The Greatest Fear

(Posted Nov 6, '07 7:44 AM. I was still working as a call-center trainer and part time insurance agent when I wrote this article)


I don’t know if anyone of you felt this way.
We had one activity during our training wherein everyone would make one question. The question can be about anything… Why work in Convergys? How do you see yourself in five years? Why does the rainbow have 7 colors?

They would then pick their questions by lot and answer them respectively.
What happened was a beauty pageant of sorts. One talked about tourism- promoting the beauty of the Philippines (plus 8). Another one shared the importance of focusing on career than love life (plus 10). While some shared how great a trainer I am (plus 100).
[Of course, the latter was just my imagination]

For me, one generic question rose among the others… “What is your greatest fear in life?” It is not really the question that caught me but the answer the agent gave that hit close to home. “I’m afraid to fail”, he quickly replied.

I felt all the men in the class related to that answer. It is something that creeps at the back of our heads. Only this guy managed to blurt it out.

There are times I ask myself, am I in the right place? Right job? Right company? (no offense to my present company… It’s just a philosophical question… haha)
Is staying in the Philippines going to be better than going abroad?
Will I be a businessman some day or I’ll be an employee for life?
Will I have a better life than the one I grew up in?
Will I pick the right wife?
Will I grow old bearing the age-old reflection “I could have been?”
Will I make it?
Really? How?

When I watch entertainment talk shows… I realize… Wow, Dawson’s Creek was already a decade ago… Eraserheads the same… Whatever happened to The Zombies?
Teen stars during my high school days are now taking parent roles…
It’s already 8 years since Martin and Pops separated… Yet it seems my mom and I just talked about that topic yesterday…(yes… showbiz kung showbiz)
I met one of my favorite college professors the other day and I was only able to remember his first name… Way back in college, His name to me was like my date of birth.

Is life passing me by?

There is something in my heart that sees grander things ahead… Yet my present reality just gives me shadows of things to come…

During our meeting with my team at Sunlife, Lizette Tan gave me a refreshing insight.
I shared with them my uncertainties about my career, etc. She said, “Bloom where you are planted”. She assured me I don’t need to know the whole blue print of my life today to be motivated to move. She reminded me just do everything in excellence- in the here and now. We will never know as I do my part what a small piece can do to complete the whole puzzle.

I guess that’s our inheritage as Christians. I believe this is what Him (my cell leader) is talking about when He discussed the glory of God- the glory of God residing in us which is not measured nor dependent on our possessions or earthly success.
It’s Hope. Hope stored in these jars of clay.
Hope that through all the questions life would throw at me… Through all my grave personal mistakes… Through out all those seemingly wasted years… Ultimately God is in control and he has the power to turn it all around… And His loving promise is to give me a Hope and a Future…

As I play around with these questions… It’s comforting to know that life is not just me. In fact it’s more than me.
As the great philosopher Optimus Prime once said, “There’s more than meets the eye”.
And with that, I rest my case.