Thursday, September 22, 2005

Growing Pains

These past days, I'm going through another period of self-discovery (I seem to be having a lot of these nowadays). I posted an entry a few months back about life in law school; what I didn't include was the sheer difficulty I'm going through. It's not just the workload that's hard, although I can honestly say that this has been the hardest semester I have ever had in my entire life. What exacerbates it are the people. I'm not saying that they're really difficult to get along with. Au contraire. My block's pretty good. It's just that when you're there, you meet a wide variety of people who come from all walks of life (not just limited to students, or even to members of the college, for that matter), and let's face it, some of them can be cutthroats just to be on top. To put it bluntly: it's crab mentality personified. People desperately want to be up there that they do not care if they trample on somebody else's toes. If that's not bad enough, there are also people who act like they have no souls. If they are compassionate, they do a pretty good job of hiding it. A lot of times during the semester, I went on quitting mode. What kept going on and on in my mind was this line that was said to me during my interview for the college: "You are too young for law school." If it's hard to imagine, think about the old Globe commercial with the Ilocano speaking people, to the scene when Geoff Eigennmann (is that how you spell it?) realized that he was lost, and shouted, "Wala na akong load! [Wala na akong load, wala na akong load, wala na akong load (continuous echo)]." Yep, something to that effect. It just kept on going into my mind, and it doesn't help that it's really obvious that I'm different from the other people. Maybe I'm just feeding off my positive energy and my paranoia just makes me think like this, but I couldn't help but think (at least before) that maybe I am too young, maybe I have not reached that level of maturity that the other students possess. Let's be honest: I can be such a kid sometimes. It's a facade and defense that I have a tendency of using in all aspects of my life (yes, I psychoanalyzed myself. Sue me.) Yet I can't be like this all my life. I can't be a real-life Peter Pan who will never grow up (mayhap because I don't have any fairy dust, but I don't think that's it). I can't be like this mentally, or else I would end up putting myself down all the time. At the same time, I can't be like this spiritually. Growing up entails responsibility, and I can't keep on being like a child all the time, because everyone has to grow up sometime. One of the things that I have to do to continue this is to stop being such a whiner. I've mentioned before that I've already let it go, but apparently, it's not complete withdrawal yet, because I catch myself complaining again. One of the most important things I learned this week is found in James 1: 2 - "Consider it all joy when you encounter trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." All things in our life are allowed in our lives by God so as to mold us to become images of our Lord, and it's up to us to act on these. Someone said to me that reaction is totally different from response, because the latter entails actual reasoning and not allowing one's impulses to control you, as what the former would result to. It's not glorifying God if I kept on going like this, because it's as if I don't trust Him to take control. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says that His grace is sufficient in our weakness. Mt 6:34 says that we shouldn't worry about tomorrow anymore. I claim to be Christian, but if other people see me grumbling and complaining, that wouldn't be a good reflection of God.
To make this long story short, I need to grow up. By His Grace.

3 comments:

Marley said...

Amen shobe! It is said in Ecclesisates 3:1, "There is an appointed time for everything." One day you would need to grow up and act maturely. Although, as we discovered, maturity doesn't always come with age. You may be young by years, but your way thinking is mature. Heck, you're more mature than I am, even though I'm the eldest among the three of us. Yeah by God's grace He will bless you with maturity and more importantly the wisdom that comes with it :D

Marley said...

erratum: it's way of thinking :D

jarletofclay said...

Haha! It's ok, achie.:D This entry was sabog by itself anyway, so your comment would be perfect with it.:p