights coming from vehicles congesting on the main roads. Others, however, give a mesmerizing visual effect such as the ones I see when I reach a few kilometers away from home—the dancing of colorful, flickering lights outside malls that break the cheerlessness of the deep, dark night.

©2017 Anne

Randomly thinking of city lights brings me to a sudden insight that we have extreme darkness to thank when we learn to appreciate the light—a somewhat pretty good metaphor I could think of concerning the challenges we face each day as well as what true and ideal relationships are about. Simply put, we should not condemn the misfortunes that came on our way. We have the dark, wretched episodes of our life to thank because it is where we get to know and appreciate the sincerest people who give us several reasons to carry on. Apart from that, these people deserve our gratitude for being our light, our hope during the times when we feel like we are getting used to the bitterness of the dark—when we think there is no light at the end of the tunnel. As for the real essence of true and lasting relationships, I say: let the sincerest and worth-cherishing ones who are the bright lights at our darkest moments remain, while the others who contribute to the bleakness of the dark, or to the complexity of problems, to drift away.

Failure or Redirection?

One of the world's undeniable realities is that everyone is not exempted from failure. It is part of the natural balance of things, even in the way of learning things. No one has ever succeeded without knowing what falling feels like. And the feelings that go with these falls are not the ones to be shrugged off or buried in the depths of our subconscious, only to haunt us later.

Dealing with failure may be an easy endeavor for some but an arduous one for others because people have unique characteristics, live in diverse contexts, as well as experience various circumstances in life. Despite these differences, it is amazing how we still end up in the notion of getting back on our feet, trying again, and believing in ourselves and in the idea that it is the courage to continue that counts.

Teaching has been my dream since I was a kid, and so I did every single effort to make that happen. I was so motivated to be a teacher someday to the point that learning from different fields and from anyone I interact with has become a hobby…

©2018 Divino, M. M.

…only to fail in the teaching career, six months after graduating from college. (well, this might not be the most proper way of saying this to build credentials) 

I slipped into that tendency of thinking that I really did because that was based on the coordinator’s observation in my teaching performance prior to the pressures of an upcoming board exam. I got trapped in that long, vicious cycle of sulking and self-loathing when the principal said, “You’re even better than me, you graduated with honors, and it’s best that you’d teach” but fired me anyway.

A week after, a friend of mine working in the publishing company informed me that their company is open for hiring a textbook editor. I grabbed the opportunity without any doubts since I remembered what I wrote on my journal before graduating college, that (1) if there were another thing I would like to have as my career, it would be something related to writing; and (2) teaching does not end in the four corners of a classroom. Teaching is not limited to face-to-face instruction or social interactions and spoken discourse. As Winston Churchill said,

 

"Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her."

 

As long as I have been generous in sharing knowledge, true to my intentions in inspiring and motivating students to learn and be the best they can be, and fierce despite the challenges and adversities in the world just because I do not share the same vision for the future as they have, I know that I am still a teacher in the written discourse—in the form of editing, improving, and writing textbooks soon.

The experience taught me, and everybody else, that failure means deciding to stay in the negative vicious cycle and focusing on what we are not capable of doing to drag ourselves to rock bottom. Redirection means learning to be kind in appreciating our strengths despite the circumstances that did not work well and being open to other related careers or opportunities even if it is not the ideal way you have dreamed of or wanted it to be.