Are You Crazy Enough to Save the World?

by Sam Macagba

A Feature Article

 

This is an article that I wrote for a class. The goal of the said requirement is to reflect on any event in your life and relate it to DEVELOPMENT. During that time, my interview for AYLC is something that I find to be very memorable for me, so I wrote about it and here it is… Also, this article will be published in BACKPACK, the official school paper of the School of Education in the University of Asia and the Pacific. The unedited version of this article was published in this site: urworldvision.blogspot.com, a site that was created by the Integrated Marketing Communication students of UA&P to support the endeavors of Worldvision… I want to share my thoughts to this site so as to invite and encourage more teachers to be proud of their professions and to be agents of development

The Ayala Young Leaders Congress (AYLC), for me, is such a great blessing that I have received this Christmas. Ever since, I was really hoping for an opportunity where I would be able to share my vision of helping others through my development education perspective. But before getting my acceptance letter to the AYLC, different hardships and challenges came to my way. One of these challenges is the nerve cracking interview with the Ayala executives. I remembered that my interview for AYLC is a significant event in my life as I try to understand my vision as a person and as a future teacher.

In my interview, they told me that teachers are really needed abroad and a lot of opportunities are waiting if ever I planned to work there. They asked me whether or not I have plans of working abroad as a teacher. I said “no, I don’t have any plans of working anywhere but here in the Philippines.” They were really shocked with my answer. They said that working abroad can really help me and my family, especially because, as I told them, I’m not really that wealthy. As they said this, I remembered my mom and her sermon every time I was telling her my plans for the future. My mom cannot understand that helping others is really my passion. My mom always ends our debate with, “Puwede ba? Tulungan mo muna kami bago ang iba.” My mom and the Ayala executives (although, I believe that all of what they said is just a test or an assessment of how dead serious am I about my vision) were not only the ones who think of the same thing. Some of my friends and my relatives have the same sentiments and are urging me to go abroad, to work and to earn money for my family.

Because of this, I reflected. Am I the only one thinking of staying here in the country and helping my fellow countrymen? Am I crazy enough to think of not going abroad even though greener pastures await me? This reflection brought me to a reality check – in the end, I realized that there will come a point in my life when my family will be asking me to lift them up. Scared to face that scenario but if that time comes, all I can say to my parents is that “I am happy helping others. I know that I seem like crazy to you about helping other but I hope that you would also be happy for me as a lot of people would be very happy in the help that I would be extending them.” In addition, I told my interviewers, “Malaki ang tiwala ko sa Pilipinas. May pag-asa ang bansa natin. Hangga’t mayroong mga taong nagmamahal sa bansang ito, may handang tumulong at magturo, mabubuhay pa ang bansang ito.” In the end, I believe that my family will understand me and my calling in life.

My life seems to be very melodramatic, as how I narrated my interview in Ayala. It is similar to some of the superheroes that we know. At first, people perceive them as crazy. But just like a status message of my friends in yahoo messenger would state: “People crazy enough to think that they can save the world are the ones who really do.”

 

“Tomorrow, I promise to save the country and even the world. But I would like to dare everyone to be as crazy as me, to be crazy for the right cause – to save the world.”

 

As of now, all I can assume is that I am crazy because of this vision. Though I’m not yet sure if I would be able to save and leave a mark in the Philippine society just like the 3 Filipinas who successfully climbed Mt. Everest, Charice Pempengco and the like, I believe that saving the world cannot happen in a blink of an eye. I think that it is good to be crazy for now. Tomorrow, I promise to save the country and even the world. But I would like to dare everyone to be as crazy as me, to be crazy for the right cause – to save the world.

Moreover, I would like to attribute my acceptance to the AYLC as to how I was formed as a teacher. Being in the School of Education, especially being a Development Education (DE) student is a decision that I will never regret. In being a DE student I realized how to step-up for the right things and most especially to step-up for others. “Teacher ka lang?” is not an acceptable phrase anymore since we are not just teachers in this modern time. I think that my acceptance to the AYLC, the many different educators scattered all over the different settings, whether it be in the corporate setting, the academe, NGOs and elsewhere, are just the signs that WE ARE NOT JUST TEACHERS. The world is our classroom. As future educators, we should not just be concerned about the ABCs rather we should also be concerned about making a difference in our so-called classroom and about being heroes, without necessarily having capesJ