Passion vs Reason

I don't remember the last time I've written anything substantial in this blog (Read: I'm too lazy to check my own archives!). I've uploaded various photos, answered inane slum book questions, and posted several announcements, but I haven't written anything in a long time.

Tonight I attempted to bravely see my thoughts "on paper" again, perhaps because I had dinner with a writer-friend and her husband, The Coach. We talked about our passions and frustrations, as well as our dreams and challenges. We shared about how we lived out our Christian faith in the context of our respective careers. We tried to understand how God was working in each of our lives.

While on my way to the office this morning, I already knew I had a dinner appointment with them tonight. When I heard a radio commercial asking, "Ikaw, may passion ba ang buhay mo?" (You, is there passion in your life?), I refused to answer in my head. I brushed away the thought. And then I remembered that I might have to face the question again tonight, when I share a meal with a friend who pursued her passion - and left lawyering for good in order to do so.

In some struggle between reason and passion, I wondered if I sold out somehow. I wondered about this all day, even while working, and especially on the ride home from my dinner appointment.

Who needs these thoughts?! Yet I can't brush them away tonight.

I, a person who loved to read, write, sing, and dance, became head of Marketing and Sales, a target-ridden and pressure-laden position. It seemed like a compromise, that if there had to be some speck of the legal profession I wanted to be part of, then I reckoned it would be Legal Research and Training, and I went into that.

I, a former full-time Lingkod staffer, who read Christian books rather than the Business Pages of newspapers, have had to adapt to the new demands of my job. I've had to tap skills I never thought I had and to summon ideas I never knew I could produce. I've had a dazed and lost look for months now.

I struggled with keeping my prayer time and being on time for work. But I told myself that I had preached about these things to the single young professionals of Lingkod before. I found myself being confronted with the exact same challenges that were so easy for me to dismiss, just because they were not mine. Back then, when I was BWM, I lived five minutes away from my former office and had a results-oriented position, meaning, no bundyclock or biometric time in/time out system. I lived ten minutes away from the prayer meeting venue and had the free use of my father's car. Of course it was easy for me to manage my time and to serve God while having a career then.

In my present position, the long drive, the traffic, the biometric machine, the amount of work, and my own ignorance at many things, all proved to be too challenging to maintain my previous schedule of daily mass, long prayer time, multifarious services, and unlimited fellowship nights.

I wondered if this - my job - was where my heart's desire met the world's need. Then I started wondering again what my heart's desire was. When you sweep things under the rug, you tend to not want to see the mess you've made underneath. You'd like, as much as possible, to step on the rug!

I don't really have an answer tonight. But at least I faced the questions once more. I also made myself count my blessings and to be grateful to God for them.

I don't need to know the answers right now. I could die and not know. It wouldn't make a difference to the world.

Yeah, right. Of course it would make a difference, a world of difference, in how I lived my life and served my God.

But really I'm clueless as of yet. I'm either too busy or too scared to face this reality.

It's easier to just keep workin'. Just keep workin'.