The challenge to find triumph amidst the journey is not difficult in time of peace and abundance. To do the same in times where such is sparse leads to a famine in gratitude- the heart, mind, body, and spirit being starved by bitterness and sorrow.
Although the adult figure, when having endured spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical famine, we may still find ourselves running from our own fears acquired throughout time. In our hopes and attempts to give our offspring peace, security, and love, some of us continue to withhold subconscious shields to protect them from our own repressed contraries.
It was just in the last ten of our thirty years together where my husband allowed some of his own repressed memories to come to surface privately to me. Before that, I heard only of what I now realize were the bright side of his recollections. Interestingly, although my own manageable memory releases come from a different upbringing, culture, and environment, I realize I have strongly done the same, I, at times, being more latent than he.
As I tell my own students, real drama stays in silence. Deep hurt and shame aren’t proudly spoken by the resilient who want nothing more than to get over the struggle. In the victory to overcome is where the tenacious heart, mind, and spirit finally takes a moment to relinquish all burdens carried with gratification to have freed oneself from the weight.
Real drama is not lacking what you want to comfortably live. Real drama isn’t even at just the level of lacking what you need to survive. Real drama is waking up to catatonically harsh realities day in, day out, until the heart, mind, and spirit inside is able to push the physical body through and out of the daily battles.
Lack of sustenance was not a choice. You didn’t forcefully starve yourself because your peers did it; you silently just became well-acquainted with hunger. There was no talk or check-ins of school happenings; quietly you were always just thankful that school had food, heat, and progress. Listening to others’ hardships silently baffled you, wondering if what they perceived as a bad life was truly all there was to see as reason to suffer.
You tell yourself you have all that you need. As long as the mind believes, the heart will not hurt as much, the spirit will keep lifting, and the body will keep moving forward.
Proverbs 13:7 is a good insert here to reflectively shed light on two mindsets:
“There is one that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is one that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.”
In times of hardship, you must focus on the positives that give you strength to do better or have a better tomorrow. This is all the only force you may have to see to it that today doesn’t take you permanently down. Any shed of light will never leave you in complete, utter darkness.
We rejoice amidst the journey for if we haven’t arrived to peace and glory, we must think the moment given as preparation to protect the days of peace and glory when they come.
Yes. There are many hurts through the bumps and jaggedly steep roads, but there can be finest lessons learned from those bumps and challenging roads than the straight, unobstructed paths- those easy paths that cause us vulnerability amidst the storms and battles. From the hurt to those involved themselves, all are in part to give training to the very masterpiece of the you that potentially is becoming.
While I recollect of my past in truth, there is no blame or resentment toward my mom or dad for anything that I have had to overcome. Sure. The hurt from suffering hardships is real. No one can deny pain when felt. Pain was definitely there. I felt it. I wasn’t dreaming. As a young immigrant finding poverty from home and school after another, the pinches were deep with some cuts taking longer to heal than others. I cannot imagine, however, how weak and fragile I would have become had it not been for my days, weeks, months, and years of what I now refer to as “training”.
It took some time to master my mind (still in the process of finding consistency with the commingling of the heart and spirit), but at a pause during times when even a hint of light seems to not exist, power of perspective becomes the power switch.
Living in darkness and staying in darkness contains two types of mindsets: the latter being that one who has surrendered to the belief of having no power to change the circumstance.
Yes. My parents struggled when we arrived here in America. Yes. They might have mishandled what money they had to chase their dreams. Yes. They might have passed on misconceptions of life due to inflictions and constrictions both experienced. However, I could not be that child loathing those who gave me life for their misfortunes. I loved and honored my parents obediently too much. In fact, I silently hurt to myself because I could do nothing as a child to give my parents what life they hoped for, seldomly seen in their eyes and heard in their words anymore what perhaps they may have ecstatically dreamed out loud about some time ago. They weren’t drunkards or drug addicts who thought to squander what they had. They inadvertently squandered what little they had in hopes to get more.
What I learned early from observing those around me is that one only fails at the moment of surrender. Perspectively, there is no failure in an attempt to get something right. There is only a moment to note THAT way didn’t work. As I tell my students, there are mathematicians who work on finding a solution to a math problem for the rest of their life, one wrong method at a time until their persevering belief to one day get it right. Did they fail each time? No. The determined, unrelenting heart, mind, and spirit know they just haven’t gotten it right yet, strongly convicted to the belief a solution exists.
My parents hopes to one day get it right does not end with them. That hope continues, one generation after another.
A selfless sacrifice, I know now, parenting children is the greatest gift one could be blessed with no matter how many fear factors are being thrown out there to say otherwise. It is the one gym machine that has endless weights to lift, push, or carry to work every bone and muscle; the track that allows you to run a marathon and sprint at the same time, goal after goal, medal after medal, sweat to follow more sweat; the obstacle course you sign up for knowing that the cuts, bruises, and bleeding are what makes the race the biggest and most sought out- all who go through are courageous contenders.
Determined parents lift, push, carry the weights, run the track-medal or no medal, endure cuts, bruises, and bleeding. Through their children withholds a dream, captivated by belief, driven with hope of victory in their endeavors to give their children a good if not, better life than they. The obstacles can be innumerable in arriving to success or satisfactory fulfillment. Symbolically, this is why the torch must continue to burn.
If my ancestors were to evaluate my sense of character, surely my reading would report to say the least: I was a rebel as a child, fearing to disobey my parents, but defying them whenever they said I couldn’t. Thankfully, I was given my parents’ belief or surrender to push through, fighting for what I believed I could do.
In my first encounter as a child at an apartment, I ran across that pool water, over and over, as Papa just watched diligently without a word, when I believed I would not go underwater, but the same father gave me the worst punishment to remember in front of my cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings when I decided to jump in a van driven by an unlicensed teenage cousin only months before.
Like the famous line of the movie, Avatar, “I see you”, as a parent, I understand the need to believe in your children’s self-belief, letting them go to grow, but engage to protect your child, even if it means all eyes watching will cast differing judgment.
Seeing your child means seeing their soul, that which they themselves cannot.
I was that black horse I rode on the first time, Prince, who even when I was told he would be the most difficult one to manage during my 6th grade class camp, I still chose. I was that white horse, Laredo, who, even when told would be difficult to manage going up the dry hills of Ensenada, I still insisted on riding. Rebel as a child and even as a young wife and mother- here I am.
I rebelled my thoughts of not being chosen as my senior commencement speaker- I spoke at two, one in that arena on behalf of all and within our own academy as president. I rebelled against the thought that having already a child, I could not finish college- I received my BA in Psychology with a Teacher’s Certificate within four years, one child to start, two at the finish line. I rebelled against the belief that one could not teach full time and complete their masters- I wrote those assignments in my head while taking my children to the park, read sitting on those sporting events bleachers to the finish, following each day of teaching, at peace shy of a straight-A when my Master’s was granted. I rebelled against the belief, notions, and whispers that my husband and I would not make it through for long- thirty years later, still with my great friend, still virtuously true.
I look back at all the times I must have drained, scared, drawn my parents to silent tears and incredible worry and all I can do now is continue to show gratitude by thinking, the best is yet to come.
My rebelliousness have not gone in vein. I have conceived and naturally born five amazing children, been true and faithful to the same man from the moment we were first together, endured and served countless children to push themselves to greatest heights under the mindset of no excuses with the challenge, If I was able, so can you.
You did not spare me the rod, Papa. You balanced lady mannerisms with the joy of laughter, Mama. So, like Prince and Laredo, I am one to be minded at times to rebel against developed expectations. I could have developed the expectation to give up and follow the paths of others. Me running from my fears to develop into such expectations is my daily acts of rebelliousness. I have defied and rebelled against such expectation as a child. Why stop now?
I bring up my past with truth of genuine hardship, but I place no err in either of you, my parents, who gave me the life I lived. Rather, I thank you both.
To rejoice, I am endlessly thankful for all that I’ve journeyed to get to the strength in heart, mind, body, and spirit I’ve gained.
My children may not have had to go through the same training as I did for still, I rebelliously run in fear to repeat, never arriving to my greatest potential, but through their own parenting they will discover the indescribable feeling of wanting to give more than what was ever given them. Within my locus of control, I rebel to be looked down upon as one not having met expectations, but rather one who exceeded beyond greatest potential.
To err is to have one less way to get something wrong. To fail is just to arrive at saying someone else can take over to get it right.
There is nothing new under the sun, after all. One just picks up where you left off.
