A year ago, I was already happy. For example, the non-profit organization that I have been working for the last six years asked me to take on a greater role to cover the whole Asia Pacific region. I was in a loving relationship, and we had two dogs running over our condo unit. When the pandemic started, I started my own business – I opened an online marketing firm. I was financially stable, and I enjoyed a career which I also called my life project. I was set for life, and I was living a comfortable life. Yet even in that state, I would still feel God calling me for something more, something greater than the comfort I am enjoying. I was already thirty years old, what else He could be asking from me at that point?
On a clear night, I could hear Him as if inviting me to love Him more radically and to trade everything for something I am not even sure if worth all the “leaving everything behind” again. If I choose to return to the seminary, I would be trading my stable life where I was the boss and the manager with a life which I must follow someone else and rely on Providence for everything I need. I thought that if I love my partner with even greater zeal and if I begin to consider my material and professional achievements as my way of honoring God, then eventually the desire for religious life would eventually die down. But God is a funny lover. There would be times in the day when it is quiet or busy, the thoughts of consecrated life would suddenly occupy my mind. In my daydreaming, it didn’t matter if I was relating to a large crowd or assigned in a barrio, the feeling was the same, a feeling that did not give the same “high” as I would feel when I was much younger.
I knew exactly what Soren Kierkegaard meant with his concept of dread, a kind of anxiety one experiences in the face of one’s own freedom, as he conveyed on his example of a man standing on the edge of a cliff because I was on that metaphorical cliff for an overly extended period. I was a man on a crossroads knowing that with the limited information that I have on hand, I ought to make a life-changing decision that can either turn out good or worst.
Oftentimes, dread stupefies the most when one has more life data and moral concepts to work on because one cannot escape seeing the choices in many points of view. I kept on delaying my return to the seminary for many reasons, both practical and personal. My position was that God will ultimately remain happy for whatever good and ethical life choice I will make, regardless of the vocation I will pick for myself. Yet, the call of the one, true, good, and beautiful God is always mysterious. He calls me to be good, but he also seems to be calling me to take one step further. But taking one step further looked too much far. At some point, I felt it too rigid that I just wanted things to unfold que sera, sera style, a form of submission to a childish determinism.
I confided my thoughts to my partner and between resentment and tenderness, a new form of love emerged between us – the one that lets go. We chose to part ways so I can begin the process of discerning.
I took discernment seriously. I consulted people, I considered pros and cons, and I even made a crude logical framework of action, a kind of outline, that I would follow regardless of my decision. Between October to December of last year, I went on backpacking together with some new-found friends. I spent months travelling to Siargao, Cebu, Baguio, and Leyte going on adventures. It was in this period that I learned many things about myself like my capacity to maintain healthy relationships, how I deal with unexpected events, how I react to them, and how much I enjoy admiring the whole of creation. It was at this point too that I related to others in a more sincere and intentional way. Everywhere I went, I witnessed how kind the simple people truly are, how generous are the poor! As I progressed through my travels, I realized that I was not a tourist anymore but a pilgrim. His mercy keeps on following and showing me its different manifestations. All those times, the last lines of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” would constantly play in my mind:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I guess a leap of faith was made. Considering where I am right now, I finally took a turn and regained control of my fate in the grandest Kierkegaardian way. Wherever the path may lead from this point, I’d welcome grace and dread just the same.
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