Reading the first- hand account of Miss Reycel Hyacenth Bendana’s most inspiring story of how she got to be accepted (on a full scholarship yet) at the Ateneo De Manila University against all odds, in spite of the prohibitively discouraging obstacle course she had to negotiate – this account puts to shame the usual rags- to riches stories that proliferate in newspapers, magazines, books, TV interviews and other media cheaply available to us nowadays. Her poverty and her coping mechanism for its alleviation and overcoming make for a wondrous bit of read. If you are not touched by her account I must conclude your humanity is not just there to be invoked. There’s something gravely the matter with you if you remain unmoved, uninspired. The Holy Spirit has bestowed on her the Pentecostal fire… As I went on reading one after the other of hurdle she had to skim and/or slowing her progress towards her goal, I thought to myself not only has she guts, in great measure she also has DRIVE! You won’t be able to sail over each of such a long series of these hurdles if you depended only on dreams, ambition: you have DRIVE, the will to see to the doing of what has to be done – if you are to get anywhere at all. And this young lady Reycel Hyacenth seems to have an INEXHAUSTIBLE SUPPLY of it, of what it takes to make a difference. When we subtract a small amount of something from a larger amount ditto, we get a difference. But this lady, she not only gets, she makes a difference! There’s a world of difference there (no pun unintendent).
Now I segue into my own take on the value of education and skim lightly over my doctoral graduation. All this in the light of Ms. R. H. Bendana’s exemplary narrative.
My sortie into the doctorate world was no mere whim but a long-held ambition of mine, the hope to get to the academic ultimate thule. Besides – to be not so heavy-handed about the matter – don’t we all, amongst the welter of alphabet degrees, Ph.D. the most or the Ed.D. in my case. As a priest my titular handle would be Fr. or Rev. Fr.; superimposing a kind of administratorship to my priestly honorific might look more balanced if after my name the no less prestigious letters Ed.D. were appended. For a long enough time this degree had seemed, what with the close-to-hectic Aimetable of a diocesan (parish) priest, impracticable. But I have inched my way by proper husbanding of time and other commitments towards the doctorate.
Now with Ms. Reycel Hyacenth Bendana’s wondrous example before me, I have come to a closer understanding of what all those years past had seemed to me mere scholastic (I refer to the Schoolmen philosophers) mumbo-jumbo. I refer to St. Anselm’s impossibly convoluted maxim, ATTINGITUR INATTINGIBILE INATTINGIBILITER. I translate this “The rendered attainable.” Now I’m beginning to get a better perspective on this – thanks no less to Ms. Bendana’s example than to a maturing man’s surer-footed approach to wisdom.
If brevity is the soul of wit, this article in a hands-in-the-pocket, relaxed, offhand style must at least be a wit-ness to the sometimes disrespected virtues of talent, hardwork and reward embodied in the exceptional likes of Ms. Bendana’s never give up attitude…
Mabuhay!
