What I thought I lost gave me more than any recognition ever could

Life is cruel. It is not kind, and it certainly did not care that I spent a good chunk of my senior year begging the gods that maybe—just maybe—they would grant me this one prayer I had repeated so often it had become a chant: Let me finally have the ticket that would prove I made it. Let me make it to the renowned National Schools Press Conference. After years of back-to-back near misses and wishful thinking, you can see why I was so desperate for a win.

Unbeknownst to that 17-year-old, however, life also has a sense of humor; and perhaps it thought that denying this poor soul her greatest wish would finally set her mind straight.

The world, indeed, is forever spinning. It stops for no one and marches on despite our pleas; but there is comfort in realizing that you can be so devastated by something and still wake up the next morning with enough hope to discover joy in places you never thought possible.

Joy, for me, was here.

I have to admit, as naive and narrow-minded as my disdain for the world was back then, I was convinced that the national stage was the highest level of prestige I could achieve as a student who had nothing better to do than to stay updated on every current affair and avail myself of every training within reach. I had become so preoccupied with the thought of winning that I did not realize I was losing myself in the process.

Two years on, I have realized there are things greater than any medal could ever fulfill: community; not just in the people I write about, but in the people I work with and learn from. Through Explained PH, and by extension this year’s JournQuest, I have had the privilege of working with campus journalists from different stages of their own journeys. I have spent so much of my youth trying to stand out that I forgot how much of it is about standing with others.

It is so easy to get lost in chasing the high of making it farther than you did the year before. I would know, because it was a reality I had lived for years. My ambition is part of what brought me to Valenzuela, to Davao, and to Cebu; but it was only through the 10-day whirlwind of adventures that I realized that some of the most meaningful lessons I will leave behind will never even carry my name.

I am now back in Cebu, tired, but with a renewed sense of purpose and a newfound hope that, even with my limited reach, my words will travel farther than I ever will. I hope those handful of campus journalists will carry a little piece of what they learned from me into the world, just as I have carried pieces of what I learned from those who came before me. If there is anything I hope to have left them with, it is the belief that their voices deserve to take up space, that their stories deserve to be told, and that they have a responsibility not only to speak, but to make room for others to speak alongside them.

Still, I know they will dream the dreams I once had. Some will experience the recognition I spent years yearning for. I hope they do, but I also hope they realize sooner than I did that winning, when it becomes the only way you understand success, can be a lonely pursuit. That instant gratification can be intoxicating, but it is fleeting; you are allowed to mourn without letting it consume you, feel the full weight of disappointment without allowing it to become the measure of your life, and slowly learn that there is still so much waiting for you beyond what you once thought you could not live without.

If having to end up here meant losing every press conference I would have once done anything to win, I would choose to lose every single time. I would choose the village that raised me and the people I now have the responsibility to serve. I would choose the exhaustion of having to organize another JournQuest over the emptiness of having something to prove, because if I had won every contest I once thought would define me, I would never have learned that journalism isn’t about how far I could go alone.

Life did not end when I lost my last press conference. That lost girl simply had not yet reached the place where she was meant to understand why she still insisted on continuing—but what she thought she had lost would eventually give her more than any recognition ever could.