Road Trip

Last May, my friends and I went on a road trip. We didn't go to a nice place or eat in a restaurant somewhere, but we were able to see something more beautiful—the smiles of people as we give them the lunch and grocery packs we prepared. We called it the love packs and we promised to do that again, so yesterday, that's what we did.

With no intention to romanticise poverty whatsoever, I'm sharing this. You don't have to be the richest person in the world, you don't need to have some type of special power, you don't need to be Ms. Universe to be able to help others. A little goes a long way, and yesterday, we tried to give our little share to the homeless. 

We wanted to cap the year off by doing something good, but just like 2018, our day went craaaaazy. Everything started to be prepared the night before and by 4am, the lunch packs and groceries are all ready. The plan was to leave at 10am. Everything was going smoothly, until the driver of the car we're supposed to rent bailed on us. I was so mad and frustrated I wanted to cry, because looking for another car to rent at the last minute seemed impossible. But the will to do this was stronger than anything at that moment so we did everything to find a car we could use. After what seemed like forever, by 3pm, we finally found an L300 we could use. We were able to leave around 4pm and our road trip finally started. 

All the weary and stress was instantly gone once we gave someone a love pack. When it started to rain, it became a challenge. We hardly see people living in the streets, they were probably finding shelter somewhere. We continued our trip until we have given away all the love packs we prepared. It was both heart-breaking and heart-warming to see the smiles, the joy, and the surprise of the people we were able to reach out to. We wish we have more so we can help more, but with the little that we were able to give, we know it meant something greater to those people. We hope our love packs could create a ripple effect and inspire even just one person to share. It is already a cruel world we're living in, I hope we could share more kindness and love. 

I want to thank all the people who helped make this possible. First, to my friends I did this with. I'm always happy to spend time with you all doing whatever, but doing things like this with you is always special. To all friends of friends, acquaintances and some people we barely know who shared what they could, thank you! To our kuya driver who went to Malabon at the last minute so someone could drive for us, thank you! To my ate's friend who don't allow other people to drive his vehicle, but said yes to us anyway, thank you. We don't know if we could've done it if you didn't. To friends and family I bothered to look for a car, thank you for helping a frantic girl out. And of course, to my kuya, our little helper Daem, and especially to my ate who did all the cooking and packing of the lunch packs, THANK YOU!

This is kind of a long post and if you read through here, thank you. I hope this inspires you to share whatever you could. The day has been wild, but I definitely want to do this again. Maybe do this for my birthday and ask my friends and family to help out for the love packs as a gift? 😁 I don't know for sure, but surely, this won't be the last.