To Where We’re Most Needed
by Raph Doval-Santos

I’ll tell you a story. A long story, this is. Or a series of short stories, I think. This essay is in some parts, a very long story, and in some parts too a lot of explaining and side commenting on my part. It’s the best way I know I can get across what I want to share. I hope you, dear reader, are not put off by my informal approach.

So here goes.

There was a boy. He was well-to-do, had a fairly good life. He was well-educated. His family was not wealthy, but they had means to live comfortably, and could afford to send him and his siblings to good schools. He did his best to do well in school, although he was best described as “above average”. He liked time with his friends, reading books and was largely kept “safe” by his parents, who liked to adhere to the “don’t talk to strangers” school of raising their children.

His family was close. They kept him safe, and in effect, he hardly knew how to make good in the real world, or how to deal with people outside his family’s “social circle.” He felt that’s just how it was - his family raised him to speak in English to ensure a good education, but in effect it cut him off from everyone else in the Philippines.

One day, he met somebody. There was a girl who caught his eye. She was charming, and kept a vibrant aura around her. People were naturally drawn to her, not just because she was quite pretty, but also because she somehow carried herself with a certain air that made people love to be her friend, how she never seemed to be upset. That’s what happened - they grew close. He often wondered what kept her going, where she got that never-ending optimism.

The turning point was when she brought him to her home. There, he saw the truth: she lived with upwards of 12 siblings, and were living in a small hovel at the outskirts of the city. They hadn’t a lot to eat, and as the eldest, she was the one who had to balance being a student and working. They had nothing, and many of them would never get to finish college. Yet, they weren’t sad. They were fine, somehow, and seeing that broke the guy’s heart.

That boy is me. Of course, parts of it aren’t true, as every good story, my teachers said, are parts fact, fiction, and fantasy. That I was well-liked, that I fell in love with a very pretty poor girl or that I was taken to be introduced to her family, are parts of an active imagination.

What was very true however, was how I became exposed to a world much unlike mine - how there are people who live day to day on selling rags on the street, or how students couldn’t finish studying because their parents needed them to work.

I was a high school kid when I met Hans Fabros. He was quiet, and one of Barangay Pansol’s smarter students in Balara High. He didn’t associate with the other boys because they thought he was effeminate, but Hans was incredibly smart.

I met him when he was one of my students as I was a tutor in a remedial teaching program of the Sta. Maria Della Strada parish. That I started teaching because of a girl I met, that much is true, and I did want to impress her.

But what really left an impression was how much I loved working there. I loved teaching kids. I loved everything - lesson plans, grades, lectures, games for the students to better pick up and learn their lessons. It was gratifying, knowing that our students would make a marked improvement in their studies, just like Hans did, who would go on from Balara High to be a student in UP.

There was Patrick Cristobal, one of my smartest students. He was short, dark and had a smile that was a little crooked. When he joined the program I was part of, he was a boisterous young boy horsing around a lot. Then, he emerged from our program a high school graduate, the eldest boy in a pack of 5 who lived in the Kaingin depressed area. He would go on to take engineering in UST, and as of today, I believe he is preparing for the board exams.

I loved the feeling the most how these kids, when they were done with high school, would come back to be part of the program and be teachers themselves like us. They would handle classrooms, speak in good (if somewhat broken) English, and would give us a run for the money on some of the Math questions. It wasn’t the skill that was impressive, though, but how it was their desire to come back and give back through that program. Where us more well-off volunteers came in to make friends, meet boys or girls, and have something to do in summer that could impress our parents, for them it was just a simple matter of giving back. True, some of them had crushes in our teaching staff and wanted to be with them everyday, but the fact that they kept coming back was heartwarming.

I felt then that I belonged to a community. Even well after my time, I still feel a bond to that place, those people, and the people who came after us. I’d find this community spirit elsewhere - in Days with the Lord where I staff, in my time at my former job at the Ateneo Alumni Association, and I loved how my belonging meant something.

I carried this into college, where I first encountered JVP. I was a freshman, and because the parish program was such a force in my impressionable college freshman life, I was immediately drawn to JVP. It was as early as my Ateneo Orientation Seminar that I heard about JVP, and I thought to myself “Hey! That’s awesome. I’d love to, but might not me for me.”

What changed that were when I met some of my elders in college - the upperclassmen who were on their way out to the real world. One of them was my Ate figure in two of my organizations, and she told me that’s what she was doing. She was a senior, and I was quite surprised at her determination - blocking time off to work on her recommendation letters, taking education classes to be a better teacher, and in our org alone, she was giving extra attention to the students she taught.

She told me that she wanted to do this because she felt it was something she was compelled to, by virtue of everything she had seen and done. “Kailangan nila tayo, they need us,” she always told me, and for her and me, it was more than reason enough. She had already given much towards helping others, but she wanted to give more. Thus, she made it to JVP, leaving behind a lucrative salary in a banking career to take a year away and teach children in far-flung areas.

It seemed futile to many, especially when I would tell them about what they were doing excitedly. I’d share the things they were doing to make our country better. They’d motion to me at the street children, the slums, the stories in the media about murder and rape. But I’d remember the Martin Luther quote that said “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” That saying gave me some hope, and it reminds me that we have to keep going, because somebody’s counting on us.

Being a volunteer, thus, became a big part of me. I would sign up for Ateneo’s Orientation Seminar (OrSem), staff for Days with the Lord, continue tutoring children in Della Strada Parish and in my org Kaingin. I’d help out with production work at the Heights literary folio, another organization of mine. I’d find ways to be involved, one way or another.

I guess the best way to describe how I was at this time was like being in love - it brings the very best out of you. I started to find myself to be a stronger and more dependable friend. I found myself making great personal risks and sacrifices for others, like giving up an entire summer to help a kid learn English, or driving for a whole day to keep the Days people fed. I’d find myself suddenly insightful, inspiring to others who needed me to help them from losing hope. I loved how I could be so thoughtful, like I’d surprise people with gifts or hugs, or other warm gestures and thoughts. I loved how I could be that much more sensitive to others, like I could pick up how they felt.

I came to understand some things. I saw that we are placed where we are needed most. We are put in situations because we’re right there where we’re needed. I started to feel that the more we could open our hearts to other people, the more capable we can love the ones we really love, like our families or significant others (and the reverse is true too - the more we are able to commit to one person, the stronger our ability to sacrifice for more people is higher also). I came to feel that being “Man for Others” of Ateneo, the “Basta Ikaw” of Days, they all meant less if I couldn’t live them out, and live them out I was doing.

What changed through college, however, was how my priorities changed. Somehow, I stopped being as active in my socially-aware activities. I started focusing on making my own life better, a “me-first” kind of life where I studied hard, partied hard, and looked out for Number One. I looked at trying to build a career. I thought I met the girl of my life, and started making my own plans for us. I started looking at learning what I wanted to learn, which was to write and write well.

It was around that time I started to see the things I didn’t like in myself. I started being argumentative, wanting to win every debate and be right all the time. I felt that I often had to keep proving myself as I frequently had to be bombarded with people questioning what I was doing. I kept feeling I wasn’t good enough for other people’s expectations. I started giving up on being something more than where I was, and even then I didn’t know.
To this day, these bad habits remain and I do struggle with them. I struggle at how I say things carelessly, hurting people when I don’t realize what I said was hurtful. I wish I knew when to just shut up and not try to win the argument. I wish at times that I had more “fight” in me, that I wouldn’t give up on the things I want so soon, especially after a series of obstacles and bad losses. I would have a hot temper. I learned to start hating myself.

In this, I often felt that I had to “make up for what I lacked. I started trying things, and fortunately they worked out here and there. I made it to UP Law. I met a wonderful girl who I thought I could settle down with someday. I started to plot a course where I could be wealthy and yet somehow help. I had put away my thoughts of the dreams I had early in college.

Did giving up on JVP change me? Honestly, maybe. I know today I’ve not had the same kind of verve, energy and passion for life like I used to. I find that waking up in the morning is harder, getting out of bed more painful, and being with friends a little more tedious.

And yet I knew I made a pragmatic, realistic choice. I’m the eldest in the family. I have to be that pillar in case my family needs me. I knew being a lawyer was the best thing a Creative Writing major could hope for, never mind I had no real passion for the Constitution, or for the rules of legal procedure.

But somehow? I think there was something in me that never really gave up on me going to JVP. Even as I started plotting a life for myself, it was as if life had kept on giving me opportunities to try it, just to try.

I was a law student and right away, I had two classmates who finished their JVP year, and wanted to study law to pursue greater good. I would later be expelled from law, enter a retreat to soothe my soul and I’d find that we were at the same venue and time as a JVP OrSem. I would find work in Ateneo, only to have the JVP office just a few flights of stairs away.

It was as though I learned that God was trying to lead me somewhere. It was as if I was being taken by my hand and run through the rain. In the span from the day I gave up on being a JVP, I found my life bounced around. I got into law school only to get kicked out. I fell in love twice, and both girls left me for other men. I found jobs that I managed to really enjoy, but only to have bosses say I was not as great as they thought I could be.

And then there’s JVP, that old dream I thought was long gone, a dream I was so scared to pursue, an anecdotal “what if” that I shared to friends to get their sympathy, an idea I thought I had hardened my heart to.

Well, that’s what I thought before today.

Today, I’m taking a risk. I’m leaving the life I’ve known forever so I could rediscover that person who I loved, the man who took time out to help his fellow Filipino. Right now, I think that all this has led me to the point I am in right now. I know with faith that my life has been about how God, somehow, led me here. I find that I am at the point where I can ignore that call in me no longer.

I do not know what to expect in my time ahead, should I be selected to be a volunteer. I only know that I will have a chance to pay forward the good life I’ve had somehow. I do hope that the person I am today will be radically changed too - hopefully a more compassionate, more giving, more selfless person returns to Manila, if not a more socially aware man who is sensitive to how there are areas in life that we affect, and we don’t always realize it.

I know that JVP is not the end-all and be-all of my life. I know that right now, with my job and with the options I have before me, I know that I can stay my course. It’s win-win. If I don’t make it, I still have my career, my life here, and the chance to continue to help my friends and family. I still have the chance to study, or the opportunity to serve in other ways.

I know that if I don’t leave, my plans are still the same - I still want to pursue higher education, and then work in a related field. I find a certain appeal now to studying journalism, because the country needs good people in there now.

If I do make it to JVP, then I already know how it works - I will leave my job, make the most of my time as a volunteer, and be part of a growing community. I still intend to study and work when I return. I know that it all will be for the best. It’s that hope that keeps me going.

It inspires me too to imagine coming back home a changed me. I think of the person I am today. I think of how successful I’ve been this far, but I’m nowhere near happy nor being fulfilled. I can think of ways I can adjust, but like how Einstein said we can’t use the same mindset hat made the problem to fix it, I think stepping back and be a JVP will help.

I know that I will have to leave people behind. I’ve already started planning my own way out. I’ve begun to slowly pull away from the people who leaned on me for years. I’ve stopped trying to find a girlfriend, and stopped trying to win back the hearts of people who used to like me, because I now that I just might get that call and leave them.

And yet it is wonderful to know how supportive I’ve seen people back me up. Old friends I tell them to are not surprised. Some even tell me that they knew I would take a shot at this, and wish for the best for me. Even my parents, who had many apprehensions at the start, are cheering me on and the feeling is very gratifying.

It’s scary, but I also know that it’ll be worth it, one way or another. It’s with faith that I can say that there’s really “something here” that compels me to take it with an open heart, and with arms open. That this could be a part of some bigger journey, and by being part of the JVP community, I feel that I could keep giving, keep loving, and keep contributing to a brighter future for all of us.

In the end, we are all placed where God knows we’re most needed. I hope also, that God finds ways to get us exactly what our hearts yearn for, and searching my soul I know: I do want this.