Never was it Gone

The generation of the youth today has become technologically advanced that no kids can be seen playing “habulan” in the streets when the clock strikes at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Nowadays, kids beg their parents to buy them the latest gadgets to satisfy their wants. Some concern how they look, what they wear, who they please, and how many likes? What happened? If change is constant, then this change among people could have contributed less to our development.

While sitting on the porch outside our cottage in Kevin’s beach resort, I studied the jellyfishes that came out of the water below. It was already high tide time of the day and the blue waters revealed several black, brownish jellyfishes. Lenny, a youth participant of our activity from Mayjo, withdrew from playing “habulan” and saw what I was looking at. She started talking to me about the many kinds of jellyfishes abundant near their home. I was amazed with how she tries to entertain me about all these. After a small chat, we redirected our topic from fishes to her personal experiences as a typhoon Haiyan survivor. At first, I was a little bit taken aback; getting some first-hand information from a survivor herself is a bit of a challenge. I know it’s one of the most traumatizing events in history- but what amazed me was how she actually reacted about it. “If you believe and trust God, nothing bad will ever happen to you,” she said, “My teacher, who’s also my friend once told me: That’s life, sometimes you’ll feel really happy, then afterwards you’ll feel sorrowful,”. I smiled at her because there’s nothing more I can add for a strong girl to become stronger; she already is.

Several other kids joined us and some questions were redirected to me. They seem to look forward into going to college since they were very eager to ask me about it. What was my degree all about? Was it hard? I told them all I could and advised them to prioritize their education because it’s the best gift they could ever reward their selves, their families. I told them to never miss a chance to pursue what they want. They all just nodded with hopeful smiles on their faces. After a while, they took a glimpse of their finished products from earlier and asked me if they could sell them. I enlightened them a little bit by saying they could and they were quite positive they could earn from it to support their education and buy rice for their family.

My encounter with these kids made me realize that there are still those, who at a very young age have the initiative to help their families and continues to persevere in school. These kids, exposed with the traditional kind of living, are those who are more privileged in terms of having to achieve something significant at an early age and a coping mechanism with all the challenges they will all go through.  No storm will ever break them because their faith is strong. They became an inspiration; a proof that our evolving generation still has left us something just like before.