Someone asked him why he keeps posting about money and finances stuff. Another asked if he’s an insurance agent, or if he is a member of a networking fad.
He told them it’s an advocacy.
“What’s your advocacy?” They asked.
His reply: “To help people become better versions of themselves, and to empower Filipinos get out of poverty. One life at a time.”
They asked why.
“I dunno”, he said. “All I know is that, I’ve always have had that ‘sense of purpose’. About leaving an impact in a person’s life, about touching hearts and changing lives. Yeah, I know it sounds cheesy, like it came from a philosophy book or a Mother Theresa novel, but, I dunno, it makes me happy. It makes me feel alive.”
“That’s deep.” They jeered.
“It is…”, he agreed. “Maybe it’s because I have known poverty like the back of my hand.”
“I know what poverty SMELLS like: it’s as obnoxious as the smell of pig shit when you are inside their pen cleaning it with your bare hands. Or that familiar stench of garbage cans when you had to scavenge it for tin cans, PET bottles, cartons — and sometimes leftover food.
I HEARD poverty with my two ears. It’s the sound of your classmates making fun of your dilapidated shoes, the one and only pair you had, which you tried to put rugby on so many times until it just could hold anymore, they gave up and the soles run for its dear life — or whatever is left of it.
I have also SEEN how far poverty can take you; it is the distance from Lower Bicutan to SM Aura, when some asshole took your money and you had to literally walk your way back home. But hell yeah, I know it could be farther than that for other people.
I FELT poverty with my skin. Sometimes it’s hot. Like the heat of the sun at one o’clock in the afternoon as you push your kariton shouting ‘bakal bote dyaryo’!. Sometimes it’s cold. As cold as the cement floor at night when you sleep, even if you put a thick cardboard that you call your bed.
I TASTED poverty with my taste buds. sometimes it’s as bad as the burnt pandesal you begged from that bakery for breakfast, but sometimes it is also as fulfilling as the ‘kaning tutong’ from the suking karinderya across the State University where you were studying; topped with kaldereta sauce — just the sauce, plus a small cup of ‘sabaw ng medyas’, and a glass of water, all just for 5 pesos, that’s all you can afford to call a decent student meal.
So why do I have this advocacy? Because I have seen what education can do.
I have seen how education can be such a powerful weapon it can level the playing field.
That with education, an ounce of faith in God, 2 cups of resilience, 1/2 lbs of perseverance and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, a pandesal vendor could become a capital investor. And that with nothing but a college scholarship grant, a 12-year old boy pushing a wooden cart of junk could afford to buy a brand new car on his own 15 years later.”
How he did that? Well, that’s for another story.
I am [DreamChaser] 