Ambition Should Be Made of Sterner Stuff

If you’ll look at my elementary yearbook, you’ll read that as a kid, my ambition was to be a doctor.

That was a lie.

My real ambition was to be a journalist. That was what I wrote, but when I submitted that to my moderator, he gave it back to me and asked me to change my reason for wanting to be one.

By then, I realized that my entire barkada wanted to become doctors, and since I was too weary to think by then, I turned in an entirely new ambition.

In high school I probably had a chance to be a good journalist. I applied for the school paper and passed the exam. But I was a lousy speaker then, and so I failed the interview. I did not attempt it again, because I was convinced of my worthlessness as a writer.

I eventually became an honorary writer during my senior year, but writing a couple of articles does not make one a true journalist, does it?

For College I wanted to pursue a course in line with my true love, words. But my parents thought that journalizing would be more profitable than journalism. Hence my degree in BS Accountancy.

I have always been a jellyfish – spineless and weak.

Maybe jellyfishes do not deserve to become journalists. Jellyfishes do not deserve to follow their dreams because they only follow the dreams others have set for them.

Marc Anthony was right — ambition should be made of sterner stuff.