Venedict Paul M.

Santiago
N01A

As a Lasallian who has been with the institution ever since my senior high school days, I
have experienced a lot of events and situations that have greatly affected my life positively and
negatively. For the most part, the negative situations have mostly involved tough schedules for
the subjects I am taking for the semester, and having problems with my social interactions like
not being able to fit in with my section, not being able to communicate properly with my
groupmates, and other similar situations. These events mostly happened during my first year in
the school because I was in an environment where I was unfamiliar with how the community
works. Even though these events were only a minority part of my duration of stay in the school,
these events have negatively impacted my life a great amount during the time I was experiencing
them. On the other hand, my 12th-grade experience was the complete opposite. The negative
situations that I have experienced before like tough schedules and a terrible social life were
completely made upside down. The once terrible social life I had was the realization I needed to
commit myself to improving it by making friends, joining organizations, and overall just
interacting with new things and situations in my life. Tough schedules were also sort of fixed
because I now had the motivation to push through that hardship in my life. What was once a
downward spiral in my life I thought I would never get out of has now become a situation that
gives me a lot of hope for my future and this is all thanks to my family, friends, and God who
have always been there for me during my trying times.

As mentioned before, I also thank God for giving me the positive experiences I have gone
through but why is that? This is because God and the concept of religion have been with me
throughout my life and have played a very important role for the most part. A gospel story that
sticks out to me, especially with my current situation is the one that has been brought up during
my Lasallian Recollection 1 session, the story of Bartimaeus. I really relate to this story due to
the situation that Bartimaeus was in before he met Jesus, a blind man. Similar to Bartimaeus, I
feel like I am in a spot in my life where I am blind to the future ahead of me. Even though this is
a problem that most people face at my stage of life, I feel like if I let the problem sit too long, it
would be impossible to repair it. In the gospel story, Bartimaeus was cured of his blindness but
Jesus said it was due to his faith which is why his blindness was cured. This story really
resonated with me because of how much emphasis is placed on a strong faith in God and how it
can help us in life. Recently, I have started going to church and similar to the benefits I got from
the positive experiences I mentioned previously, it has also helped me in improving my mindset
on how I handle the things in my life. Even though the blindness in my life has not been
completely cured, the story still inspires me to push through with what I have now and maybe I
could also help others along the way in my journey.
 In my journey through life, I have to make easy and tough choices that will determine
how my life is going to go in the future. One of these choices is to seize the opportunities given
to me by God or to reject them and stay the same and in this kind of situation, no matter how
hard the path of seizing the opportunity offers, I am sure that it will forever change the course of
my life for the better and improve my life as a whole and this is an action I can take because of
my faith in God. Another action I can take with the invitation of God is to help the people around
me to the best of my ability if they ever need my assistance. This is a good situation where I can
apply it because, through the guidance and knowledge given to me by God, I can help a close
family member, friend, and those around me rather than keeping what I have learned to myself
which does not benefit anyone at all.