Lessons from Mang Felix

I am very lucky to have known Mang Felix, from whom I learned life’s most enduring lessons.

Mang Felix lost his father when he was five, then lost all his siblings shortly after. His mother became blind years later. He worked in the farm. Through sheer determination he finished his freshman year in college, and then he got married and raised a family of nine.

He worked as school janitor. Every day, before biking to the barrio school five kilometers away, he’d drop by the church for Mass. He was deeply admired by his principal, the teachers, and the pupils he worked for.

He was first to arrive and last to leave. He made sure he left every room smelling and looking clean. He’d go home with a contented smile on his face, find time to tend to his vegetable garden, fetch water for his wife’s laundry, lead the rosary at 6 p.m., tutor his children after supper, or simply gather them to tell stories. There were times he’d be absent to attend to a sick child and days he’d borrow money from a friend. But his faith helped him bounce back with much serenity.

For 65 years that was Mang Felix’s world. He did his tasks, big and small, with great fidelity. He knew his place in his little corner of the world—to clean, provide, teach, and, most of all, share his faith—without actually saying so. He was an icon of unfailing commitment to little things. His whole life, from the time he lost practically everything, was resiliency made incarnate. He was a man always responding, falling but rising again, renewing, celebrating. To him, life was simply a loving response to God’s call in any form, never mind if it was just cleaning the toilets or wiping the windows. His sense of commitment was in carrying out one’s duties with perseverance and joy.

There are 10 big lessons I learned from Mang Felix, lessons I try to live by to this day—as a husband and father, a teacher, and a Christian.

1. It does not matter what you do.  What matters is how you do what you do, the love you put into it, the passion, cheerfulness, generosity, fidelity; not so much your vocation as how you respond, in the day-to-day drudgery that comes with it; your little yeses, your fiats, the amens.

2. Take pride in what you do. Put your heart into it, big or small. Be enthusiastic. Be cheerful. At the end of the day, you go home like Mang Felix, happy and content, with a smile on your face and peace in your heart.

3. Be single-hearted. Know what you want, pursue your dreams, don’t keep looking back. When you trip, keep going. Mang Felix lost his parents and his siblings. He moved on, he didn’t wallow in misery.

4. Expect disappointments.  Most of the time, these are beyond our control. Mang Felix met disappointments early on. Sway like the bamboo. Don’t be hard on yourself or on others, or you’ll break. Don’t fight your troubles, befriend them; you’ll eventually get along well.

5. At the first sign of trouble, reject the temptation to react. Often, it’s a reaction of fight or flight. In conflicts with my wife I’ve learned to forgive and seek forgiveness, to surrender or let go. I’ve learned to correct without putting down, to be supportive of people I love despite their occasional failures, to treat my wife and children with utmost love, respect and fairness. Married life, I realize, is not so much a matter of give and take as a matter of give and give, not a matter of who is correct but a matter of who is more forgiving.

6. Surround yourself with friends. Seek out people who share your concerns. Develop a “vocation culture” where you and your friends and colleagues can talk about your lives, concerns, problems, joys. The resilient bamboo gains added strength from those around it.

7. Cherish and celebrate your little successes. Celebrate a lesson well-taught. Celebrate a student who finally passed his first long test. Celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Take time for rituals with your family. See a movie. Go places. Take time for renewal, for healing, for washing each other’s feet.

8. Be creative and flexible. Just as there are many ways of falling and failing, so, too, in solving problems and conflicts. Experiment, explore. In the classroom, there are many ways to explain a lesson. Adapt, be resourceful. At home, there are many ways to court your wife after a fight, ways to make up, ways to renew ties.

9. Frequent the sacraments. The Eucharist was Mang Felix’s special source of strength as a father, husband, cleaner. Today, each time I go to Mass I “bring with me” my wife and children, thank the Lord for the gift of their persons, and ask for the graces they need to go through their own lives. I also bring with me my students for whom I am the Lord’s mouthpiece. He speaks with me, through me and in me.

10. There are people who are watching me all the time. I have children and students who see me, who will judge whether what I say and do correspond to what I claim to be. Witnessing is more powerful than words. As Pope Paul VI put it: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers; and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they too are witnesses.”

We are called to be models and witnesses—in whatever state of life we are, in whatever situations we find ourselves. It doesn’t matter whether we are janitors or teachers or married persons. What matters most is how we remain faithful despite the occasional disappointments and failures, how we bounce back, in humility and self-sacrifice, summoning all the strength of our faith, hope and love, in order to build God’s kingdom in our little corner of the world.

I thank Mang Felix, my father, for these lessons.

Renato N. Carvajal, 61, was a CLE/values education teacher of Ateneo de Manila High School. He retired after 38 years of teaching in order to pursue his other passions—teacher-training and textbook-writing. In 2003 he was one of Metrobank Foundation’s Outstanding Teachers of the Philippines.