My Ferriols Experience

I’ve been thinking of Philosophy for quite a long time now but changing career path means to me being hungry or infamous with my batchmates. Be it living within my needs shrouded without luxury and leaving my dreams to be a something someday. I know my fate and I have to take decisions like that in the future. That’s why I tries to escape because of the pain of making such decisions and be eternally forbidding with my life.

It was a slow morning and I decided that I have to sneak and trespass to Ateneo to attend this lecture by Padre Roque Ferriols. At first I am hesitant to go because I am an alien to another territory, but when I saw on twitter that he conducted his “Last lecture”  threatened by the worst feeling of too late,  I am determined to go. I’ve been eyeing to see him for years now after reading his Insights and his blog Malagipko. He is simply a legend by teaching Philosophy in our native language and his Philosophy spud to many students that still remembers him amidst their successes. I said I guess I’m starting to find my place here as I believed that I am bound to search for it. 

It was 8am and the drizzle of the rain has just started- I ran and catched the FX and went to Cubao as fast as I could. On my way I was looking for the very edge of life as if how would it manifests its beauty to me. But somehow, tiredness to everything snatched it just like that. All mechanical in one way or another. I have to be in Ateneo before 9 so I can find the venue and also see the students there. I reached Cubao quarter before 9 and went directly to LRT and everything seems to be boring.

From Katipunan I rode a tricycle and heads directly to the school.
While on my way, I am quite hesitant to go and then I saw how beautiful and peaceful the school is, it reminds me of my fellow students in PUP. How lucky are those students in Ateneo, they will not bare the discomfort and insufficiency of a state university like ours. They have this guards in white polo barong roaming around ensuring their safety- in my school we do not have that. They also have aircon and much more decent school facilities. They have no activism and dirty walls tired of vandalism. The school is not a confine of hell. It must have been a wonderful place to stay or sleep or to be a good student or something productive.

I entered to this plenary hall and I saw few students and they are not talking to each other. They were busy playing with the Ipad and busy doing something else. They are obviously rich and I am devoided of some feeling of inferiority. There’s the line breaks.

The plenary hall is a hollow ground. I waited and waited until a speaker stood at the podium and said something. He has a bard face and long neatly tucked hair. He looks decent and cool and his voice is as flimsy and a bit shy like a woman. He is introducing what will going to happen, who is Teilhard de Chardin and all. I sit there waiting. Looking at the ceiling unmindful of the crowd as the sharp ticks of chairs echoed. Just like that! Life is just like that- ticks of chairs, as the sound burns, life goes just like that.

Then there was a sudden chaos on one of the door. Fr. Ferriols is coming and it was my first time to saw him. Then the wheelchair was hoisted to us, there Fr. Ferriols, peacefully sitting on his old wheelchair. In my head I wondered how many people who have gone before us seated on that same wheelchair- but later abandon that thinking as it proves worthless. The only thing that I know is Fr. Ferriols is Fr. Ferriols. That’s it.

It was very long minute of silence as we saw him preparing and composing himself with his thoughts in his mind and grappling with much more words to say.

Almost all of student who went there just went there because a professor required them to do so, few really gave time and went as there because of conviction. Some makes these stare to their friends almost saying to go out and planning a group exit and I feel sorry to Padre ferriols as he wants to say many things but he was so deeply restrained by his physical limitation as his body is being eaten up by Parkinson. He tried to paint a better picture of lecture in our mind recalling the bygone years when Ateneo was then full of “talahib” and there are so many times that his words has failed him and these students have been looking for each other waiting for someone to stand and leave for them to follow.

The truth is most of them does not know the value what they have.

When the bell rang, the tiny sharp ticks of every chair echoed. I know many will be leaving while Fr. Ferriols is trying his best to introduce Chardin to all of us. It is Ferriol’s commitment in teaching Philosophy and his obedience in teaching Philosophy that strikes me until now as I write this. I deeply admire him for that. Really.

The ending of the lecture is quiet. Only of us left when he said thank you and
I clap as loud as I could for him to hear it.

After the lecture everybody left. 7 of us stayed. When it’ my turn I approached him and said, “Father I am one of those people that you inspires. And you became the reason why I want to take up a graduate studies in Philosophy after college.Thank you” I know that he is grappling with words as his muscles were contracting but in my ears I can hear him whispering the word “Thank you and God bless you.” I can see it in his eyes and I can feel that he is speaking from his heart to mine. I almost feel down. It is some sort of admiration that breaks me- it has been Fr. Ferriols that I am eyeing to see for years and the man of God and Philosophy that I admire now I shares the same moment with him.

I went out in the plenary hall I’m just in time, outside I saw him being hoist away from the place by his personal nurse and with the guy wearing checkered who has been so nice to me. I looked at them that way and when I turn around for a final glance, they are all gone, just like the sharp ticks of the chairs.