What was originally a requirement, became something much more and I just thought that it would be something worth sharing to the world, not just in class.
Initially, upon reading on ‘The Story of the Eldest Princess’ I was intrigued. It caught my eye simply because it was about the eldest princess. As I always say, I often relate it to me being an elder sister and the persona it tried to define was personally, quite similar to the conventions of being the firstborn. There are perks, I know, but there are more pressures brought about by the family and by society which confine the ‘ate’ or ‘kuya’ to act a certain way. Often times it gets really annoying while others times you just thank God you were born way before your siblings did.
With what my professor said during the discussion, does birth order really matter? We don’t really have a choice and it’s definitely something our parents are liable for. So why do we have these conceptions and assumptions that a certain birth order is equivalent to a list of responsibilities, attitudes, and successes, that may be quite difficult to answer, even explain for that matter. But definitely, it is just a generalization because it’s something situational and vary depending on the family’s set-up. However, the most important lesson I learned from this selection was about making your own life path. Yes, it is true that society dictates to us how we should live our life but the thing is, they don’t have a hold on us. They cannot control us, we are rational individuals who can decide for ourselves and learn from the consequences of these decisions.
When the eldest princess realized that she was following a certain pattern, it woke up her senses and made her question herself if this was the path she wanted to follow. At that moment, she realized she wanted to make her own choices and write her own story.
“There is always an old woman ahead of you on a journey, and there is always an old woman behind you too, and they are not always the same, they may be fearful or kindly, dangerous or delightful, as the road shifts, and you speed along it. Certainly I was ahead of you, and behind you too, but not only I, and not only as I am now.” (p. 28)
Each generation has a predecessor and a successor. The generations before us, including our parents, grandparents, teachers, professors bosses and the like, often tell us ‘Papunta ka pa lang, pabalik na ako’ which simply means they gone through so many things already in their life and they’re already aware of the effects of these causes. When we decide they often tell us that this will lead to this, or if you choose that it will lead you to something like this. That’s their role, that’s what makes the wise individuals. But then, we can’t always rely on them to make choices for us. As a member of today’s youth, we are encouraged to speak and decide for ourselves and to make our own footsteps in the sand. We can stray from the path, but it is us who will have to undergo the challenges that life throws at us. Then, from these experiences, we learn for ourselves, something our elders have not experienced, and we share them to the following generations after us.
Our lives are not meant to follow a straight line. What fulfillment would it bring if we just walked 500 m straight, that would be dull and boring, and lifeless, and there would be no sense in accomplishing something once you cross a finish line. Vis-a-vis walking a mile with a slopes, crawling, and just every single hurdle you could possibly think of. But, when you conquer all of those, then you can truly say, you deserve success because you tirelessly worked for it. Though there we times you thought to yourself that you’d give up, however, it further pushed you to do your best and keep aiming for the finish line. The people that come into our lives, they are only instruments, catalysts, I must say, that continuously motivate us to continue living our life but in the end it is in our hands to decide where we want to go and how we want to go through this journey.
I remember a song from the 90s called, ‘Next In Line’ by After Image–a song that I always carry with me in my heart never fails to remind me how important our generation is, as well as the future ones, role in shaping the world for our sake and the benefit of society backed up by morals and values.The song goes:
“What has life to offer me when I grow old?
What’s there to look forward to beyond the biting cold
‘Cause they say it’s difficult, yes, stereotypical
Gotta be conventional, you can’t be so radical.So I sing this song to all of my age
For these are the questions we’ve got to face
For in this cycle that we call life
We are the ones who are next in line
We are next in line”This would always inspire me to keep making decisions, keep taking chances, to be open-minded and accept failure because only then we can achieve our true sense of living. Our purpose in life will not easy to identify, but we just have to keep living for today. This is our life and we hold the steering wheel to where we want to go.
I am saying this not just for the sake of answering the questions given for this requirement, but I am sharing these from my past experiences and collective learning and I would want to share them with the class because I see no point in just keeping it all to myself. Someone has to know my story as much as I have to discover your other stories. This life is not yet over because we have a million, billion, trillion other stories to read and discover in this lifetime. Who knows we might just end up writing an entire library collection of untold stories from the past? We’ll never know what fate would lead us to.
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