The Original Estreras
"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born." ---Unknown
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Background
In this world, there are families that we can consider exceptional or remarkable: those who were born wealthy and end up wealthier, and also those who were born basically nothing and end up being something. The formers are just blessed with talents and money and they know how to use their talents to make more money or at least keep the family's fortune. Their parents were famous and popular and so with the children who are now also famous and popular like the Kennedys and the Rockefellers. The later were nowhere to start with and now they are "here, there and everywhere." They used to struggle for what they needed and even struggle more for what they wanted, and now they just strive for the mere fulfillment of their life. They are simple people who consider life as precious and established their code by which to live it. They are God-fearing and their honesty is as solid as ever from one generation to the other. They don't and never did expect, let alone demand respect and credibility; they work to earn them. When they achieve what they want or what they work hard for, instead of being proud of such achievement, they would dismiss it like they don't deserve, for all too often their modesty is too much to the point of being naive. It is as if being proud of what they have achieved would somehow find a way of humbling them down later on, like some bad luck may only happen to them.
The original Estreras, Salvador and Josefa, came from a tiny place in the mountain of Camotes, Cebu, Philippines called Bakhaw and Cagcagan, where the land they tilled to live and survive have more rocks and boulders than soil, and nothing grew faster than their own hairs and toenails. But with blood and sweat and the guts to make life better for their children, they made do with what little they had - toil and soil, no oil. Because their children were blessed with intellect and the ability to use it, these children realized early in life that the only way to improve their situation and their future generation was to get a good education. Thus they had to wake up at dawn, walk more than eight kilometers a day to go to school, oftentimes barefoot with nothing but a sweet potato or a piece of cassava cake for lunch. At night they would learn to read, write, and study under the flickering light of a small candle. But they were never deterred by hardship or by an empty stomach. In fact, they enjoyed their meager life or at least grateful for it because they see it as a lot better than others who could not even go to school. They knew that somewhere out there is an opportunity that one can only have by one's strong determination to achieve. They followed and pursued their dreams with the old-fashioned way; they work hard to make their dreams come true. None of them had any desire to become the king of wishful thinking.
Their life was less than simple because it was hard, complex because of the lack of many things, but they never lost sight on growing their brains with education. Surrendering to the life of idleness, impotence and incompetence had never entered their mind. They knew they had brains and they realized that brains couldn't grow unless they think. And think, they did. They dreamed big, yet they were not dreamers; they were achievers. During those times, being a teacher was the most glorious profession they knew of and thus those with education became teachers - Eugenio, Miguel, and Clemente. When these brothers became teachers, they parted ways to boldly go where none of them had gone before - to bigger schools in bigger towns to start their teaching profession.
Building a family
Being a schoolteacher with decent means of living, each of the three brothers did not waste their time to follow God's command in the Bible - "Go to the world and multiply…and fill the earth." They immediately looked for a woman with brains that came from a decent family to marry, and to obey God's command. Eugenio went on to marry Charing Otadoy and they settled in Poro, Camotes. Miguel married Esping Martinez and they settled in Adela, Camotes. Clemente married his own pupil Esperanza Solante and they settled in Tudela, Camotes. Eugenio and Charing were blessed with 10 children, Miguel and Esping with four children and Clemente and Pansing with 10 children, but two died when they were just a child. Multiply, they definitely did. Fill the earth, well, never mind that. Their descendants are all over the earth now. To them, God's command is so powerful that they didn't seem to care whether or not they could afford to raise their children into independent adults. All they knew was that, God always has His mysterious ways to those with faith. Indeed their belief was enough to make their children achieve a lot more than they did. For out of that faith or belief, came discipline and determination that in turn brought forth children with different professions like doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc. Many of their children turned out to be all the things they wished they could have been
Going his way Everything change and except perhaps for death and taxes, nothing stays the same. The inability to accept changes and the unwillingness to change with the changes, are the main sources of one's failures, frustrations and disappointments. Mao Tse-tung once said: "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself." In these day and age, knowledge is the key to success - the ability to keep us with vital information in any field of interest in order to appropriately deal with problems, not to mention plan for the future. A doctor cannot treat his patients properly if he doesn't keep up with new knowledge and new procedures. Further, one must notice that those countries that are behind the technological evolution and the information revolution, are unable to achieve success in their economic rebellion. They have only become mired in political corruption. Faith alone cannot make the brain grow. You need reason - the cool rationality that can only be achieved with adequate good knowledge. When knowledge is lacking, one's cool rationality is readily replaced with hot emotion. In other words, reflex would easily triumph over reason. Faith and the Bible Despite constant indoctrination to his religious faith, Clemente's children decided to think for themselves, followed their own faith and belief, to Clemente's disappointment. One of his children, Cle, developed his own philosophy he learns mainly from observation and analysis of what he reads and observes. Cle believes that the reason why we are all in this world is to learn. That's why God had given us the mind with divine intelligence. Otherwise He would have left our skull empty. Thus as we are living longer, we should be learning more and be growing wiser. We can acquire knowledge to the limit of our mind and keep on learning to the limit of our life. Life means to grow and to learn. When we stop learning, we stop growing. When we stop growing, we start dying. Life has got to move forward. Not to move forward is to fall backward. Philosophy We don't have to look too far to see the evidence of the power of the mind. When man needed to travel to long distances and for longer period of time with his horse without hurting his butt so much, he invented the saddle. Then he realized that he could harness his horses and transport others. So he invented the wheel that soon became a wagon. A wagon became an automobile. Then an automobile became an airplane. All originated from man's mind, and all because man realized the power of his mind and used it to the fullest in order to provide mankind not just the basic necessities for survival, but also the luxuries, comfort and the pleasure of living. But why not just the basic necessities? For obvious reason that man can think better with all the comforts he is having. Try thinking in a room without air-conditioner during summer in Florida or during the hot days in the Philippines. But the mind must never be used as a means to destroy each other. Unfortunately, many people haven't learned to appreciate the mind as God-given gift. They use the mind to destroy each other out of envy, greed, hatred and hostility. They take advantage of each other through fraud, force, deception and even murder to get what they want. The stronger ones program the mind of the weaker ones to hate and destroy. They may still retain their mind, but they lose their heart. They could no longer understand what it is to love and be loved. Others with misguided belief preached the end of the world and the final judgment to come disrupting if not destroying their lives and those of their followers. The world of some of them had ended, but the real world has kept on going. Yet there are still many of them that haven't learned their lesson, all because the mind is not used the way God intended them to - to learn and acquire wisdom to at least help make the world a better place to live, not a place destined to end according to the misguided minds of men. So one's condition almost always depends on the way one uses his mind. Those who have used it to the fullest have achieved success relative to their own way of thinking. Moreover successful people are not deterred by failures because they see failures as barriers to be overcome, not brick walls to stop them. And it's because of the mind that the world is constantly changing, as man has to think not only to solve the present problems, but also to anticipate the future so that man can plan and prepare for it. That's why Noah built the ark when it was not raining. And that's how research and development come to mind to discover new means of survival and improve mankind's livelihood. Even if there is another rain for forty days and forty nights, men would no longer build an ark like Noah did because men can now live under water. Man must think in order to eat. He must eat in order to think. But he must think first. Children If our past generation like our parents or grandparents castigated us when we expressed ourselves by talking back to them, or doing something against their ways and wishes, we could not really blame them. Their understanding was limited to what they knew and believed at the time. An act of rebellion was always considered as bad by the past generation even when such act was meant to be only a self-assertion or an expression of the freedom to think for ourselves. During those times, love was tied with many conditions as if to say: "I love you if you do this and do that." Now we should know better that love is not love if you are not free to express yourself. It's tyranny. But it was the way our parents loved us during those times. And the best discipline they knew of in order for us to succeed was mainly based on the biblical knowledge - "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Indeed this kind of discipline may still work in other galaxies, but it no longer works in earth. Many of us who got the rod in our butt also sustained a wound in our heart. It is the wound in the heart that doesn't heal completely, and it has a way of hurting us intermittently into adulthood. It's this wound that makes us doubt ourselves or makes many of us lose our courage and confidence to take risks, for fear of mistakes and failures and the disappointment and disapproval of others. This fear keeps many of us from discovering our true potentials, and thus denying ourselves of our values and desires. We maybe tempted to say: "But look what we are now - doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.!" Sure, we should be grateful. But we could have been a whole lot better. Our potentials are unlimited and many of us have discovered only half of them, while some of us not even a quarter, all because of the fear. Lastly, we should not keep telling our children what's good for them, because in reality, we really don't know what's good for them. Certainly, they need our guidance, but not to the point of changing their direction or destination. The guidance they need is the investment of our time, love, understanding and openness. They will make mistakes and we should not correct every mistake they make or solve every problem they have because if we do, we'll be cheating them out of their sense of wonder - their chance to unravel the mystery of their own lives. If they are hurt or troubled by their mistakes or failures, we must never forget that it's impossible to ease the pain of another human being, even our own child, no matter how hard we try. We can only offer help, listen and be quiet. Or we can give our child a hug to make him or her feel that he or she is loved no matter what.
Perhaps because there weren't many books to read, Clemente who was always a voracious reader, spent most of his time reading and interpreting the Bible by himself. He studied the Bible like a student who had to maintain his scholarship. The more he read the Bible, the more convinced he became that he is on the right track regarding the teachings of God. He became more and more confident with his growing biblical knowledge that he seemed to be able to see an invisible thread attached to a man's head from above that determines man's fate or destiny. Thus at one time or another, he believed that man's success or failures would depend mainly on how strong that man's faith is according to the Bible. Sadly, he did not take into serious consideration that the Bible has many different versions and thus many different interpretations, and that if it is interpreted narrowly, literally or rigidly, could make someone unable to accept changes in reality. Faith, if taken blindly, can become an obstacle to understanding, an excuse for not sorting out the here and now.
Everyone of us, even our own children, are created different and thus we think and see things in different ways. God probably made us that way, for each of us is unique. Otherwise if we were made the same and we all think the same way, the world would be stagnant and a boring place to live. The world in front of us is so different than the world our parents or grandparents used to live. It has gotten more complex and the old ways of thinking no longer make sense, for they are impotent to tackle the new complexities of life. We need knowledge, new ideas, information, wisdom and the willingness to take risks in order to learn more and acquire more knowledge and wisdom to survive and live comfortably. In other words, we need light to find our way through the changes that none of us can stop from happening. Unfortunately, many old folks like Clemente have the mistaken notion that when it comes to light, it almost always refers to how strong one's religious faith or belief in God is. They never attempt to realize, let alone understand that it was religious faith itself - blind faith - that brought not light but darkness during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. Ignorance and laziness are the king and queen of darkness.
It is also Cle's belief that God has given man the mind as his tool for survival in the environment, and as a way of separating man from the animals. Since it is the gift from God, the mind therefore is definitely precious, divine and unique, and must be used appropriately to the fullest. One should not lose sight of the fact that the mind enables man to adjust his environment to himself to survive. Animals used instinct for self-preservation. But animals have to adjust themselves to their environment in order to survive. If drought strikes, animals perish, but man builds irrigation canals. If flood strikes, animals perish, but man builds dam. When winter comes, animals migrate to warmer climate, but man invents fireplace, heaters and winter jackets. If carnivorous animals attack, the weaker ones perish, but man writes laws like the Constitution of the U.S.
In order to improve our future generation, we, the present generation of the Estreras, must understand that our own children are going to think differently than us. We should leave them alone to think for themselves, for the future belongs to them, not to us. If they rebel against our beliefs, our ways, or the way we see things, it's not because they no longer love us, but it's because they are using their mind to assert themselves.
Note: Cle Estrera is at present the Public Relation Officer of the American Society of CIM Alumni, Inc. (ASOCIMAI). He is the founder and editor of CIM Brain Waves, an Internet newsletter publication of the CIM alumni in the U.S. and Canada although subscription is free to anyone who desires for knowledge, ideas, or philosophical thoughts in order to grow. If you want to read more articles he had written, go back to the homepage by clicking on Home at the bottom of this page and click on Recommended Web sites, then on CIM 1972, then on Entrance and then on any of the Featured Articles or on any edition of CIM Brain Waves. ********************
