There are always two-way in every road we travel, up and down, left and right or back and front. There is positive and the negative the black and white. Even a respected institution respected for years has skeleton in the closet. And yes, I was once part of that dark closet. Amidst successful individuals lies dark recreational elicit activities, cheating… extra marital affairs….sex scandals…..office staff elicit affairs and yes even substance use. I am guilty of some combination of what I have mentioned earlier.

What seems innocent and professional office on the outside is rotten immorality happening inside on all its four walls. The year 1996 when I got enticed along with office colleagues’ peer pressure or the pressure of the idea to be “in” plus with the maddening office work pressures got me invited to try substance use. So I don’t want to be involved with elicit extra marital affairs, I don’t want the idea of getting involved again with co-workers it gives me so many headaches before. I don’t do gambling also, it’s a bad business sense. Working in sales is a pleasure and pressure. Pleasure because it pays well and pressure because of the quotas and targets. Easy quick fix becomes the easy way out, especially if you are in a competitive and materialistic environment. So I choose another path which started as just an “innocent” unwinding becomes a stressful vice that eating my life to depend on it as cure to all my troubles at work.

Last year 1997 it’s a struggle to focus as I go up the ladder of success the corporate ladder has two directions the ups and the downs. I go up for more career milestones but go down with vices and earthly minute pleasures. It is seems like an over-the-counter OTC solution that is easily accessible, especially now that it is rampant and somewhat tolerated by “liberated” peers. Because of the materialism of my environment all wrongdoings becomes legal.

How I always pray to God and wish to quit. I sometimes wanted to quit my successful career, give up my job, rationalizing in my thoughts that the more successful I become the more I am destroying myself thru vices. And it is beginning to push me to eventually seclude myself, because my soul dictates that I am not in a healthy environment, my office becomes a department store of immorality.

I struggle daily, I win some, and I loose some. There are moments that I conquer the pressure not to depend on earthly pleasures of this “recreational substance “ and there are few if not perennial moments that I was leaded by my immoral environment to give in, “anyway everybody is enjoying sin and why I am going to exempt myself.

God has a painful way of leading us in the right path. I believe that the painful incidents early 2008 are not accidentally happen to me. But it is the answer to all my prayers. God intervenes in His right time, I surrender my career, my pride, my money as He teaches me the lesson of money don’t buy happiness, and success don’t make a person respectable. It is having peace, love and joy that come in making God as the center of my life.

I have jump out that den, I am now free. It is not wrong to choose friends and office peers as long as my morality and spirituality will be protected. I am determine to stay free because material things does not making me happy. But working my best to be of service to others and for the Glory of God. As St. Paul wrote to us that do not be yoked together with unbelievers. I left that environment and I thank God I am in good company!