Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

I HAVE been writing a year now for Asian Journal. I cannot describe my profound joy for working with my good-hearted employers, Cora and Roger Oriel, who are principled and honest but also nurturing and supportive to me.

When I gave birth to Rhizomes, I was given unbridled space to develop it as my own, and I was privileged to meet ordinary folks with extraordinary lives from their inbred virtues and traits, some of whom I wrote about, some I could not, as they prefer to remain anonymous.

"Develop your virtues," I was told by Mama M, a 73-year-old woman. I interviewed her, along with Papa M, who was 76. But their profound humility did not allow me to print their interviews in my column. Instead, I will use some of their aphorisms and their insights as my guide for this piece to pay homage to their beauty, kind-heartedness,spiritual-consciousness and emotionally maturity.

Mama M told me that it is far more important to develop your virtues, not the habit of complaining. In teaching others to play the piano without slapping folks’ hands literally and figuratively, she believes she has the primary duty to follow up on what she teaches. While teaching her students to play the musical verses, she tries to understand their character.

By knowing her students and their needs in life, she, as their piano teacher, can easily influence them to practice more, to learn more, to make music part of who they are.

And when they do get the playing skills, she feels like a new mother, happy to see and eager to hear them play their music, to evolve to claim their talents from God.

What she said blew me away, for she echoed, almost verbatim, what I learned from another mentor, Mas H.

"Pay attention, understand what makes them tick, what motivates them," Mas once told me. After listening to their issues, you will know how to bridge the gap between their dreams and their realities. Therein lies how to influence them and how to assist them. Just like Mama M., he is focused on what the other person has to say first before sharing his own views and perspectives.

Mama M. focuses on what she needs to do to teach and motivate her students. She makes it a point to give her teaching as an offering to God. She does not emphasize on their faults, rather she sets her mind on how she can give her services with kindness.

She believes that focusing on faults makes her impatient. She finds herself lacking in understanding and needing to confess her sins to be deemed worthy of God’s blessing.