I love meeting celebrities—who doesn't? The thrill that comes along with talking to celebrities and successful businessmen, sitting down and getting to know more about them on a personal level is something that each writer like me looks forward to. It is as if you are privy and very much welcome to know who they really are as normal human beings before they transform into those glamorously perfect and unreachable gods and goddesses on television.
I am and I have always been a creature of CURIOSITY—so innate that it keeps me hungry for mysterious things—like unread books, roads that are less taken and most of all, people that have stories to tell—and that is—everyone.
Growing up in a very sheltered and safe environment (Christian family, Christian school, missionary lifestyle, all-girls college) has altogether kept me naïve, gullible and seemingly clueless about the real world for sooooooooooooo long—UNTIL I unexpectedly got myself into a high-fashion publishing company as a writer—which position was like a golden key to enter a world that is so glamorous but so messed up, a world where all those glitters, embellishments, spotlights, studio lights, camera flashes that can be so pleasant to the eye, but can be dangerous enough to blind me, a world the people I thought only lived inside our living room’s television sets were the same people I now rub arms with, talk to, make friends with and hang out on restaurants, cafes and even lounge with inside their own homes—it could get overwhelming—so overwhelming, that I always find myself in a state of shock.
But for every dream, there will be nightmares—things that keep me from floating in cloud nine, things that remind me that this glamorous world is also full of dug pits, traps, set-ups and dark wicked schemes altogether awaiting for me to make a single wrong move, just so they can finally attack.
Nevertheless who’s to fear all those when I know that it was God Himself Who has brought me here? In my first year of being exposed to the so-called “showbiz,” I discovered a very important lesson. And that is…THOSE WHO HUNGER FOR GOD’S WORD ARE NOT ONLY THOSE WHO HUNGER FOR FOOD. I think we should break the common connotation that “missionaries” are only meant for the field of the poor, the oppressed and the less-prioritized. God also needs missionaries that can go out and share His Word in the world of the rich, the glorified and the highly-prioritized—the modern-day Babylon, as what I always like to call it.
Because I have seen that even the people in the highest places can feel lost and searching—they feel like they lack something in life but they never know what it is exactly. They achieve everything, every acting award, every endorsement and they own so many riches in the world—but as what they tell me, they can never be fully happy. Whenever I ask these people about what they still want in life, being that they have everything, they usually answer me with “Parang never pa ako nakukuntento sa buhay. Parang may malaking void pa sa life ko na di pa nafi-fill eh. Pero di ko alam kung ano yun, gets mo?”
And yes, I get it—and now I do understand exactly why God placed me here.
Photo (c) Jessica Murphy
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