An old man’s ides of March

The oft-expressed view is that behind every successful man is a failed husband and father. I am confirmed on the husband and father part, and evidently, I need to chalk in “lover,” as well. As to being successful, I gave up that pursuit long time ago.

I self-diagnosed bipolarity in college so there is an antisocial element in my behavior that shows up in mood swings. I have shunned the rites of recognition. I did not march in the rituals of completion at graduation in elementary, high, college, and graduate schools. I spurned the DD Council’s award of Parent of the Year once, a rather costly political mistake. Somewhere in my upbringing, there did not develop any strong desire to be recognized as an achiever nor clamor for the certificated appreciation for efforts expended in engaging endeavors.

One of my students recently lashed out at me: “Old man, get off my face!” She took exception to a comment I made about her academics. She was determined to rebel as an act of self-assertion while she bloomed at puberty. It made me face the reality that I had grown too old to orchestrate the fun and games of teaching. It was time to retire.

My mother spent her few precious pesetas so that I could ride on the 15-minute promotional Philippine Air Lines flight in Northern Luzon in high school, leaving the indelible impression that international travel in my time and my circumstances (my Dad was in grad school in Kentucky at the time) was a choice and not a hurdle, not a case of “whether or not,” but of “when.”

My HS Social Studies teacher thought I should mingle with the elitist members of section one in my junior HS year (there were six classes of more than 40 students each) so I discovered cognition and hobnobbed with the cream of the crop. That qualified me to a confused self-conscious journey through the dark subterranean passageway of early teenage-dom. The preoccupation of the children of the well off and the prominent was not always focused on academics. Jimmy the Runt’s hormones (I was the youngest in my class) finally caught up with puberty, but the real boys dabbled in manly vocational stuff like woodworking. I was in sissy retail merchandizing but the school editor talked me into writing a story, and ‘the moving finger having writ’ had not ceased journeying ever since.

A maternal great aunt taught me social graces among the town’s high and mighty; being of the poor cousins in my Uncle’s household aligned me with the laboring peons of the land and the squawkers of the palengke plebs. Young Senator Ferdinand Marcos and his fast-to-the-tune Imelda showed up at the house once, and I was struck by the obvious fact that both pulled their pants, like everyone else, one leg at a time. Familiarity of both domains, being lucid about the difference, came in handy in my glocalization process that traversed six continents, awakening with nationalist Rizal to struggling with south African Mandela. The vocational passage continues to journey these days of the Obama era.

The Runt would find his vocation among the haridjans/dalits in the village of Maliwada in Maharastra providing the concrete assault on my otherwise bourgeoisie disposition. Gandhi’s “untouchables” symbolized a global contradiction—humans inhumanity to other humans. The base-communidad of post-Medellin Catholicism had the Sud-American Catholic Bishops siding with the poor and propelling the ekklesia to social justice, to the consternation of the crusted red robes of the Vatican.

The epistemology of post-WWII existentialists would provide the imagery of the theology of hope, the liturgy of freedom, and the strategies of liberation. Gazing into the nozzles of eleven M-16s from Ferdinand’s martial law boys on the island of Mactan, accused of sheltering personae with No Permanent Address (aka, New Peoples Army), came as baptism by fire. It, however, steeled the resolve that nothing in this world was going to intimidate this life back into the infantile culture of fear and the juvenile shackles of intimidation.

Imbibing in the ecumenics of the day, I understood myself endowed, like everyone else who comes into this earth, as one, unique, unrepeatable gift of human life in history; there has never been one like me before, and there will never be another one like me ever again. So, how dare I live this life on the whimsical requirements of social status and fleeting acclaimed achievements, or worst, latch on the illusory promise of another life later, when the call of present reality is rich, the magnet of authentic living challenging, the transparency of sheer consciousness infinitely boundless, all resident in the world of spirit that is in the midst of this world, in the here-and-now!?!

I remember the Galilean brother who witnessed that to “save your life, you lose it; to give it away, you find it!” Followed the advice, particularly Rabindranath Tagore’s sense: “Our aim must be to restore to the villagers the power to meet their own requirements.” SJ Tielhard de Chardin thundered: “The task before us now, if we shall not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices, and rebuild the earth.” The current contradictions on CNMI labor and immigration, and the ecological implications of the Marianas marine monument have not lessened the relevance of one’s covenant and vocation.

These days, there is fatigue in my bones. To be sure, there is longevity in my genes. Statistical probability points to another score, but my ears hear the clanking of Mephistopheles’ spade, and when shadows beckon, we harken, I reckon.

I just relinquished the security of a job to remind PSS and the Board of Education again that they are treating teachers like servants in bonded servitude; to promote among teachers a climate of cooperation within the learning community—particularly among students—rather than perpetuate the culture of intimidation and its consequent practices of putdown and bragging rights competition prevailing.

Meanwhile, in a globalized food chain gone awry, I join the motley few in localizing food production. While we are reminded this month of the tradition that says: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return,” I invite others in the quietude of the in-between to exercise their freedom. “We need not wallow in dust when we could be busy tilling the soil, fertilizing it with our pee, and watering it with tears of joy.”

Dag Hammarskjold, former UN General Secretary, wrote about being chosen and being thankful. I find no comfort in thinking that one is “chosen.” I am clear that I chose my path, and thereby, I live its consequences. Success has not been my holy grail, and the rewards of well-tended relationships had not been my bounty. I’ve left shredded illusions, shattered dreams, and tattered delusions along my way sans regrets or apologies.

To be reminded then that I am an old man bars me from the remaining escape into flights of youth that had blinded my last decade. There is a deep sobering sense of quiet now, of an unintimidating and humbling sense of failure that abides even as colleagues’ ashes one-by-one are boadcast into the four winds, and the lucidity lingers; but girl, oh, boy, what glorious journeys of failure it has all been, and this old man, in the ides of March, is indeed, and nevertheless, if not precisely for the unerring gift of realism, is very thankful!