from a 25 yr. old kid....

A few days ago, my teacher cousin from Bohol sent me these precious pictures of gratitude from her tiddie tiny students. Immediately I started blogging about it, but for some reason, I just didn’t click that publish button. Maybe I wasn’t confident of my grammar, or my spelling, or I was just being cautious before the brutally-frank-merciless-English-bitch cop-why-did-I-have-to-cross-paths-with-her?! Gayle Opsima gets the chance to proof read it in behalf of the whole wide web. Don’t take it the wrong way, I happen to brutally love her to death and that’s the kind of love I have for her… deadly! Haha

Going back, for some unexplainable reason I just didn’t feel like it was the right time to post that blog. I guess it was kind of a shallow blog for a trying to be deep in the shallow waters like me. But I think now is the appropriate time to swim deeper and drown myself into the shallow waters of my 25 years of accumulated wisdom.  I am barely breathing. Here it goes…

Dear Small Kids,

 

Looking at your cute faces and tiny figures, makes me feel like a giant who had to be reminded that I too was once a dwarf. I remember how it was like to crank my neck and look up to the world of giants around me, and say I can’t wait to be like them. In the mean time, chasing the winds as fast as I could with my two short legs was a past time. Climbing trees and playing make believe were my favorite games. Studying was a disaster I never liked, but dreaming of what to be was unavoidable. 

Dreams…  

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”will always be the timeless beauty pageant question for the kids. And I’ve had more than 5 career changes based on that question alone. When I was five I wanted to be a doctor, then an artist, an artista, an architect, a driver, a pilot, a rockstar’s wife, a businesswoman. 20 years after, I am now a teacher. A pleasant surprise I’ve never dreamed of. So kids, be warned that the future will be as fickle as your childhood dreams. 

Friends…

You can either run after your childhood dreams, or you can let fate takes it course, but know that fate is what you make.  Same ways as your friends are who you choose. Take a clear look of those faces beside you, because chances are you’ll be laughing together while looking at your pictures 20 years from now.  The journey of your friendships may likely be as unpleasant as that missing tooth, dorky hair, chubby cheeks and gummy smile, but it’s what will keep you going to last a lifetime. Stick with it; it’s an adorable faces bond to have.

But keep this in mind; you are who your friends are. Friends can either make or break you. So choose wisely and think whether they are worth for keeps and your love.

Luuuuurve… 

Love… the word that should not to be confused with a boy or a girl, or else a broken heart is inevitable. But it’s a natural course of life to have your heart broken as many times as you eat per day, just make sure that he who breaks your precious bloody heart is worthy of it. It’s part of the experience. Let it be a humble learning and silently keep it. But please don’t hoard and be blunt about it, because kid, you are looking for love in all the wrong places. If you truly love yourself, you’d guard your heart, keep it intact and present it to someone worthy of it, rather than have it used and abused, gushed and opened by the meaningless passing few before it gets too rotten for the right one.  

Kilig moments are great especially when there’s substance to it.  Hopefully you’ll all be grown up when you read this, so that spares me the need to explain further. Also, be safe – always! You know what I mean…. Er… population control???

Learn…. 

In my early school years I never understood why I had to disrupt my precious sleep and ruin my chances of growing taller by having to throw myself into the routine of waking up early and into the bucket of cold morning water. Words and letters were not my friends and numbers were not helping either. 75 was a card companion I thought was big until my mom had to painfully tutor me till my crying sleep.  Learning can be painful – figuratively speaking!

Things, people, time, place and events will always present you with eureka moments. It flashes itself in the most annoying-told-you-so-in-your-face! But you got no choice but to suck it all up, then pray and learn that it shall never happen again.  

But either way, quench your thirst for learning and you’d realize how small you are in this big badass world of wonderful merriment, while keeping you’re self-centered ego in check. It’s a never ending process so might as well embrace it with open arms. 

Family…. 

Almost all you do in this lifetime is brought upon by the choices you make. What clothes to wear, food to eat, who to hang out, where to go and etc. Family is not one of those choices. These are the individuals whom we are born into, like there’s really nothing we can do about it. Parents don’t get to choose their kids, much more kids don’t get to choose their parents, but either way it’s a fortunate thing to have.  Living with a number of different personalities under one roof can be heck of a lifelong teleserye, full of drama and corniness minus the kidnapping (thank God we are not rich!) in the ending.  Daily life can be very eventful to the point that it becomes uneventful that nothing they do fusses you. Of course, given the long time that you’ve had with these individuals, your level of tolerance has got to be skyrocketing.  

Either way, you gotta be thankful for your family, because they are the ones who sculpt your backbone to its fineness. I hate to brag, but I’m very lucky to be born into this simple, average, happy family. There’s not much happening, but trust when I say that it’ll be your ideal kind of boring. I love my ideal boring family. I can only hope to spread my familial boredom in the far stable future of someday.

Bottom line is, the world can turn upside down, in and out but family will always be there. They can be overdramatic at times, but at the end of the day they’ll always have your best intentions at heart. You may not necessarily understand it, rebel with the tough love but when all else fades and the fun stops you’ll always be coming back home to mommy and daddy to comfort you from your idiotic-teenage-emo-moments. 

Future…

But sometimes, we need these emo2x moments to make us appreciate what we have. That’s life, it’s damn tricky. The good and the bad goes hand in hand - always. They are the BFFs who’ll shaken your decision making skills, just be smart about it. God has given us the free will to do what we must and nobody can question us for that. Just know that there will always be consequences attached to the choices we make, it’s called the future.

Listen closely kiddilets, the future is going to caught you off guard, nothing will be what it seems, that’s for sure. So here’s my Peter Pan advice, take your time, enjoy being young. Chase more winds as fast as you can. Climb the highest of trees and play your hundreds make believe. Be friends with your studies, love to learn, and then dream a thousand dreams from then on. 

Those are the precious times that you can’t go back to, but can reminisce with great fondness. Just breathe and live life to the fullest and everything will be alright. Lastly, find your passion, live it, and then aim to make a difference for the better. 

Whether or not this attempt at imparting wisdom can make a difference will be known years from now. But hopefully the time you turn at quarter a century you’ll be able to figure things out and brag to me how it’s done. Because babies, I tell you quarter life…..I’m running out of words….

Yours truly, 

25 year old Kid.

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Kids by MGMT