But somehow, something intervened. A project came, I earned the equity in seven months, the house pushed through. Then, just as I paid that last installment, the project stopped. Timing? Something more? I shrugged and looked up, quietly grateful.
Then it happened again. I’d long wanted my own car-public transpo was a hassle-and was searching for easy financing on whatever I could find. Then came a promotion, and with it, a used Volkswagen Beetle, paid in installments over a year. I hadn’t asked for it, but there it was, once again at just the right time.
For years I watched friends and colleagues surge ahead with computers I couldn’t afford. I ached to work from home. Then a graphics company hired me as a creative consultant and lent me a Mac-not new, but perfectly functional.
But somehow, something intervened. A project came, I earned the equity in seven months, the house pushed through. Then, just as I paid that last installment, the project stopped. Timing? Something more? I shrugged and looked up, quietly grateful.
Then it happened again. I’d long wanted my own car-public transpo was a hassle-and was searching for easy financing on whatever I could find. Then came a promotion, and with it, a used Volkswagen Beetle, paid in installments over a year. I hadn’t asked for it, but there it was, once again at just the right time.
For years I watched friends and colleagues surge ahead with computers I couldn’t afford. I ached to work from home. Then a graphics company hired me as a creative consultant and lent me a Mac-not new, but perfectly functional.
My son nagged me for a PlayStation, but it was too expensive. I made him wait a Christmas, promising one the next year if he worked hard and saved. Sure enough, prices dropped, better models arrived, and a bonus let me buy it.
Remember my first big investment after getting married, the life insurance? It wasn’t easy to part with my money to pay premiums month after month, year after year. But in a way I never expected, it paid off. The policy came from a mutual company, so the insurance I bought made me a part owner. Then I received notice that the company had decided to demutualize and offer shares to the public. As compensation, I received a sizable lump sum-right when my savings were nearly depleted because I had no regular income after choosing to go on my own. Isn’t life wonderful? A blessing always arrives at just the right time.
For years, I persevered in driving my old VW Beetle. With every mile, the wear showed: it broke down often, the paint faded, and rust gnawed into the fenders. I wanted a new car, but I couldn’t afford one. All I could manage was to have it repaired again and again. It was so old and beat-up that my kids didn’t want me to drive them to or from school. They didn’t want to be seen in it, and the teasing and embarrassment stung-but I shrugged it off. In due time, I said to myself. True enough, in due time, I got a better car-not new, but better. It even had air conditioning.
I got it on very easy terms from a colleague who was earning a lot of money selling smuggled goods. He wanted to buy a new, more flashy car and offered me his old one on extremely friendly terms-almost like a giveaway. He basically just wanted to get rid of it.
Why me? He once rode in my beat-up Volkswagen by chance, and maybe he felt sorry for me. Was it coincidence? Luck? Divine providence? Whatever it is, it never fails me.
After his college graduation, my son was eager to get a job and start earning his own money. Peer-group pressure only intensified that urgency, so he applied to as many companies as he could. Soon, he was getting interview calls. After his fifth job interview, however, he felt discouraged-especially when he learned that many of his co-graduates had already been accepted elsewhere. What he hadn’t realized was that, with each interview, he was gradually losing his fear of facing other people.
But my son was desperate to get a job, any job, to avoid losing face. One day, I ran into an acquaintance from a mutual fund company who mentioned an accounting department opening. I passed it on; he applied reluctantly, but his interview ease and confidence landed him the job. See, I told him, you just have to wait and trust.
If one has the right attitude, waiting can be seen as a process of building up to the right or should I say the ripe moment. What seem to be failures are sometimes the prologue to something great about to happen. It is like earning points for the big moment.
Like a boat on water, I went where the flow took me. When I needed something that I felt I had earned, something came to help me out.
One day the friend who sold me the second-hand car came over to my house. He was in dire straits; he had terminal liver cancer. He needed money for his hospitalization and medicines. As I was driving him back to the jeepney terminal, he said to me: ‘I envy you. Here you have your own house. You have a car. You don’t have many debts. While here I am, sick, no savings, no life or medical insurance company will touch me…probably I didn’t have my priorities set right. I wish….’ He choked.
I quietly replied: ‘Perhaps, you wanted too much too early.’
‘To everything there is a season’ is a popular quote from the Ecclesiastes. In life, factors you can’t control will build up like clouds to that point in your life when the blessings will pour down. Seeding the heavens for a few drops of rain don’t really work. And if it does rain, it doesn’t last. Because nature, like life, cannot be hurried. This is why we need to restrain ourselves and learn to curb the impulse to pluck the fruit when it’s not yet ripe.
It is a choice that takes sacrifice, a tremendous effort of denying oneself and delaying satisfaction until the right time has come.
So, as I look back at the first 75 years of my life, may I say not in a shy way that indeed I did all that, and I did it my Wei.