Finding Wonderland

Have you ever wondered what lies behind the looking glass? Have you ever thought of going down the rabbit hole and finding your own Wonderland?

I’ll let you in on a secret: I have been to Wonderland and back. And the great thing about it is that I can choose to go there whenever I want. You see, when I sing and act onstage, when I take photos, and when I write a poem or story, I get transported to a different world full of beauty, danger and mystery.

Thinking back to my high school days, I was given the task of writing our class prophecy, and for that, my imagination went out of the box. It was not the typical story of what the students had become after 10 years. The title I gave it was “Starfall: The Prophecy,” and I incorporated highly impossible fantasy elements into it. In this work of fiction, it’s the year 2016. I and my batch mates were highly successful in our careers and it was a typical day in our future lives. But then, something magical happened that changed the world as we know it. We were transformed into warriors and became so-called “Protectors of the Earth.” Think heroes in World of Warcraft and League of Legends—that’s what I imagined us to look like.

The gist of it was that there was a prophecy that when lights fall from the sky, an event called the Starfall, forces of darkness were to rise underneath our old high school; and our whole batch, the Centennial class of Antique National School, was chosen to save our alma mater and, therefore, save the world. I guess I just wanted it to be unique, but the message behind it was that no matter where we end up, if ANS needs us and it calls, we would be there.

When I was in college, the Class Prophecy and Class Will and Testament were publicly read at Prom Night. I think it’s the same in other schools, but it’s not the case here in Antique National School since there are hundreds of students mentioned in these, so it would be a drag. Thus, we usually leave those compositions to be read in our yearbooks later on.

A few days ago, I found my yearbook and read the class prophecy again. It’s both funny and sad at the same time as I realized two things: First, class prophecies are exaggerated stories of what we could be in the future; second, fantasy elements aside, class prophecies usually don’t come true.

In the futuristic story I wrote, someone has become a world-famous fashion designer. In reality, that person is now a nurse, and instead of creating clothes, he is saving lives in a hospital’s emergency room. There’s a guy who is a world-class lawyer in the prophecy, but today, he’s also a nurse, about to take up medicine to become a physician. A friend of mine wanted to be an architect, so that’s what she is in the story. Right now, she’s probably taking care of patients in a hospital. The class couples back in high school who were supposed to be married in the story are no longer together in real life. It’s 2016 in the class prophecy and a lot of us are supposedly living and working in other countries. But hey, it’s already 2014 and look at that, most of us are still here in the Philippines.

Sure, it’s fun to read. It’s kind of nice to know that your future self is a superspy, or an international rock star, or the new vice president of Apple, or a Wimbledon champion. But then you realize that what you wanted to be when you were in high school is not what you’re going to become. It doesn’t always work that way. It just goes to show that nothing ever stays the same.

People change. Dreams change. The ambitions we used to write on our friends’ autograph books were not definite. As we grow up, our choices grow as well. Sometimes, life just doesn’t make it happen, forcing us to take a different path and eventually become people we did not expect to be. But you know what? That’s okay, because it’s not going to define you for the rest of your life.

If you don’t reach the exact same dream, or the degree of success you visualized in the past, so what, right? You will still be fulfilled because you tried, and you would have achieved something that is as close as you can get to that vision. It’s usually working toward your goal, and loving what you do, that bring true satisfaction. Even if you decide to go on a different direction, you will eventually reach a point where what you do and the people who love you make you feel like you’re the luckiest person in the world. Life will never be meaningless because you have a purpose. In the end, the important thing is to be happy.

Besides, a class prophecy is just what somebody else wrote about you. It’s never going to be accurate. You were born to write your own story. You were meant to discover your own Wonderland.

On the other hand, our class prophecies usually depict our greatest aspirations. And the good news is, it’s never too late to fulfill them—if you really want to. Who knows? You might be the next secretary general of the United Nations, or a Nobel Prize winner for a breakthrough in science. You could be one of the Filipino athletes who will make it to the Olympics, or the next astronaut to travel into space. You could be an award-winning film director, or the next Filipino to perform on Broadway. The important thing is to keep your dream alive.

My dad once told me that if you have a dream, you have to work hard for it. And he was right; life will not just throw it on your doorstep. You can’t expect something big to just happen out of nowhere if you don’t make it happen yourself. I haven’t even reached my own dream yet, but nobody said it would be easy. As Charles Du Bos said, “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” So, do not limit yourself. Believe that you are capable of great things. Discover your potentials. Nurture your talents. If you’re passionate about something, do it, because it will play a huge part in defining who you are.

It’s a mad world out there. Reality is not so different from Wonderland, after all. There will be a time when we’re going to fall down the rabbit hole and wake up in a world that seems so different from the one we lived in back in our childhood. Everything we experience there will seem rather strange, and even scary. There will pop up many doors, and we don’t know which one to open. There will be many roads, and we haven’t the slightest idea which way to go. We might wind up in a labyrinth, and it’ll be difficult to find our way out.

So what do we do?  If we find ourselves lost in the real version of Wonderland, we always have a choice. We can either sit in a corner waiting to be rescued, or we can be brave and choose to go on an adventure. We all know what Alice did. She chose to be her own hero.

This is the speech Maxinne Marie Belo Sentina, 23, delivered as guest speaker during Antique National School’s recent Junior-Senior Prom, which had “Alice in Wonderland” as theme. She is now a registered nurse whose “biggest dream is to be a musical theater performer.”