Life's Crossroads

Looking back and reevaluating my life, I must say that I am most fortunate. I felt blessed and protected.
No. Not materially. I have always been poor on the material side of things. As early as six years old, I had already learned to value labor and its rewards.
I know. The money my mother used to buy my first school uniform when I was to enter grade 1 was taken from the savings I had out of gathering rocks for the construction of our rich neighbors’ houses.
Yeah, I fetched rocks for a fee, together with my brother and some cousins. But don’t get me wrong. My parents did not force us into child labor. They are very good. In fact the best as far as I’m concerned; for despite our financial struggles, they raised us well.
School was easy. I never needed to cheat to earn myself good grades. Back then I was more concerned with learning than with grades. Also I have learned during the second grade how unreliable grades are as an indicator of student intelligence and learning. I knew then because a lot of people in my class cheated during exams all the time.
I first decided to become a teacher when I was in grade 1. That was when my teacher hit me in the face with my flashcards for some unjustified reason. She hit me because I didn’t put the cards inside my envelope and said she didn’t want clutter on our desks. But since those cards where neatly tucked in under my envelope, I didn’t see why she needed to do what she had done to me. She could have told me first as a sort of warning. And I said so as much. Not to her, but to my father who became the sole audience of my righteous, if childish indignation.
With that I had made up my mind to become a teacher, and definitely a teacher not like her. For as long as I can remember, I have always had high regard for the teaching profession. But that experienced with my grade 1 teacher had also made me very critical of teachers behavior, competency, etc. I know now that sometimes I overreact. I have had a couple of teachers in the past both in high school and college who received my sweet, double-edged love letters. But sometimes, I just can’t help it. Someone should never tread on other people’s dream so callously and cold-heartedly without somehow expecting to get burned.
Well, much had happened since then. I have experienced both the joys and pains of living—though I’m sure not all of it yet—and struggled to find some meaning for my existence. I have felt intense emotions toward some things and react apathetically towards others.
Crisis? I don’t know what it is—apart from what economists say.
Yes, there were pains. Even heart-wrenching pain that seems like tearing your soul apart; the kind that somehow made you feel that no matter how hard you cried it doesn’t seem to go away. But of course it did.
There were also choices. But then they were just that.
Choices.
It never reached to some critical proportion. And although there were a lot of times when it seem to make a poor choice of things, I couldn’t find enough reason to regret it however.
Poor choice or not, I know everything that I have experienced were crucial and essential to my becoming. Even those I did not consciously choose.
I don’t believe in coincidences.
Everything happens for a reason.
I know it. I read about it. I experienced it.