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[av_heading heading=’Better life choices’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY GORDON GUILLERGAN
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Sunday, January 8, 2017
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“The choices we make in life are equally important to us, as those of others are to them. It is an arrogant attitude in the mind of those who feel superior to believe their choices are better than others. Having respect for others regardless of who they are is the greatest choice anyone can make.” ― Ellen J. Barrier, The Price We Must Pay for Our Father’s Sins
SOMETIMES circumstances in our lives teach us to either be strong, nonchalant or simply give in to despair. Here’s a story of a young girl who got married in the States, had a daughter with an American citizen but left to continue studying here in the Philippines.
Over a year of studying here, she met someone a bit younger than she was and going to the same school like her. She stopped schooling and lived with him together with her daughter.
While all this took place, her husband from the States continued to send her monetary support for their daughter and for her.
But when her husband found out about her having an extramarital relationship, he wanted his daughter back, sever ties with her and cease financial support for her (she gave the money to boyfriend and not to her daughter).
There’s a need to have the mother declared unfit if there is clear showing of any of the acts deemed by jurisprudence (Tonog vs CA, G.R. No. 122906, Feb. 7, 2002) as neglect, abandonment, unemployment and immorality, habitual drunkenness, drug addiction, maltreatment of the child, insanity and affliction with a communicable illness. The paramount consideration in custody disputes is the welfare and well-being of the child.
A proper judicial proceeding to declare the wife as unfit and to have the legal custody of the daughter may be sought. As a general rule under our Family Code, if the child is below seven years of age, custody of such child belongs to the mother.
Our choices determine how our life will become and in this case, the mother chose to love someone far greater than her daughter. I don’t judge her, for sometimes our choices tend to be irrational or our judgment clouded when we are in love.
But one thing I certainly hold dear as a principle: if I ever have a child of my own in the future, only the love for my God shall be greater than that of my child.
Sometimes it takes just a little bit of awakening for us to realize which matters most in life. Or sometimes we wait for a loss to finally understand the value of what we have.
Regarding the mother in this case, perhaps the gravity of her offense may be different from ours but at the end of the day we all, at a certain point in our lives, made grave choices, too – choices that we are paying to this day.
I sometimes wake up wishing some fractions of my past would simply be forgotten by many. And look at who I am now, or who I was then. I know the feeling of being judged based on my choices.
Don’t let the choices of others be our judgment of who they are. Some have lived a tarnished life but are filled with so much goodness they just choose to hide./PN
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