My Mom's Legacy

Here is a beautiful prose about lessons in life passed on by Leona Rubio Miranda, my grandmother, to her son, my uncle, Gilberto Miranda, who decided to share it with friends and loved ones.



My Mom’s Legacy
By Gil R. Miranda


To plants and animals including human beings, life has three directions— survival, reproduction and death. To survive, find a mate, reproduce seeds for plants, and raise a brood for animals and humans, and even in dying, one has to face countless difficulties. It is a dilemma. One needs to accept and understand that life is full of problems because problem itself is life and life is a problem. Life is meaningless without problems. Problems would not exist without life.

People earn their living because they solve other people’s problems. Lawyers find solutions to legal problems. Farmers resolve food problems. Engineers settle engineering problems. Teachers unravel education problems. One sorts out other people’s problems according to one’s forte or discipline.

As people earns from other people’s problems, they spend these earnings to solve their own. To survive, men need to provide themselves food, clothing, and shelter. Other than that, they provide their children with education, so that they may have a better chance of survival in the future. It is a continuing cycle of earning and spending hooked on a chain linked with problems.

Survival stirs up competition. The struggle makes man acquisitive. The phenomenon is rare to plants but is also common to a few species of mammals and insects. A few known species of plants and animals also hoard, but few become greedy. Human acquisitiveness turns to avarice, which complicates the problem all the more. That is why we seek social status, a place under the sun, recognition, and influence. These complicate our problems. We yearn for lavish foods, an extravagant house in a plush neighborhood, a more luxurious car and amass properties as much as we can. Yet, everyday, we mutter about problems. We mutter about the thorns that lay on the road going to our desired destination.

It is innate amongst living things to reproduce. Thus, looking for a perfect mate is an instinctual grapple. Living things has to show off their intrinsic good looks, strength, skills, intellect, etc. The point is not only to find the finest to help us disperse our inheritable factors, but to produce perfect children and assure that our genealogical seeds will survive a world only the fittest could endure. At times though, the process goes wayward. It boosts the human being’s own sense of self-importance. Some gifted persons, or those who believe they are, become conceited egotists. Consequently, the effort to solve a problem develops another. The adage probes itself, “There is always a solution to a problem as there always is a problem in every solution.”

Death to plants and animals may be unceremonious. Most humans however, wish to face this final act appropriately, marked with dignity and serenity. Some wish for immortality. People want other people to remember him. Eternal life may not be physically possible but somebody’s memory can live on. Life is a tussle, a brawl, but one has to strive to continue living on. We have to face an endless wave of problems to achieve another problem. When problems end, life ends.

Life is seemingly simple. Yet, once you dig deep into its labyrinth, it becomes more and more complicated. Someone who has gone through life earlier than us could give us roadmaps of the favorable route in the maze of life’s struggle. My mother left some. I thought I should share them with my children and anyone who may find it useful.

Keep your head down. — When you look up, you see things that are difficult to reach. Your attention focus on people with better paying jobs, elegant homes, nicer cars, etc. Look down and you will appreciate life more. You will be happier to know that your life is better than the others rather than having the worst.

If you love the things that you do, you never work at all. — A business executive would go fishing and enjoy it. For him it is a hobby. To a fisherman it is a job. If you will learn to treat your job a hobby, you will not work all your life.

Changing jobs, careers or business.— If you think you should quit your job, which you once wanted so much, got after scanning hundreds of want ad pages, grueling exams, and several exhausting interviews, do not change your job… change your attitude. (My mother always reminds me, “A rolling stone, gathers no moss.”)

Friendly relations — when you quarrel with a friend once, something must be wrong with your friend. When you quarrel with the same friend twice, think again, something must be wrong with either you or your friend. When you quarrel with the same friend for the third time…something is wrong with you.

Life has no pause, stop, or rewind buttons. It does not have a fast forward button either— Life runs incessantly. It is unstoppable. It is not the problems of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets of yesterday, which one cannot redirect, and the fear of the future, which one cannot preview. Except for the lessons that the past brings, forget every yesterdays. Leave all despair on the way and travel towards each tomorrow with fresh hopes.

Most of your worries do not happen. — Many people shake away opportunities and fail to achieve lifetime dreams because of worries that do not always happen. Brave men who ignore obstacles succeed. Coward people who worry does not dare— they fail. Remember that fear is only imaginary.

Most people want to help. They are only waiting for you to ask for it. — Sometimes, we need help, but we do not ask, because we fear rejection. Most people are gracious and compassionate. They just do not offer their assistance because they fear rejection too.

Be generous with praises. — Everyone welcomes words of admiration. Praise is a necessary tool in a polite society. One who generously uses it gains more friends. Like a rider’s whip, its use is necessary to make a horse run faster.

Dreams do not stay in one place— Dreams are mobile. It moves as fast as you reach for it. Dreams are illusions. Like a rainbow, it either changes its position or runs away as you get near it.

When in panic, press the button. — When something goes wrong in the bathroom, you call a plumber. When something is wrong with your car, you see a mechanic. When you are in pain, you visit your doctor. When everything seems to be wrong call God, He is only a prayer away from you.