Every year since I was 19, I have spent time in another country to find a piece of Life I could grow old with. Wisdom is the seed of so many cultures, old and contemporary. My inner core has been made from those seeds. At my best and worst, what sprang from those seeds kept me going. And I continued traveling. And learning from complete strangers and wisdom givers.
Our family spent the past two weeks immersing ourselves in the lights of Christmas in Europe, as we have done in the past few years. My best Christmases were in Manila, even if we didn't have much. I have never experienced that again since we immigrated to NY. But I thought the spirit, cultural not religious, is still out there somewhere, and so we started a tradition of following Christmas markets. The world has always been troubled, and no matter how rare and fleeting, Joy still exists. Finding and experiencing it, even for a short-term, is a Life of wisdom-sharing. 2025 marks my family's 40th year in America. Four decades of absorbing culture and wisdom brought me here.
2024 was and will always be a special year, the year I finished writing #BataanNewJersey — pulled from two stories from a short story collection I couldn’t get published. While Bataan is known for its historical surrender, its legacy in Bataan families is to never ever give up. I move to 2025 with the same spirit and grit to carve a space I never had. Finding a literary agent is one step toward publication, a true challenge, but now I have three completed manuscripts. Big enough a reason to go against the wave again. Life has no clear paths. As Machado said, we make it by walking.
2025 is the year I walk and clear a path made by and for me. I can only be thankful to those who taught me how to live, love, fight. For the seeds, for the wisdom that grew from them. And grateful to be able to share the same with the next generation of artists and world travelers. On a full-time management job, I find time to do Art. I write. I enter the temple where I become an artist in his fullness. The artist's life is more tangled. But I also think it has always been like this. #BataanNewJersey was born of such entangled truths. I can only be grateful I finished it. All 700 pages of it.
And now, with all the grit I have, I go forward to get it represented, printed, and read. And so the wisdom-giving continues.
(Photo taken at Maison de Victor Hugo)
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