Today, when I was talking with a distributor, whom I was working with to develop our brand in a certain area (trying to be as general and vague as possible), I was faced with remarks questioning my right to be doing this job as a fresh graduate and discouraging me to pursue this career path altogether. “Maniniwala ka, bata, mahihirapan ka dito. Dapat nag-office ka na lang,” he would repeat, “Hindi naman sa nagmamalaki, pero wala pa kayong alam, mga bagito pa kayo.” It was nothing short of the most counterproductive sermon I’ve yet to receive from anyone.
But as I was walking away from the meeting, I asked myself, could I blame him? All day this thought floated over my head until eventually I concluded, this is the way his mind works because it’s the way his environment has forced him to think and view his world.
And so the next question becomes, what do I do with all this? How should that “sermon” affect me? My reception to this barrage then becomes a question of value. How much value do I give to the opinion of a man who cares not to know my name? How much value do give to words that been used over and over again to other people in the past? Truly, words are powerful. They can be used to hurt, inspire, destroy, or rebuild. But words with barely any weight to them are precisely that, weightless, empty and misplaced.