Character: Ate Menchu...

Dear journal,



Today is Ate Menchu's last day here in ICU, for she will already be transferred to the Out Patient Department specifically in the Dobutamine Stress Test starting tomorrow. It was her decision to be assigned there. In fact, she requested for it more than 4 months back. I really don't know her exact reason for choosing to leave ICU, but I really wish her well.

Though Ate Menchu was not my preceptor, I have learned important lessons from her; lessons that only eccentric people like me might recognize.

I wish I could be like Ate Menchu, too. She doesn't seem to care about what other people say behind her back. She does what she does with a smile. Her complaints are with glints of laughter that's why I sometimes do not know whether they are indeed complaints or what. All of us live in our own side shows with a spotlight directed towards us all the time. The road is full of presumptions and premise from the bystanders who are there to paint our every movement and our every word. The colors are sometimes dark, but the sky has its way to make the hues clearer.

Others say that when you have been working at the same place for a long time, you tend to be saturated with the work, and thus you lose interest. Though Ate Menchu opted to go to another place, I don't think she lost her drive to work. Probably with the number of years that she has been working, she wants a change of scene, too. But at the end of the day, she did not decide to quit. I guess quitting was not a choice and it was never on the table.

All of us are driven by something. May it be for ourselves or for our family, we get out of bed everyday and go to work albeit we can't anymore. Stress gets some of us. They break because the thread has gotten tensed and hefty, and they forgot the beads and pearls that can go with it. For some, work and life in general can be described with only one word: Unhappiness.

Let me share to you the story told by Paolo Coelho is his novel The Alchemist.

Once upon a time, the son of a storekeeper was asked by his father to go to the wisest man in the world to ask him the secret of happiness. The wisest man lives in a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. The wise man listened attentively to the boy's explaination of why he had come, but he didn't have the time to just explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours.

Meanwhile, he gave a boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil.  He said, "As you wander around, carry that spoon with you withuot allowing the oil to spill."

The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.

"Did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?" asked the wise man to the boy. The boy was embarrased, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. Then the wise man asked the boy to wander again and observe the marvels of his world.

Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw th gardens, the mountains all round him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.

"But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?" asked the wise man. Looking down the spoon, the boy saw that the oil was gone.

"Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you," said the wisest of the wise men.

"The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon."

Need I say more?

What I am trying to say is that it's fine to be like Ate Menchu sometimes. To be carefree. To be light. And to have long breaks :)

Remember, lightning could strike anytime...  :)