Jake Riel

I am almost done with the first half of my last year in the Ateneo. Everything gets exciting, though becoming more complicated, but still, even becoming more meaningful. Yes, it is the meaning of my journey in the Ateneo that I am knowing. But let me illustrate this by first remembering what my attitude was towards Ateneo before I even get here for college and then relate this to my actual college experience and then finally relate everything to the cause of this writing.

Almost four years ago, one week before the deadline of the submission of application, I prayed to God to grant me the opportunity to study in this school. But honestly, I did not know why. I was just attracted to the beautiful ambiance of the Grade School as I underwent my first Ateneo experience through ANI. I liked it very well how my kuya’s and ate’s in the program spoke with us fluently in English. I was so impressed with the new English words, pedagogical gestures, mathematical operations and techniques, and game-oriented co-curricular activities I experienced. More profoundly, I loved the idea of having an outline of the lessons detailed in what I figured out as a syllabus, and having the actual compilation of the lessons in what I learned as readings. Those I found it very necessary in advancing my rank in Marikina High School. If I could be able to organize my notes and xerox copies, then it would be easier for me to study and pull up what I must study. If I could remember the advanced lessons well, I would definitely step farther forward in class and that would also mean greater chance of winning among contests within the Division of DepEd-Marikina City, and the achievement of being the Class Valedictorian. Apparently, I loved ANI because it brought me at the top of my high school academic career, which turned out to be my ultimate ambition that time.

However, these immediate realizations after my ANI experience did not still make me consider entering the Ateneo. Not even the sharing activities we did in our ANI Christian Living class. Everybody now considers me talkative even about the most personal in my life, but way back to that summer, I even hated when my kuya’s and ate’s asked us to write in our daily journal. I found it intruding. Furthermore, even when still in the program, I did not notice how gorgeously appearing my kuya’s and ate’s were. Plainly, I just disregarded their looks. Perhaps, I even thought my crushes in MHS were more beautiful (in an ungenderdized sense) people than them.

Yet even among these wonderful few things I discovered about Ateneo, I really cannot remember why I chose Ateneo. If I would to think now about back then, I could know that experiencing ANI was not enough to learn everything about Ateneo. But thinking like before, I knew that by experiencing a part of something would still be something about that thing. But to clarify, I never had an intention to discover the other things about the Ateneo. But again, perhaps, the closest answer maybe in this remembering was the very fact that I had always remember the term Ateneo since then with everything that I remembered about ANI.

Nothing repeated in my mind but the word ATENEO.  Come my third and fourth years in high school, I remembered Ateneo whenever I was reciting in my class. I remembered Ateneo everytime I talked to my teachers and classmates. I remembered Ateneo whenever I went home and saw how cheerful my relatives were though all of us were living in a weary abode and whenever I tried to recall the century trees in that school alongside the bamboo strips of the River park whenever I visited there. I remembered Ateneo whenever I saw my friends who were not as neat as my kuya’s and ate’s but nevertheless as friendly as they were. I remembered Ateneo whenever I looked at my face in front of a mirror before my contests started and saw the courage and determination to win, sustaining the motivation when winning was really probable while submitting to humility when lost would seem likely to occur. And I remembered Ateneo whenever I prayed to God, thanking him for allowing me to begin, live and end each day strong and hopeful.

And then when I remembered the word Ateneo, every hardship of producing the transportation fare and the mere physical exhausion going to and from that school, and of struggling to earn and become thrifty to have something, if not sufficient, baon for ANI came back to me. When I remembered Ateneo, it made me think again of the academic competition within my ANI classes. When I remembered Ateneo, I recalled how it helped me championing many interschool competitions. When I remembered Ateneo, I remembered how soothing the summer breeze was that freely coming in from the widely opened windows of the David Hall. When I remembered Ateneo, I remembered my teachers and relatives telling me how wonderful and possible to be in that school despite poverty and other personal matters. When I remembered Ateneo, I remembered how intenseful my prayers had become. And precisely that now I am in fact leaving Ateneo, I remember these things that I have almost forgotten.

and for my personal project, I would like to remember the goodness of being in the Ateneo, and by being an Atenean for that matter, by writing my personal evaluation about it. This is an attempt to reveal the grandest things I learned from this school in the light of the simplest and most common things I perceived and experienced in relation to being in Ateneo. I do not know how long and how many parts this synthesis would have and how grave the imperfection of the literary form may be, nevertheless, I will do my best to overcome my wordiness and too much emotion.

The purpose of the project is for the delight of my own reassessment of my self and most importantly of my own remembering of the important values where I should always ground myself on. Of course, there is an ambition to share this to anyone who would like to read this, and to hope that something relevant to that reader will be drawn out from this and be valued.

Temporarily, the title is “A Life”, and the succeeding post is the first part, but it still needs revision (quite sleepy now hehe). Hopefully, the project will be done before the finals week of this semester.
thank you.

Anyway, I’m just thinking out loud here guys. But I would love to hear your reactions and thoughts.

MY RESPONE

You are correct in mentioning that due to our “conservative” culture, the circuit parties in this country will still be having hard time to become a periodic gathering in an acceptable and respected fashion.

However, i doubt if the circuit parties will really reach its success in this country just like those in America even if LAdLAd would make it to the House of Representatives or Danton Remoto in the Senate.

Let me start sharing you my thoughts by saying that I am a bisexual and i have mentioned it in the introductory class discussion in all my classes.One of my classmates approached me after the class and said, “How does it feel that you are now free?” At first I didn’t know how to answer him, but there were two major thoughts that occupied my mind. First, is he asking how does it feel that my homosexuality can now be somewhat legitimately exercised? or would he like to know if i now love my status as a homosexual? The first one seems to ask if i have the guts now to behave as a gay. The second one,if i now have accepted being gay.

I mentioned this as my spring board to answer your concern primarily because I think, the reason why circuit parties   will never be like those of the USA is that LGBT here in the Philippines themselves choose not to be as radical as compared to other countries in terms of social gatherings. Here, I would like to debug the idea that LGBT here in the country would not want to be allowed in organizing and attending events like circuit parties but more on an intimate level of not just being accepted but more of being supported to become better persons through a life of being a homosexual by means of opportunities of enabling more than existing. Knowing the controversies that circuit parties are associated with like drug abuse,prostitution, STD, and AIDS, and the fact that majority of LGBTs here in the country have to work hard while assuming their given genders upon fully realizing that they are part of an economically challenged nation, and precisely as what you’ve said, the fact that we are morality-seeking individuals (thanks to the Church) that liberates us more from inflicting pain to others specially to our family while also fulfilling our satisfactions in non-sexual activities, such as career advancement and the mere fact that we are able to champion our families’ needs provide us more of a grip of our selves with regard to events like this that, admit it, will just provide temporary happiness and will not really lead us to our betterment as individual persons and the progress of our sexual orientation. It will just make us visible, but it is not enough indication of our quality.

In the light of the two things about homosexuality that circumvented my mind upon that classmate’s inquiry, i had cleared my thoughts upon realizing that i am free in terms that i have found the point where i should begin reconciling being a homosexual and being responsible for it in order to pursue a life worth living not just for myself but for the people i care for. Of course, the circuit parties is not just confined to the issues of the events themselves but we always have to consider up to the largest, longest and most individually-binding concerns to us being a human first before our being in the light of sexual orientation. And by being human, i would like to emphasized that we are born not alone but with neighbors and as neighbors to other humans as well which i think most of the persons of all sexual orientations tend to ignore upon doing womanizing, adultering, “picking up”, “partying”, and by my last quoting, I emphasize the negative aspects that are more frequently occurring in reality even if guised by good intentions.

To conclude, we have already learned to undo a yet to be learned passion for our insufficient expression of our orientation’s existence by precisely looking on history, our pragmatics, and our very definition of what homosexuality is.

a friend is always a friend. thank you.

Hail Ateneo Hail. On To The Fray. still more to come.

An unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates

Maximizing the fullness of the grace of God in a human fully alive.

Morality, Wisdom, Health, Neighbor, Citizenship