Staying home

Last Sunday, I met up with Shean Chiva, an old friend, my classmate since second grade. She's flying back to Koronadal to stay there for good. Industrial engineering work is awaiting her in the all too familiar company that supplies electricity to South Cotabato. Who'd have thought she'd work in SOCOTECO?

Going back to the province is something she had always wanted to do; it had been right at the back of her mind before she even started her work in Manila.

While she was relating this to me, how she pleaded with the Lord for guidance, I asked myself if I ever want to go back. For good. After living in Metro Manila for more than six years, Koronadal—or Marbel, as we, locals, call it—now seems like a quaint, quiet, little town, despite the "city" appended to it. The province has a peculiar charm to it that I occasionally miss, something lifetime city-dwellers won't probably understand: the slow ticking of the clock, the chirping of the birds, the muffled sounds of tricycle engines. It's a beautiful place.

After seeing and getting used to the bustling city life, I realize I like it better here. It has its downsides—the traffic, pollution and stress multiplied to a tenfold—but I am enjoying it. Perhaps it's the adrenalin rush of youth that will probably subside in my late twenties. But am I closing the doors to the possibility of going back to my roots and live there for good, as my friend Shean has decided to do? Not at all. A possibility, no matter how remote, is always a possibility. And my comfort is that the Lord is sovereign (Proverbs 16:9).