It's no news that my dad is my role model and this is simply because all my life, I've always been that kid who loves to say less and observe more, and all I've done is observe this man, the way he lives his life and the respect he gets for that.
There have been many occasions where I find myself just being happy just for the fact that he's my father, and I remember telling myself that I also want to be respected the same way he gets respected. So I try doing the same thing I see him do, I try living a respectable life...and this is because I know that you have to respect yourself in order for other people to respect you.
A while back I had written about my hostel and how some of the guys had taken the hostel president to the community vigilante group due to his mismanagement of funds. Well, one thing I didn't tell you guys was that meeting had ended with the chairman of the vigilante group handing over the entire hostel money to me, to hold for a short period of time.
Now this wasn't the first time I was being offered this money to hold, but I've always declined it in the past because I knew that when it comes to the matters of money, it was always a delicate one and the last thing I wanted was someone accusing me of doing something with the money that I obviously didn't do.
But seeing how that whole issue happened, I had no choice but to accept the money. That money had stayed with me for more than a month, and throughout that whole period, I had made sure to handle everything that had to do with that money openly. I was more than an open book and was always ready to give an account for every penny that was given to me, or spent.
By the end of the month, when I was required to transfer the money over to the newly elected hostel treasurer, the whole thing had gone so smoothly that everyone had been impressed by how I documented and handled the whole process.
I didn't know it at the time but doing things the way I did, gave them the understanding that they could trust me with their money, go to bed with both eyes closed and all of their cash would still be intact.
It wasn't until some weeks later when we needed to make some contributions at the hostel and everyone had asked me to be the one in charge of the money, that I realized how much respect being transparent and honest had brought me.
Unfortunately I had to decline for two reasons, the first being because we now had a hostel treasurer and it was his job to handle anything money-related, and the second reason being because I still hated holding money that doesn't belong to me.
But you see, that entire feeling, knowing that everyone at the hostel was willing to put their trust in me made me feel some kind of way....the kind of way I'm sure my old man has been feeling all his life.
