Paradigm Shift
I grew up thinking that money was evil and that businessmen were shrewd. It didn’t help that I attended the University of the Philippines, said to be the bastion of the communists. I became a student activist, became an agnostic for awhile, and began to hate imperialist America.
But because of a twist of fate, I landed in the corporate world in a job I didn’t know existed before and never imagined to have. My employer was American, and so it didn’t come as a surprise that I had go to the land of milk and honey to meet the people I worked with and get some training. Anyone in my shoes would have jumped for joy, but I flatly refused to go. I did not want to go. I didn’t see the point in going, because I already knew how to do my job, and I did not want to sign the bond that came with the trip.
Fortunately for me though, I had a manager who had amazing convincing powers. She told me that I would come back a different person–that travel would change me, that there was an experience waiting for me on the other side of the world that I couldn’t get anywhere else. That was what convinced me to go. I signed the papers and packed up. That was how the shift began.
