ESL Blogs

      What are the limits of human ability? We have no idea. Few of us reach our limits. The Guinness Book of Record is an ongoing compilation of the possible. Every page describes an upper edge of human functioning. Each new edition list hundreds of prior records broken and hundreds of new ones created. What is striking is not the record themselves; it is the changing record- the continual surpassing, the pushing of the limits further and further. Each is a baseline for the next record breaker. It is the book of limits asking to be exceeded!

In our life, fear is the greatest reason why we are afraid to go beyond our limits. It is the greatest common factor of each every human being to stay on their comfort zone and not trying to do new things that are not included to their daily activities. A person who has a lot of fear is usually a person who is not contented on their life style. Someday you will realize that pushing yourself into the limits is one of the key to success, pushing yourself into the limits can change our thoughts and idea that we can use in our life forever.

On October 01, 2013 I’ll be elected as a coordinator of our choir. Himig Pag-ibig Choir is the name of our group. It is my first time to handle such a big group of young people who is willing to serve God through music. I don’t know what I am going to do at first, because even when I was young I never imagine that I’m going to handle such a big group like this. I’ve never imagine people will follow on whatever I ask. But unfortunately it happens. I am very afraid to take this responsibility because I know in myself that I can’t, until one day our adviser talks to me. “Take this responsibility, go out with your comfort zone and learn from this experience. We all believe in you”-he said. With those inspirational words that our adviser gives to me I got the courage to continue my time for being a coordination of our group.

Christmas Evening Preparation

A preparation for Christmas evening service, we start our practice on November 20, 2013 one month before Christmas. It is not my first time to go practice for the Christmas evening service but this is my first time to handle a practice for this service. Although I am prepared on what I am going to do, I can still feel the nervous in my body, but when the times goes on, little by little I feel relax on what I am doing, until the times end. And when I got home I took a deep breath and said to myself “Yes you did”. The practice was continuing day by day. Then one day when we are all prepared and ready for the practice, the pianist texted me that he can’t go with our practice today. I was facing new challenge and feeling nervous again. Since I can’t cancel the practice because we have visitors from a different choir group and I don’t want to waste their time, what I did is I get the guitar and I try to practice them with it. I don’t usually play guitar in front of others because I know in myself that I am not really good about it. But since we need to continue our practice even without the pianist. I did it. And when the times end, I feel happy for myself that finally I counter my fear for playing instrument in front of others.

The Christmas evening finally come. We are all ready for our service with our best dress suit. The instrument are ready, even the instrumentalist are ready too. We check our self that we are all in good condition. But some things happened. There is a big changes with the progress of the mass specially in “Panuluyan”. Panuluyan is a reenactment of how Jesus was born. They want us to sing the Diwa ng Pasko which we didn’t practice. We are not aware of these changes. Since I am the coordinator of our group I have the responsibility to do some action with this misunderstanding. I have to be calm and pretend that everything is okay. I go to the head of Music Ministry of our parish to talk about this problem. After a few minutes we started to understand each other by singing another song instead of Diwa ng Pasko. Finally everything was okay and we do our service with love and joy.

By this experience I don’t only learn how to push my physical body into the limits but it also pushes my entire personality. It change some of my thoughts and ideas. I learn how to conquer my fear, I learn how to communicate with others and I learn how to appreciate life, because in our life we never stop searching and we never stop learning. I know that this is not the end of my journey but at least I already have the courage to face new challenges because what I understand of pushing yourself into the limits is to go outside of your comfort zone and do not be afraid to discover new things about yourself.