LEAVING OUR MARKS

October 15, 2015

Glad to have pounded on the other mounds of office paperwork today, before going to render a few hours of speaking time as one of the resource persons during our office seminar.  Personally, I felt satisfied sharing what I knew and experienced, and providing advice and reminders especially to the newbies.  I’m not sure if the participants were satisfied with it though, or just going along with the flow, clapping their hands after the end-of-chapter exam and final stretching exercises.

This evening, after a couple of hours spent watching some episodes of a tv drama with mom and reading some reactions and comments about it which I downloaded from the internet a few days ago, I learned that for most people, death is not the worst thing that can happen, but to disappear without leaving a trace.  What is most painful is it is analogous to ostracism, where it would seem that people do not acknowledge your very existence, and you feel that you are meaningless and nothing.  You do not die a physical death but an emotional and spiritual one.  You cease to belong, you cease to be seen by others even if you are tangible.  In short, in everybody’s consciousness except your own, you cease to be.

I guess the more intelligent tv dramas nowadays start exploring this very real emotional struggle as it is one of the strongest reasons for a person to go away, retreat into one’s self, hide away from the world and even take his/her own life.  I know and I can relate because this is why I am writing once again, after feeling that some of the people whose opinions and affirmations I value, seem to take a vacation from doing that.

I agree that in order not to go down into the depths of depression, one should immerse one’s self in work.  As Kahlil Gibran says in ‘The Prophet’, ‘we work because we need to keep pace with the earth’.  So true, and keeping our pace with the earth diverts the focus from us and our own shortcomings but to what we can do and what we can produce that is useful and valuable to ourselves and other people.  But a well-balanced person does not only live through the work of the hands, but also by the machinations of the mind.  The rational person sometimes stops, takes time every once in a while and thinks where he/she is going, whether he/she is already there and what he/she should do if he/she is straying off the mark.

And I guess this is one area that teaching others is most relevant.  Because even if we go through the rest of our lives without looking back, we will never be there in the first place if we had not learned from our teachers (our parents and elders, our academic teachers, our bosses).  They who are full of knowledge and heart in giving their all to teach us what they know, undeniably leave their mark on us who in turn, will leave our marks to those who will come after us.  Even if we all forget each other’s names, it is human nature to never forget how other people made us feel.  And what we feel when we are being taught or instructed will act as the epoxy that solidifies what we learned from life.  Whether good impression or bad, every lesson learned, every idea planted, every advice given, and every warning pointed out, will permeate even the deepest reaches of our consciousness and stay with us for the rest of our lives.