Micks' Realization (If You Read anything of Mine Read This)

If you'll read this, please try to read it all... If not, I have outlined what is optional, semi-optional, and required to read, for your viewing convenience. :D

Introduction (reading is optional :D): Today was my first day serving in the Ateneo's Junior Engagement Program. Known in previous years as the Ateneo Labor Trials, it is a program that allows Atenean juniors the opportunity to experience the daily life of the working class majority. By allowing the students to do menial labor alongside their working class brothers and sisters, the program hopes to instill into every Atenean the wisdom of life from "down the hill."

JEeP Day 1 (semi optional :D)

It's all about splagchnizomai.

After an hour of introductory Chinese philosophy, I felt that my day could not get more head-splitting. My professor dismissed us late from class, and I had 30 minutes left to get from the depths of the Loyola Schools to Marikina Public Market. I took a trike to Aurora Boulevard and a Cogeo jeep to the palengke, where I was to do my initial 2 hours of JEeP service. I arrived at the fringe of the market at 2:40. I had to be at the market office at 3. I spent the next 20 minutes running around the market area asking people where the market office was. I arrived at the office at 3:01. As the officer on duty signed my time card, he gave me my Marikina Market uniform, which has the colored seal of the City of Marikina in front, and the words "Market Office" at back. He also gave me a pair of 1 meter long tongs. "You'll be cleaning the market," he said with a grimace on his face.

While walking towards the service area, I imagined how my other classmates were doing in their respective areas. I wondered about two second wave* Koreans in my class who were also to pick trash in the market. I also wondered about the English speaking homebodies who were selling fresh chickens in the adjacent area. I could imagine them saying "Please sir, make bili our manoks." I arrived at the site, and was surprised to find that I was not alone in trash picking that day. Some other poor unfortunate soul was dragged into the dirty task. I forgot his name, for reasons I will expound on later. We were assigned a guide to make sure we wouldn't get lost in the maze of saleable goods. His name is Danilo. We two Ateneans picked up bits and pieces of trash here and there for an hour or so, and when we reached the food court, Kuya Danilo told us to stay put while he tended to something. He said he would return in a few minutes. He left us there in idleness for an hour.

JEeP Lessons (this is required :D)

While enduring the long wait for Kuya Danilo, my Atenean trash buddy and I started conversation. We exchanged information such as names, degree programs, teachers, blockmates from each others' high schools, et al. You know the drill. He's a Management Engineering student, and we share the same Philosophy teacher. We both don't understand the technical aspects of the Tao Te Ching. He seemed to be really amiable, and as I look back at my history of friends, he would have been a perfect friend candidate. The problem is that I may never see him again. His schedule is once a week from 2-6, and mine is twice a week from 3-5, and although our schedules overlap, the place and person we are assigned to may be different. That's when I realized that although I thought I made a mistake in thinking that I could find more friends I could relate to in Ateneo, since It is hell searching for friends in that dog eat dog world, the fact is that good friend candidates exist in abundance in the most unexpected places, under the most unexpected circumstances. If I had met him in class, I would have shrugged him off as an M.E. grade whore. It was my preconceived biases and preconceived fictional hierarchies of everyone that hindered me from proper social interaction. All I needed was a level field where total anonymity shielded me from my own paranoia long enough to find proper friends. All I needed to do was treat everyone as my equal, and not look at myself as inferior, undeserving, or just plain different. I'm beyond the adolescent concepts of the "Imaginary Audience," and identity related egocentrism. I'm old enough to rise beyond the cognitive capability of adolescence.

When kuya Danilo finally arrived, we started working again. That meant walking around and around the whole market place for an hour, picking bit after bit of cigarette butt or ooze coated plastic bag. At 5:35, we finally returned to the market office. We punched in our cards to time out, and we were given our market IDs to wear for the next time we visited the market. As I said my goodbyes to the friend candidate that will probably never graduate to actual friend, I remembered some other very promising friendship candidates that never matured to real friendship. I always seem to meet the very best of humanity in the fringes of society. Interpret that as you may.

I walked down the road that leads to the highway where I was to take a jeepney to Gateway, and my mind again digressed to the thought of "Why do I have to do this?" Why was I picking up other people's trash for four hours a week? If it's immersion that they want for me, I've been to the very depths of Phillipine poverty before. I had been exposed to the lowest of lows, and the highest of highs in the social strata, which is something very few can truly speak of. It was at the moment of that thought that I looked right and saw the sign of a store that read "Althea." Alithea. That is what this experience is about. It is the unconcealdness of reality to a human person. No two experiences are the same. Each if examined is it's own treasure trove of thought and experience. I stand on the world and see only what my eyes can see. It is when I take a step in any direction that I realize that there is a world unexplored before me. If i lead myself to believe that one part of the world is precisely like the other, I do not do the world justice. I conceal a portion of the world, never to be realized by me. I do not do myself justice.

It is plainly impossible to say that I will have viewed the whole truth someday, but the fact that I try, and I pass on what the world has unconcealed to me as noema, and what I take in and examine from the world as noesis, leaves a hope that maybe someday truths gathered can make life even more worth living than I perceive. My experience may then leave a chance for some future child to realize the faults of his values system, as I have realized today. In summary, It is all about splagchnizomai. It is in my compassion to share truth, that it may make a difference not just to me but someone else. The truth is bittersweet, but the taste is worth the strife.