My Mid-life Reflections: An Essay

Forty-Five

I did not need the quiet gravity of a deathbed to begin the reckoning. Midlife has its own way of forcing an audit, not the glossy kind packaged in platitudes about “no regrets,” but the bruising kind that demands non-negotiable honesty. The good, the bad, and the ghosts I would rather forget. At forty-five, I occupy a restless middle space: no longer young enough to pretend time is infinite, yet not old enough to claim wisdom as a consolation prize.

I haven’t accomplished everything I once believed I would. As I often confess to Carlos, my deepest fear is to leave this world having lived a merely average life. Not because an average life is shameful, it isn’t, but because I am haunted by a single question: Have the resources, opportunities, and gifts handed to me translated into the life I was meant to build? Have I honored them, or have I squandered them? Have I truly lived, or have I simply coasted on the momentum of early promise?

I began, after all, with so much of it.

As a shy child who spoke in whispers and sought out corners instead of crowds, I was nudged toward Special Education testing, not because I was failing, but because I didn't fit neatly into the metrics of the ordinary. My mom pulled at that thread, and it led me to a Special Education - Gifted Program where, year after year, my name quietly anchored the top ten. I chose the company of books over playground games. I devoured my Tita Julie’s Bible set for kids, weighed my hands against Tita Rebecca’s heavy encyclopedias, memorized my mom’s carefully curated recipe books, and, for reasons I still cannot fully untangle, carried my dad’s Arabic-English dictionary, a relic from his days serving the Saudi king.

High school was the first time my achievements had an audience. My grandpa became my unofficial stage parent, stepping forward to receive my medals after I delivered the valedictory speech. I also carry a vivid memory of my grandma at the dining table, her fingers carefully clipping a feature from the National Newspaper. It announced the results of the National Secondary Achievement Test. Below the general scores, two names were singled out: the top scorer, a bright student from Cebu, and mine, listed second. Their pride was unmistakable, almost exuberant. Mine remained quiet, bordering on indifferent.

Then came the University of the Philippines, the singular accomplishment that convinced my family I was ready to live on my own. Later, a brief stop at the University of the Cordilleras before migrating to Canada, Dean’s List certificates pinned to a corkboard like props from a previous act. My family, my mom most of all, believed, without hesitation or doubt, that my future was a guaranteed horizon of gold.

Then, the real world collided with expectation, delivering a paradoxical cocktail of pride and joy, regret and shame.

Perhaps the genesis of the fracture was my choice to drop out of college. I still remember the ache of breaking my mom’s heart, gently telling her I was abandoning my studies just weeks after she had joyfully filled our home with brochures from Toronto’s elite universities. Her "gifted" child, refusing the one guaranteed bridge to conventional success.

The world wasted no time in showing me the cost of my rebellion. Without a degree, I was measured only by what I lacked. I became a Tim Hortons employee. I served double-doubles, manned the cash register, and mopped sticky floors. Nine months in, after securing a coveted spot at a branch inside a high-security government building, a placement my dad had to vouch for, I tendered my resignation. It was a Monday. I had no safety net, no grand plan, but I quit anyway.

What followed felt less like coincidence and more like divine providence. That same Friday, a regular Timmies customer named Lauro slipped his business card into my palm.

"Give me a call," he said. "I have a job for you."

He had no idea I had already resigned, that I was standing on the precipice of unemployment. To him, I was simply a young person worth taking a chance on. Only later did the gravity of the moment hit me: Lauro was the Director of two Canadian government branches. The position he handed me was a career that countless qualified, Canadian-educated candidates would have fought for.

Yet, my pride did not reside in the title or the government desk. It lived in the email Lauro left for me, words that still echo in the quiet spaces of my forty-fifth year: I have observed how you carried yourself with ethics and hard work daily. I would like to offer you a job.

It still astounds me that when I had stripped away my titles, my pedigree, and my unfinished degrees, something as simple as the dignity of serving coffee was enough to speak for me.

The government job, and the glittering stint as a corporate event planner that followed, were beautiful mirages. Suddenly, I was a maestro of high-stakes events, commanding rooms awash with visiting celebrities, dignitaries, local A-listers, and political titans. I was surrounded by the intoxicating noise of self-importance, and it seduced me into a dangerous illusion: I believed I was untouchable, capable of absolutely anything.

Instead, I had merely opened the floodgates to a long, exhausting ledger of regrets.

I pivoted, choosing the lonely, fiercely proud path of the entrepreneur. I built my startup from the dirt up, and I wore that creation like a badge of honor. But the pride was a heavy, suffocating cloak. It was shadowed by a brutal financial toll, one exacted not just on my own spirit, but on my parents. Living under their roof, unable to contribute meaningfully to the very hands that supported me, became a quiet, daily humiliation.

Then came the accolades, each one a gilded trap.

When a Canadian leadership institution awarded me a prestigious grant, declaring mine "the best business plan they had ever read," my chest swelled. But I quickly learned that praise is a debt that demands repayment with interest. The crushing weight of their expectations nearly paralyzed me.

Soon after, my face was broadcast across local television, framed as the triumphant immigrant woman who had conquered the startup sphere. It felt like an arrival, but the harbor was empty. It was a false anchor, forged from vanity metrics that shackled me to a polished image rather than a lived reality.

On paper, we were a runaway success. For two relentless years, our calendar was fully booked, a back-to-back march of demand. Behind the curtain, however, my life was a void. I was driving myself into a state of pure, bone-deep exhaustion, running on nothing but fumes and the cold comfort of late-night McDonald's.

And then, there was the collateral damage to the heart.

I became a top-three grand finalist in a fierce competition of sixty businesses. It was a milestone I hid in the dark from my mom, terrified she would see it as a foolish waste of time. When a family friend proudly broke the news to her, beaming with secondhand pride, I saw the devastation wash over my mom’s face. In her eyes, my silence was a betrayal. My success had become a weapon that wounded the ones I loved.

When the end came, the world applauded. I sold the business in less than two weeks, solo, without a broker, to a wealthy couple. It was a clean, lucrative exit. Yet, in the quiet, echoing aftermath of the sale, I carried a heavy, secret shame I am only now brave enough to confess: selling wasn't a strategic victory. It was escapism, if not outright defeat.

A month later, I stood backstage in one of Toronto’s most recognized colleges, invited to speak addressing young women and at‑risk youth dreaming of entrepreneurship. I felt profoundly unqualified. But when I stripped away the veneer and told them the truth, of selling my furniture to fund my dream, of sleeping on the cold floor, I saw their eyes fill with tears.

I offered them a single, fragile piece of advice, unaware of its true weight:

"Let your choices, not your circumstances, define you."

Little did I know how deeply those words would test me in the next chapter.

My choice to move to Dubai was packaged as a grand adventure, a clean slate. I tell myself I should be proud of that leap, but the mirror demands a sharper truth: it was escapism. I was running from the fatigue of my last adventure. What I am proud of is that it became the crucible that forged my real-world grit.

Then came Emirates Airline, a high-paying, coveted role rarely afforded to Asians in that part of the world. It looks spectacular on a resume. But I refuse to wrap it in a glossy lie. It wasn't my brilliance that opened that door; it was the arbitrary privilege of my Canadian passport.

What I'm proud of now is that once I was inside, my citizenship ceased to matter. I earned the respect of my colleagues and superiors the only way I knew how: through conscientiousness, unyielding hard work, and hard-earned results.

I should be proud to have earned enough to afford myself and my family some comforts and luxuries through that job. But really, I am deep in regret that I did not quit when I should have, to go back to Canada and take care of my sick mom. It is my life's biggest regret, and it will haunt me to my grave. What I can be proud of now is that at least the job gave my mom some comfort: That after all, even without that college degree, I could secure a role worthy of her pride.

Later, I should have been proud to start yet another business, one that gave a means of income to family and friends in need, for months on end. But in the end, there is no greater heartache for a founder than telling your employees you can no longer afford to sustain them. Having to let them go. Watching it end in broken pockets, broken hearts, broken hopes, broken relationships, and broken dreams. What I'm proud of now is having ascertained, through that experience, that I will always put others' needs before my own.

I should be proud to have convinced big-name players worldwide to work with us just months into that new business. The growth was so fast it was seemingly impressive, from serving royal families to ex-Prime Ministers, from all-important industry buyers to long-established, legacy brands. But the harsh truth is, I wasn’t prepared for that kind of growth, and I wasn’t capable of handling it. It led to my biggest fall. What I'm proud of now is that the fall did not kill my spirit.

I should be proud that multiple investors were courting us, pursuing us, and showering us with gifts without us even initiating a dialogue about investment. To them, our outward success was unheard of, impressive, and worth buying into. But the ugly truth, and what will remain one of my life's biggest regrets, is that it was pure hubris. I was over-confident, erroneously convinced of my own invincibility, often masquerading it in false humility. I played god with their money.

So when the all-natural, God-sanctioned repercussions of the 2020 pandemic happened, I could not even bring myself to claim force majeure. I had played god claiming to know what the forecasts and the future held. Again, the world wasted no time in showing me that my poor choices had consequences. What I'm proud of now is that I did not take justice into my own hands, even at the height of the injustices done by disgruntled investors and their shallow judgmentalism trying to define me down at the worst moments of my life. I stood still, and I allowed divine justice to shape the aftermath of that spectacular fall.

I should be proud that my successes often came with the ability to support other people, paying their rents, funding experiences for friends and family, providing livelihoods to those who otherwise had no chance, fighting for injustices with everything I had. But the truth is sharper: my regrets live in what I didn’t do. I didn’t quit my job to care for my mom. I didn’t heed the red flags. I didn’t say no when I should have, to opportunistic investors, to hires we shouldn’t have made, to the blinding glitter of Dubai.

It’s cliché, but true: our deepest regrets are often the things we leave undone.

So what would I tell my younger self now? The same advice I offered those hopeful young women a decade ago: Let your choices, not your circumstances, define you. And if I strip everything down to its core, the questions that remain are the ones Jeff Bezos posed, questions that still hold their weight at forty‑five:

How will you use your gifts?

What choices will you make?

Will you follow dogma? Or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease? Or a life of service?

Will you wilt under criticism? Or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you're wrong? Or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection? Or will you act in love?

When it's tough, will you give up? Or will you be relentless?

These are the questions that remain, quiet, persistent, and unavoidably mine.