Homecoming: Going home after 25 years

A got an email from an high school classmate of mine just this early morning. She informed me that our class, Edison 1988 of Roosevelt College, will be hosting our Silver Anniversary by next year. She told me that she's gathering everybody for that momentous event. 


Silver anniversary means 25 years. Okey, so I graduated high school twenty five years ago, big deal. 


Homecomings are really occasions where you assess what had happened to you these past few years. These are opportunities to know what happened to your closest academic rival or your previous girlfriends or what happened to your flings and where did they end up. 


What struck me is the length of time that I was away---25 years. And what a 25 years.


Some of those years were spent in a frivolous manner, experimenting with love and finding out that romanticizing such a thing is pretty dangerous, so to speak. 


Three years of being an academic and three years of being ascetic to the ways of the world, right. 


Many years spent on developing credentials and many other years developing strong friendships and relationships with people that matter.


How would you tell that to your ex-high school buddy? How will you tell them that you were part of some of those important dates in this country's calendar, and that you were just not a petty publicist or a petty runner but a strategic planner?


How would you account that during those 25 years, you were just able to buy two cars--a sedan and an AUV? How will you make them understand that most of your money, you spent on helping others?


I think the most difficult thing to tell is---all these years I discovered the world as a journalist. That was the best decision I did for myself. 


When I decided that I'll be getting my meals from the music and poetry strumming from my pen, I made it consciously. Yes, I took law but never really intended to get money from it, only knowledge. When I took that leap as a journalist, it was something like leaping from the top floor of GMA channel 7 building and landing straight down, albeit, landing softly and gently in a trapeze :-0


It would probably be very difficult for me to make them understand or even try to convince them that I already toured the whole world, saw what I need to see, and listened to what people need to share. I already met the people that shared the same vision and even faced death before those who violently opposed my own vision.


Twenty five years and I am still growing, inventing little things that I feel would matter in the next coming years. 


Twenty five long years and I bet ya that as soon as I enter that venue where this thing will be held, I'll probably be tongue-tied for the rest of the evening and just enjoy listening to their stories.