  -Prologue- WHEN DOES A PERSON REALIZE HIS REAL PURPOSE IN LIFE? AND HOW, I wonder, will a person live up to this purpose, when everything has been said and done, until the end of his life? Even as I sit in the comfort of what I now call home, I still can’t help but stare out the window and wonder blankly at just about anything. It is as if even at an old age, I still have these questions that a mind of a little boy can dare ask himself. And now, there is yet another set of questions, another set of conjoined inquiry that still puzzles my mind. I always know there is an answer underlying between the words but never have I unraveled what the answers are. But for many years I’ve asked the question to myself so many times, I still don’t feel the urge of finding a complete answer to it.
Sometimes there is more to what a person do to what a person really needs to understand the realities of this life. There are things that comes naturally without expectation, without any sign, without waiting for it. It is just a matter of clear recognition that one has been able to see what’s coming, more than what opened eyes can see. And for everything there is, there’s only one certain thing to believe  that everything happens with enough reason. I am Daniel Lorenzo and many people call me Danny. When I have my name meaning checked, it comes from a Hebrew word that literally conveys the meaning ‘God is my judge’. Not only that I find my name awkward for my personality, but I also dread the fact that it doesn’t make sense to me because it means something that I don’t believe. Well, at least, one immense part of my past doesn’t. I am already thirty-six, an age when someone typical earns himself a living, supports a family, makes the best out of his passions and enjoys a stable career.
But I am not typical; for one good reason, I’m not and I haven’t been. I always prefer to be different from others and want to stand out from the crowd. For a moment, I always think ive successfully done that but as seen from another deeper point of view, a part of me is still convincing myself that I’ve indeed led a strange life. My life? Complicated is an understatement when I use to describe it yet I think it’s so far the closest.
For a vast portion of it, there’s only been two noticeable patterns  without any direction or focused on many directions  and neither did me any good. My life has been absolutely topsy-turvy; everything around seems messy and cluttered. It has taken me a great deal of time to contemplate that my life needs one ultimate direction.
Lucky me I’ve been able to find it now. A track where I can sustain a bit of my sanity then. And now here it is, struggle after grueling struggle, I have kept myself normal for three wonderful years. I am now an ordinary and simple man in his mid-thirties fulfilling a noble goal for himself. As far as my family is concerned, ours is one of the smallest but nonetheless the most prominent in the city. We’re just four in the family but it has become extra hard, at least only for me, that we’ve lived in the shadows of politics for almost a decade and a half that we’ve lived together.
The Lorenzos are an institution in Manila, where the heart of Philippine government is. That was, until the hopes has become impossible that another Lorenzo can take the governmental seat. Back then, as soon as one entered and walked the huge streets of Manila, the Lorenzos govern and control the place where the feet stepped on. Just as many other cities in the country, we have an existing political dynasty in the city; there have been at least five generations and at least seven Lorenzos that have sat in the many political positions including the mayoralty seat. It traces back the history of our family tree, back to my great-great grandfather that led the pack many, many years from now. Someone who happens to visit the City Hall now can see familiar portraits of my ancestors lining up the walls of the hallways like an artist’s gallery. When I was young, I always thought my father would push me to pursuing my own political career. He has thought of many times that I have the potential to be an heir to the throne, another contribution to the city’s political clan. And now, I thank God I haven’t become one of them. I have never liked the thought of living in a world that’s strictly dirty politics.
If the people in the city has chosen us to rule it for many years (for a short time that’s what I thought), we’ve been divided from our society because of our religion. We’re not Roman Catholics; our family has always been followers of the Iglesia ni Kristo Church. We’ve lived under the supervision of pastors and are big contributors in the Church. Though Manila is dominated by Roman Catholic population, we have the ‘magic’, something what it takes to keep a steady number of votes for our name. Furthermore, someone endorsed by our Church (that is about 40% of the voting population) has a more likely victory than the rest of the candidates, and it applies as I heard up to now. That has been one of the effective strategies of our family’s political career. As expected, our admixture to a totally different religious society has stirred predicaments and issues throughout the city but as the ‘magic’ takes place, the family has managed to keep this ‘business’ for a long time.
That fact has more than served as an evidence for me that religion and politics doesn’t mix that much. I am not my family’s first choice when it comes to those political stuffs. I have one sibling  a twin brother  and his name is Thomas.
We’re identical but our attitudes almost always oppose each other. I have far known that he has become more successful than I, but I often assure myself that what I’ve decided for have made me even happier than him. An obedient son as he has always been, even up to now I sense that my parents always favored him over me. We’ve just been split by a couple of hours between the midnight and the next day, with him coming as first; I always assume that can be a basis how he has been more mature in intellectual and emotional aspects than me. And up to now, it still pains me to hear when the two of us are compared, between what we’ve achieved and what we’ve done in our life.
But with a deeper wisdom now, I’ve more than understand that being compared is an inevitable thing that goes with our being twin brothers. More than that, we’ve chosen to go with two obviously different careers, though I can have chosen something more extravagant and moneymaking than his. He has this gift of mental strategy and amazing communication skills and who knows? The twin brother, the Thomas Lorenzo, I may be talking of now is already a certified multimillionaire.
And he always knows he has a brother totally proud of him. If my parents come to see me again now, I can predict with surety that I will see again faces expressing an emotion of mixed wistfulness and disappointment. I know I cannot, and I don’t, anticipate a look of pride from them. I can also recite their old lines that they use to tell me repeatingly. My mom will say I will be like this if only I tried to listen to them. My dad will remark that I shall’ve done this so I can be famous like my predecessors used to be. In one confused moment, I use to run their lines again in my mind and realize the situation they cited.
That I may have been richer, that I may have been renowned, that I can have been what they liked me to be. There are instances when I oddly ask myself questions that start with ‘What if .
.
.’ and imagine if I will look more troubled or even more respectable. What if I wear the formal coat and tie and carry a suitcase? Or sign papers for a big television contract?
Or make sketches and blueprints of highways and skyscrapers? Perhaps life can be a lot convenient for me. Bringing myself back to reality, I realize I never want any change because I know I’ll not even be half as happy as I am right now. Above anything else, I am more than contented of the blessings and graces I have received throughout my life and never will I ask for more or for any better. I cannot tell myself such statements that contains the words ‘If only .
.
.’ I’ve never regretted my decision of being here and I am a hundred percent certain that what I’ve done makes me a better and happier person.
Nothing can ever change it. Though my life now does not render or promise any mundane wealth, I am filled with satisfaction that my choice has never been wrong. But even with that contentment comes my subtle fear of other people’s opinion or rude judgment, even sometimes coming from our immediate family members. I am not honestly confident with myself and I admit I am still afraid how people whom I know use to judge me. A part of my whole self is still composed of the words people use to criticize, down and depress me all my life. I have constituted them as the moulders of who I must be and the jurors of how every person in the world will adjudge me.
Now, I always hope I’ve proven myself wrong with that. I believe now, and I think everyone else does, that God is indeed my  and everyone’s  judge. As far as I know (but I never intend to preach things that I, too, may hardly believe), it all comes down to the omniscient and unbiased One to keep the good sheep and burn the black sheep when the end of time comes.
If I am to look at Him eye-to-eye now, I fearfully don’t know to which colour of sheep I am included and what will I say to Him to save my soul. I don’t know whether I am worthy to be kept or worthy to be damned forever. But I’ve established that difference in my life right now and it sort of maintain my belief that I will spend a bit of my eternity in the cleansing stage of the purgatorio, as Dante Alighieri may have said it. In my life, I admit I’ve made more mistakes than anyone else have. I am just human and I am an imperfect being. I make mistakes like anybody else does. If imperfection hinders a person in living, maybe there’ll be nothing left in this world to live for. Maybe then heaven and earth will mean the same place. Men and women are born to make mistakes and be human; it’s the simplest testament to which I’ve lived for many times in the past. I believe then doing mistakes is just natural when I’ve lived this shamefully erroneous life. I believe my mistakes are the unruly by-products of the errors I’ve refused to correct.
And to finally correct those mistakes now is my first task after I’ve finished living my completely superficial testament. The only challenge for me is to get by with the wrong things I’ve done in the past. And now, I’m doing it in an extraordinary way, in a way no one else can have pictured of me. It may mean no difference or oddity, but doing it my own way is doing it like nobody else can do.
As I look at myself in the mirror right now, I may not be surprised if it reflects a lot different Danny now. These days, I may not look like my twin Thomas anymore. I still wear my handsome face until today, though wrinkles begin to form and my skin starts to show the slightest hint of looseness. But that smile, as I look at it  it’s everlasting. That terrific smile has never faltered appearing in my lips after all these years.
Time has tarnished but it still maintains its freshness even after ages wear out. That unfailing smile is the living testimony of my faith and the moving witness of the youth behind me. There’s not so much as a transformation except when I look further down. The polo shirt I’m wearing seems to have tightened a bit that I have to unbutton the upper two buttons to fit it comfortably on my body.
Despite undergoing a fixed exercising routine, my waist has grown an inch after only two short months. I also have to purchase a quite larger pair of slacks, at least an inch and a half larger, to suit my now heavier diet. My legs have also become a lot more muscular now, with some veins running tiny protrusions just above my ankles.
Thanks to my daily habit of jogging the perimeters of the nearby field from dawn to sunrise. Though the mirror has never shown it, my shoe size seems to be the only constant measurement in my body after two years. More than anything, I will of course notice the blazing aura that lights up my face each time I wake up to a new day. For three years, it contains warmth and gladness I use to have many, many years before. It has made me want to reminisce things and turn back the hands of time that seems to expire in a quicker pace. Now, it is my chance to rewind the events one by one in detailed form, all the significant and the insignificant ones that transpired coming into a new life. Each one has taught me a lesson and I owe what is happening now to this past that has always tried to approach and befriend me. So here I am, the product of the past twenty years that have gone by and the twenty years that are yet to come. The product of the purpose I am to discover and I am supposed to live for. 
