The Gift of Knowledge

The subject entitled Christian Vocation, Love, Family & Society explored various
topics that I did not know I needed. Well, I do know that love, family, and society, are
significant aspects of a person’s life. However, the activities we did as part of our
exams, like interviewing married couples for decades and making an informative video
on societal issues made me realize or remember things that I should keep in mind as
they are essential to hold onto— the gift of knowledge. Let me go over these things in
the following paragraphs.
First, in the interview our class did for married couples, I was reminded of how
love conquers all. This does not mean that we are defeated by it though. It just means
that in everything we do in a relationship, we think and act according to our love. Not
just by the emotion/s that we feel at the moment. Hearing their responses from
questions about how marriage works made me realize that putting our loved one in
mind and considering him/her is essential in everything that we do. This is what we call
commitment. Being married to someone is embodying the traditional wedding vow: “to
have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us
part.” This is what marriage is— a commitment to the special person that we choose for
a lifetime. It conquers a lot: conflicts due to their individual differences and their pride
because of faults to one another. Being in a relationship, I felt like I needed to hear their
responses as well. As someone who valued her individuality too much after a long
period of people-pleasing, I realized that compromise and sacrifice should really be
present in a relationship. I initially thought that my partner and I should just find another
person that we will have more similarities with, whom we will connect more with. But
then, he taught me that a relationship is about having the courage to overcome our
differences. Indeed, I was just not strong enough for us, only for myself. And I am
grateful for having a partner you stayed with “for better or for worse.”
As for the societal issues shared in the class (e.g.
unemployment/underemployment, deforestation, patronage politics, lack of resources in
public schools, volatility of rice prices, contractualization, plastic pollution, and
healthcare system issues), I came more aware of the issues that we need to give more
attention to. Although we can act and contribute to lessen some of these issues, I also
felt a bit helpless on some as they rely on the government and/or on big corporations.
For example, we can try our best to recycle and plant trees, but there has to be laws to
prevent further plastic pollution and deforestation, or the big companies should do their
part on acting on it since they are also the biggest contributors to the problem. We can
buy palay directly from farmers and give them reasonable prices, but the price of it in
the market or malls will continue to have a wide gap. We can also donate more learning
materials and properties to public schools but it will stay the same for the whole public
schools in the country. Doctors may also volunteer in municipal health centers but if
there are no policies to require centers to have a medical professional to be present,
there will still be less access to healthcare. Lastly, with low income in the country for
healthcare workers, they will still be underpaid and hospitals will still be understaffed.