My Life’s Journey

By: Nina Mae B. Rodriguez

Every person has their own struggles in life and it is unavoidable– like
family problems, financial problems, companion conflict, religious ethnicity
conflict, illness or injury, death of a loved one, loss of a job, or an unexpected
breakup of a relationship. Knowing that problems are inevitable and everyone will
experience it. The question is: how we as an individual handle these private
catastrophes. Are we highly spirited enough to face the challenges or are we
willing to be beaten with our problems?

In the allegory “The carrots, eggs and ground coffee beans” all three of
them undergo the extreme adversity of being boiled and as a result they have
different reactions to the boiling pressure.

The Carrots went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it
became soft and weak. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its
liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg
became hard. However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were
exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.
- Anonymous

The same with what happened in the apologue; human beings also have
different mechanism to cope up with challenges in life. Some people easily give
up and the worst part is, ending their lives because they taught that it is an
effective way to end their suffering; some make it as a challenge to become better
and stronger individuals and some found the transformation they want in life.
After watching the video I’ve been questioning myself, “Where do I belong
in the stage that I am right now?” Is it like a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean? And
after sometime, I realize that the characteristics before (fragile) and after (hard)
the boiling process of the egg in the allegory are closely similar to my experience
in this very challenging world.

I am Nina Mae Baque Rodriguez the eldest of the 4 siblings. I was born in a
small village located at the remote area of Barangay Maguinda, Butuan City on
February 06, 1997. I finished my elementary and secondary education at Datu
Santiago B. Ecleo Sr. Memorial Elementary School and Maguinda National High
School, respectively. After then I took up my undergraduate degree at Caraga
State University- Main Campus last June 2017 taking up Bachelor of Secondary
Education major in Mathematics and now I am currently teaching as senior high
school teacher at Bilay National High School under the Department of Education
Division of Butuan City.

Thankful and grateful- that is what I felt right now that I am a certified
teacher of this country. But before gaining this profession– an educator, I faced
many struggles in reaching this goal. And this struggles started in my childhood
days.

I believe that children ranging the age of 1-10 years old was a like a fragile
glass easily broken and very sensitive to their surroundings. They should always
have an intensive attention and care of a mother and a father. And as a child, we
also yearned for that kind of affection. Yes, we have all the attention of our
mother but our father is a different story. Why? Because in my childhood days we
seldom felt the care of our father but how can we have that attention if our father
was a certified drunkard man he always out to something we didn’t know and
also he tend to value his friends over us - his flesh and blood. That’s why we
prefer him not in the house rather than be in our side but always giving us
anxious feelings towards him. And because of that I feel like we never had the
complete essence of a family that we are similar to a broken home. But despite
of the challenges I’ve been through I am grateful to my parents since it gives me a
motivation to reach my goal and also mould me a stronger and wiser individual
ready to face the challenges of life.

That is why I can differentiate myself as an egg in the allegory since as a

child or as a teenager I was very fragile, easily be broken just like the egg before
the boiling process but as the challenges take its turn in my life it moulds me to a
person ready to face the consequences that God planned to me; since I believe
that God will not give us problems that we cannot solved. At the present, I thank
God that my father is a better version of himself now.
In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing
that truly matters is how we choose to react to it and what we make out of it. Life
is all about learning, adopting and converting all the struggles that we experience
into something positive and inspirational.