Each person has his or her own vocation. In the TREDFOR context, this entails the whether one chooses the religious life, single-blessedness or the married life. However, vocation can also be in other forms aside from one’s relationship status. According to one of my professors, he teaches because it is his vocation. But determining one’s vocation is not that easy and sometimes not that evident. This may be part of the reason why many seminarians leave the religious life to get married. The focus for the main part of the term was the married life.
Love thy God and Love thy neighbor as you love yourself. This is the very essence of one’s life no matter what vocation we choose. This is the basic tenet each person should live by because with this comes the respect for others. While the basis of human dignity is that we are created in the image of God. Relating this to the discussions about the passion of Christ, our actions may sometimes be misunderstood such as Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. However, this did not mean that he did not love Jesus. He just had a different perspective for which he did not realize the consequence of his actions.
Somehow, this general concept can be applied to whichever vocation one chooses. In the married life, this is most evident. There are five concepts to marriage (1) Faith, (2) Total and Faithful, (3) Acceptance of the other person, (4) Commitment that is exclusive, (5) Continuing commitment. Taking all these five concepts together, they tell us that marriage is more about the love couples have for each other. Marriage requires effort from both parties to do these five concepts. Somehow we are always given the happily ever after image after the wedding, but truth be told, marriage is anything but rosy. Just like other things we find important, such as work, marriage requires just as much or even more effort to make it work.
Being in a marriage also requires that the couple stay married to each or stay committed to each other aside from their commitment to their children. Many marriages fail because the couple fails to grow together as one. Usually the mother focuses on the children and work while the father focuses on work. Either way, their responsibilities as parents takes precedence over their responsibility to each other. This is not necessarily negative because parents do have to take care of the children they brought into the world. However, more than as parents, couples should remember to take care of each other and that their identity as a couple should not be lost in the family life. I find the reason given in class that marriages fail because couples focus their commitment to their children rather than to each other as very much valid. Although failed marriages are as physically evident in the Philippines because of the lack of divorce, I sometimes see couples whom I cannot imagine are married to each other. They seem to be performing purely functional roles as parents rather than as husband and wife.
I see this even in my own family. Now that my youngest sister is already 17 years old, my mom would tell us that she can already accompany my dad on his trips. They rarely traveled together before because one always had to oversee the operations of the business. Since my eldest sister started working at the company, my parents now find to go on trips together. I think that the time when we were growing up, there were also setbacks in their marriage because of too much focus on their roles as parents and they put aside their commitment to each other.
However, the questions remain when does the preparation for marriage begin and why do people marry. Preparation begins at birth as people go through the stages of maturity. The product of this maturity is evident when people commit everything to another, when he/ she is already a whole or integrated person who enters the marriage commitment. There are issues to address when it comes to maturity: (1) dependence-interdependence goals, (2) give-get balance, (3) troublesome feelings, (4) sexual responsibility. The main idea when it comes to these four critical issues of maturity is that a mature person ready to enter into marriage must fully know and be comfortable with himself. He has to fully understand who he is as a person and he should have addressed the issues or feelings he might have in the past. Everything is part of the process of growing up into adulthood. I feel that these four issues have merit because I think it is of utmost importance that a person knows himself well before committing to another for a lifetime. I say this because how can a person commit himself/herself fully he/she does not understand who he/she is. To put it simply, we cannot give what we do not own or we do not have. Therefore, we have to be mature, to know ourselves extensively before we can give ourselves to others. Aside from this, I also find it a necessity because we do not want to be swallowed up by our partner’s personality. We have to know ourselves first before marriage so that we would still know ourselves even as commit to being one with the other person.
I do not think that being one means giving up one’s personality. I think it is more of adjusting your personality and accepting the others as your own as well. Just as discussed in class, the song by Michael Lagyo, Minahal Kita (with the lyrics, minahal kita sa taglay mong pambihira) is very much the manifestation of accepting the other as your own. I can very much relate to this song because I am very much characteristic of the girl in the song such being masungit and suplada and to add to this is very controlling. However, I also somehow understand about matching my personality to make a relationship work. As I said, I am naturally all the three descriptions given above. However, given “his” good-natured personality, I try not take advantage and to let him have his way even though I was itching to take control of a situation. He understands my innate characteristic so indulges me at times. I think this is also part maturing or the give-get balance.
Authentic love, as discussed in class, is present when the good of the other becomes as important as your own good. This is a good definition, however, I do not think it is sufficient. I say this because I have experienced this wherein the good of another becomes as important as my own. However, I can evaluate it as a bad experience for both of us because my desire to look after his good and my being controlling eventually led to a bad relationship off too much dependence. The net effect was negative for both parties. This is partly the reason why I try to hold back on being controlling these days because I want both of us to grow and development and not just be dependent on the other causing stagnant growth.
The Genogram was also discussed in class being a vital tool to determine patterns in oneself, whether it is about health or behavior. Truthfully, there were no obvious patterns in my family’s Genogram. However, as the class went through the exercise of answering the questions presented to us, I realized that I am, indeed, affected by my family’s history and patterns. The manifestation was more behavioral rather than physical patterns. I realized that I can learn a lot about myself by going through the exercise of examining my own family. I see this as a way to further my understanding about myself and be more aware.
The think that I am most thankful for in this class is that I was able to ask my questions. Even though I sound very doubting at times, I am truly just a curious individual who wants a lot of questions answered. I appreciate being able to ask questions because it has helped debunk many of my theories or rather my beliefs about how the human individual works and its relationship to the Church, family and generally to the world. Being able to address my concerns cleared up some of my thoughts and I am now able to look at things from a different perspective. A clear example would be the question why do people marry. While I had absolutely no idea at the start of class why people marry, I think I may have found the answer being that the couple completes each other and before they do, there is always something missing. I had heard this line hundreds of times before whether in movies or in other places. However, I had also heard/read that people should be complete before they enter into a relationship so as they can survive if anything goes wrong. Having presented these conflicting thoughts in class, I now understand what it means for people to be complete before they enter the relationship and that people are only completed when they are with each other.
