One year, one page

One of my outputs this year is a bio-profile I wrote for my grandchildren, dubbed as a “personal memoir” by others. As a language teacher, I am familiar of ways that others use to write a memoir. A known writer even reflected on the process of writing hers. I am not much of a standard-form devotee!

Being a creature in the meta-brain format of Europe that is biased for the sense of time over the engaging spread of space, I adopted a “one-year, one-page” format (rather than one place, one phase) for ease of writing, definitely easier on the reader. I adopt the same brevity format on handouts in my classroom pedagogy. I always counsel those who prepare a CV to focus on a straightforward one-page write-up. Interest is generated by one-page, or there is no interest at all.

I vowed to write these next few years on the metaphor of a seven-year itch. The one-year, one-page format is recommended but the reflection is more important than the form. The limit I imposed on myself is simply to get me disciplined in writing, though the product is no less authentic.

I’ve used the metaphor of 86-year-long existence. I mentioned my choice before and I will rehearse it once more. My Dad beckoned to the Mililani memorial call in 2007, when he completed his 95th year of existence. My mother will reach her 94th this September and she lies at the hospice care of Kuakini in Honolulu. She is medically incapable of caring for herself in her own dwelling anymore and so she needs to be close to a hospital facility for medical attention. Genetics is on my side for longevity, but I smoked my Marlboros for more than a decade before I cold-turkey’d so I am lopping off a decade off my statistical probability on longevity. I also think that one-moment-in-time of 86 years is an adequate period for decisional self-consciousness.

Some of my colleagues say that having an image of one’s journey is fine, but I need not write about it. The self-reliance upsets others whose stories rely on faithfulness to and dependence on cosmic powers, gracious or benign, or on a nebulous sense of “fate and destiny,” with all its foreboding and anticipation. 

The arrival point at self-consciousness is at birth. Some say that it happens later because they mark it when the mental map of the created “self” forms later rather than the actual reflexes in Mama’s womb on touch, sound, smell and taste. Maybe the seeing only happens at birth when one is finally out into the light, but my point is, the wealth of sense experiences and perceptions is well on its way by the time we wail our first at the doctor’s definitive smack on our heine.

The self-consciousness journey that started in ‘45 has a departure point projected for Dec. 15, 2031. There is no explanation for that choice save my personal neurosis, so we need not go there. The import, however, is that I can be intentional about life’s journey even if it is totally shrouded in infinite mystery in relationship to the total scheme of the cosmic journey.

The distance between arrival and departure is my sole responsibility, a point I have made and repeated so many times in this column, if only to impress one and all that our propensity to whine in the social sphere is to naught; it relies on getting others to behave the way we expect them to act rather than informing them on how we behave in the event that they may choose to follow our example. In my experience, protest is ineffective and the blame-game has short therapeutic value of self-serving nature.

One might raise the cause of human communication, a civilizational invention since Ugado the hunter-gatherer uttered ‘ugh-a-yah’ over Ugada’s dinner, when discourse was attempted as a mode of sharing feelings and exchanging ideas. Again, these are fine as long as we are not stuck in thinking that somehow relentless management of words and numbers attains a clear correspondence between symbol and reality on a one-to-one basis. We know that human metaphors trump dead formulations produced in academia at the altar of precision for professional certification!

So, I will stick to my one-year, one-page format for seven years before we exit the writing mode, hoping to narrate aspects of my journey in 10 forms rehearsed in a previous column. It would be a mistake to view our effort as achieving some goal. Our arrival at birth already equipped us with all that we need to unfold, like a pupa to a butterfly, a seed to a plant, a germ to a breath. A lot of energy is expended on our striving to attain more, either in wealth or social status. That is not my path.

The possibilities on my blooming are limitless and it is foolish to be anxious about it, let alone compare it to the journey of Ugado so I can feel better for being ahead. Duh!

One-year, one-page is “I, me, and myself” in journey. It is similar to that of everyone else’s including Ugada’s except I write my recollection. The question is not how well I narrate it from the gaze and gauge of others for I unfold without apology. It will serve readers’ interest to stick to their own narrating, too.