MEETING AN OLD BUDDY
Yesterday I met up with an
old high school buddy now a Math Professor at the University of the
Philippines.
He often spends summer in our
hometown and attends the school reunion,
without fail, every year. I asked if we
could talk again, as we often do, whenever he’s home.
He was in casuals, baseball cap, with bulky camera dangling from
the neck. He looked like a local tourist or a rugged reporter . He didn’t look
like the typical academic, which he is, and a brilliant one.
We talked about many things, classmates, family, politics, and about life. We reminisce the days of our youth, of the transitions we went
through in the stages of life.
He talked sadly of friends
and schoolmates who had returned to the ground, and the unpredictability of
events in one’s life. With his mathematical mind it was as if he wanted to draw
up an equation to divine the
uncertainties.
This man is a deep, prodigious thinker, and yet there is the
artistic side to him. I glanced at the camera slung around his
neck. He said he is interested in birds and different species of native plants
and flowers. He said he recently climbed
a mountain somewhere in Luzon seeking out rare species, and documenting his finds.
I think his passion for nature is what keeps him in balance. I suppose
for him teaching higher math is exacting to the heart, much too clinical, even
impersonal, because it requires no less than utter perfection.
Alas, all of man’s
striving falls short of perfection.
And this reminds of me what
St. Paul declared to the Christians in Rome. He said we all come short of God’s
glory. (Romans 3:23).
This makes us human after all.
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