An early valedictory for 12.13.2031

I was not yet 18 when some 50 students across the nation spent two months at Jose Rizal’s Dapitan Mi Retiro park in Zamboanga del Norte in southern Philippines as the first Rizal Youth Leadership Training Institute ran by the YMCA with U.S. Embassy discretionary funds glossed over with corporate fronts.

Several tarp-covered lattice bamboo frond-laced dwellings with army cots and Spartan beddings were set up to house participants, to awaken Filipino youth’s self-consciousness beyond ego, to social sensibility, national passion, and worldwide communion.

A year earlier, I took Chemistry at Manila’s PCU from a dedicated German spinster who taught the class to pre-nursing white caps heading Mary Johnston College of Nursing’s way in blighted Tondo. Curious, I took a slice off my stomach mole and enlarged it under the microscope in the lab. Lo and behold, the image said: “Jaime Vergara, born Aug. 1, 1945, a gift of life into human history, to expire Dec. 13, 2011. Signed: God.” That marked my segue into self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and self-confidence!

It was a turning point in my personal journey. I have since created a phased personal education curriculum in increments of 17 years. In the spring of ’63, the national longevity figure for Filipinos was 66 for men and 68 for women. I am two years away from my terminus now, but 10 years ago, when I realized my kneecaps were going to outlast Article 12 of the CNMI Constitution, I extended my exit by a score! Those curious may e-mail for a copy of the curriculum.

I am celebrating a yearlong liuliu (66th) in the spirit of a Zhongguo metaphorical understanding that the time is come to forego the comfort of the familiar. From sunny Saipan and the tropical tranquility of the far-flung isles of the Marianas, I did exactly that. I am now in China’s frozen land amidst alien Jurchen, Han, and Wayan folks settled in Shenyang, one of China’s top 10 cities, whose culture before has been to us more a subject of academic inquiry than a living encounter in flesh and bone.

On MLK’s assassination day, I was in a car accident, and the events made me face the facticity of finitude. Statistical probability pointed to longevity in my genes. (My Dad reached 94 when he called 10-04, and my mom at 91 graciously lives out the sunset of her years in Oahu, so I am on target.) I smoked for a decade, and medical evidence suggests a modest pegging of 2031 as the year my lungs will give out. Thus, my new expiry date is Dec. 13, 2031.

Now, what has this got to do with CUC’s meter rate? Nothing. Really. Besides, if accused of pulling legs, particularly on the Chemistry story, I plead mea culpa. But if facts are fuzzy, the truth t’aint.

One of five strategic focus of my pedagogy is to expand the context of my students, on their identity and vocation. One graded activity in my Oral English class is a student’s introduction delivered extempo up front. One student whose expressed identity and vocation was passively latched to fate, stood in front of the class after 12 weeks and in the cadence of her ChEnglish, painted her existence including “getting married at 28, and having a baby at 30, but creating my job before then so that I will be productively self-employed, and my family has a means of support independent of other’s efforts.” Her context has been altered and behavior changed.

Whatever I may have contributed to the young lady’s context (not much by my reckon), I quietly toasted it over a cold bottle of Tsingdao the following night, along with the prayer that politicians and everyone these days be aware of the context from which they make decisions.

To paraphrase the Bill Clinton campaign, “It’s the context, stupid.”

Dichotomies are never to be trusted in the detail, but they are sometimes helpful in the big picture. When training U.S. PCVs in the ’80s, we characterized Eastern traditions as providing the mysticism of life’s mysteries, and the Western mind, the objectivity of the scientific mode. The first relies on “chance,” and the latter depends on “cause.”

I do not think life is exclusive of one over the other. In fact, we’ve all been blessed with the lady luck of chance (e.g., a Benjamin on our path). Nor could we forget desiring to play NBA-type basketball but were limited by being born only five feet tall! Of life’s chances and causes, choice is, nevertheless, an option, not only in changing the nature of our external situation when possible, but more importantly, in deciding how we relate to its givenness, caused or chanced. My student added choice to the repertoire that guides her destiny.

We face in two years our last and fifth phase from 68 to 85, as we hone the practices of humility in meekness, the elegance of simplicity in aging, and the graciousness of bedside candles in our dying.

One of my math whiz kids noticed that five phases at 17 years each only totals 85 but our timeline terminates in 2031 when we will be past 86.

Who said we were perfect?

Jaime R. Vergara (jrvergarajr2031@aol.com) is a former PSS teacher and is currently writing from the campus of Shenyang Aerospace University in China.