“If You Know Who You Are…”

If you will remember who you are, you will find your way through it.”

 

It’s been a long time since I came across this line. It was uttered by a character — the heroine’s father — in the prologue of one of my favorite books by Richard Paul Evans, “The Looking Glass.”

 

The first time I read the line, I did not grasp what it meant. For then, I did not yet understand what the father was trying to do. But when it was repeated toward the end of the book, my tears flowed freely like dam breaking free. Finally, I realized that the father was trying to save his daughter, Quaye. The line was the father’s desperate attempt to make his daughter understand that what he was to do was his only hope to save her.

 

And he did save his daughter. Quaye lived, and she did get through life.

 

There are times when I feel as though I were Quaye, and it was my father who had whispered those words to me. Since I read that line, many trials, big and small, had come my way. And this line had greatly helped me to get through them. Every time I had doubts, I would repeat that line in my head, and a stronger resolve come over me, allowing me to keep going.

 

As I continue with my journey, I know there will be humps I will have to pass through, diversions I may have to deal with, and dead ends around which I will have to try to find my way. There will be stopovers, and there will be accidents I may personally be involved in or simply witness. There will be times that I would stumble, and there will be moments I would feel too tired to go on with my journey.

 

But I believe, like Quaye, I will get everything that will come my way — intact, though scathed — because I have not forgotten one moment who I am and that I am loved.

 

I will keep walking on. Because for every slippery and unpaved road I need to pass through, there will also be sceneries whose unfolding I would witness. There will be friends I will meet along the way who will make my load seem lighter. There will be laughter and there will be music as there will be flowers blooming.

 

 

//Sherma E. Benosa

16 November 2007; 2:35pm

 

What’s your favorite line (in a song, book, poem)? And why?