Pureza Ramiro Pacis retired in 2003 as assistant director of DSWD Region I. She has an ABSW from UP and MDM from AIM. She and husband Nick Pacis, also retired from DAR, hail from Vintar, Ilocos Norte. They have four children Nick Jr., a pianist; Maripaz, nurse; Roland, an engineer; and Deanna Marie, architecture graduate.
If my life were a book, it would definitely be The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I am now resigned to the influences of the wind. I now hoist a sail and let it move me. Not because it is foolish to fight the wind but because I am now an old woman and retired from government service.
"You are like your dad," my mom used to tell me when I was young. My dad was a military officer, and during the Japanese Occupation, when he was told to hide from the enemy, he was said to have retorted: "For what? I have not done anything wrong."
When I was two years old, my brother was four and my sister was l0 months old, the Japanese came to burn down our house, leaving my mom a young widow. Because of his strong will (stubbornness, according to my mom), she had to raise the three of us siblings single-handedly.
My idealism must have been honed at UP Diliman. I remember that when we had no university president, when radicalism was still in its infancy, I was one of the students that joined the rally in front of the Oblation, carrying placards "Buti pa yung butiki kasi may ulo, UP wala!"
I carried this idealism when I was applying for a job. When I was asked to bring with me a recommendation from our congressman, I decided to put on hold my government service and vowed to never ever ask a recommendation from any politician!
When, at long last, the PRC instituted the board exams, after hibernating for so many years in the province and teaching whatever subject was assigned to me, I went back to my career with a vengeance. You think that was it was always a picnic? It wasn’t.
Now retired  and I don’t have to secure clearance from my head office  I can say that there are as many politicians as there are as many people in the world, and you have to deal with them if you want to survive. For, after all, politics is people. And we, who deliver the services to the public, are their partners, the conduits.
I was lucky that the mayors and governors we worked with were trying to be development-oriented, and it was upon us to do the coaching and teaching. Eventually some of them became personal friends though we never lost touch of our professional selves.
Have they recommended applicants for various government positions? Oh, yes, but we institutionalized the Personnel Service Board where we evaluate applicants according to their qualifications.
Were the projects they were recommending for the benefit of their constituencies or for their own aggrandizement? For this, our guiding principle was: for the good of the greater number. We made our Bidding and Awards Commitees functional.
Do politicians have prima donna tendencies? Much has been said about President Gloria Arroyo, but when she was our department secretary when she told us to meet her at the airport at six o’clock, we had to be there at five. That was how workaholic she was.
When GMA was our guest at a very remote barangay, where we had to request her to make her parade in review on a decorated tricycle, to which she graciously obliged. In one of the provincial sorties of the President where I, standing in for my boss, was to escort GMA to an official function and a dinner hosted by a personal friend of her late father, she proved to be so easy to please  contrary to her alleged tantrums.
Still another close encounter was when I escorted her to another remote barangay on a solitary helicopter ride. I even had the guts to ask her, "Madam, isn’t your vision to eliminate poverty rather ambitious? Can we not just say ‘to minimize’?" To which she good-naturedly gave her justification, " At least we can dream, can’t we?"
That was so long ago. They are all but memories now. If I wanted to go further than deputy position, I could have secured a recommendation from the powers-that-be, but I would remember the silent vow I made to myself, "To thine own self be true."
I was stubborn up to the end!
Now as I gaze at the sail I hoist and let the wind move me in gay abandon. I feel peace of mind knowing I have done my best, for having been always true to myself, which is the trophy that I got  just like the prized catch of fisherman Santiago in The Old Man and The Sea.