"Working in some
of the poorest areas of my country, I found that it was a lack of child
support, not poverty, that killed their dreams. A child once told me, “Cat,
that’s just not my life, and those dreams aren’t made for me.” But I stand here
today because someone believed in me and we owe it to our children to believe
in them.” -Catriona Gray
These are the words of the newly
crowned Miss Universe 2018 during her opening statement. Her winning answer is
close to home because I was born poor. I am still poor, but I believe I’m
financially literate now. This I owe to the number of people I met in life and
the trainings I attended ever since college.
I am blessed to finish school and
landed on good jobs. If not for the support of my Aunt who sent me to college,
my mom wouldn’t be able to send me to Nursing School. I love my mom so much and
I pray she’ll live long enough so we could have her experience a wonderful
life. Also, if not because of my mom’s constant bugging that I should marry a
rich man, I wouldn’t be able to marry a poor, hardworking man and prove to her
that we can finance ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. However, I learned
to take the good traits and threw away the bad ones. I learn by observation,
listening, and application.
I hurled away that negativism my
mom acquired from her father, that a woman should be dependent to her husband. Back
in those days, girls were obliged to stop school to help with the farm and
household chores. My grandma’s different. She encouraged her children to study
hard, raising dominant alpha-females.
Not all children think like me, and
many poor children struggle to change their outlook in life. The lack of child
support and the poor man’s mindset kill the dreams of these children. It’s sad because at a young age, many poor Filipinos
accepted their fate. Some parents force their children to be somebody they’re
not because they themselves were not able to achieve something. It’s like a
chain of poor mindset being pass on from generation to generation.
We have to
break that chain. If you are a parent reading this post of mine, and somehow this
is being practice in your family, let’s put an end to it by helping our
children live their own dreams. Remember, our kids are not extensions of our
dreams. They are different individuals with dreams of their own. Let’s not clip
their wings. As parents, we are here to support them. We must provide for them
and not the other way around. I have nothing against children supporting their
parents because it’s already in our culture and I myself would want to take
care of my parents in their old age. But doing something out of willingness,
out of purest intention to help, is different from being indebted. In this
present time of technology and economic growth, we are still shackled with this
‘utang na loob’ that no amount of money can ever conciliate.
Let’s pray to be better parents
patterned by the Parent we have in Heaven.
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