Life is Simple,

TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2010

I’ve always told myself that when I am no longer marketable for my professional skills, I shall start a career in writing. I would write about everything that I went through my life and hope that I can share the stories to others who may find solace and comfort in the fact that I did survive my life’s journey and touched quite a number of lives along the way.

When I first told this to my closest staff in a New Zealand factory that I used to manage, my friends told me that they would rather wait for the book on my life’s journey, one even further said he would rather wait for the movie.

Of course, it was a joke and its just one of the many light-hearted relationships I have built with the people that have dotted my life’s ups and downs. Funny that at my tender (?) age of 54, scarred and bruised through my life’s journey, I can still hope and dream that I would be able to write some stories that others would care to read in the future. Like many of my small dreams that I reached, I honestly feel that even if my life’s stories inspire only one person before my curtain call, I could consider my life not wasted. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “To know that even one life breathe easier because you have lived, is the true meaning of success”, and I really believe him.

So here am I at another crossroad of my life’s journey, contemplating on the path that I should take among the options staring at me and waiting for my final choice. I know it would not be hard for me to choose which path to take because I have long set my simple life’s philosophy, that is to choose the path where lesser people will be hurt by my choice and with hope of finding new ways to share my life with those who may need my existence in their own life’s journey. I have gone through such crossroads in my personal and professional life both in the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia and I am happy to look back that I have randomly picked souls who needed me by their side until they no longer needed me. Of course there were people that were hurt and would be hurt by the choices I make, but I guess life is a simple accounting balance sheet, that is, for as long as the debit side far outweigh the credit side, my life would have been a productive journey and The Almighty One who gave me my life and all the skills, talents, and gifts would appreciate the net gain of my earthly existence.

My First Memories

I guess I should start from as far back as my memories would allow and the farthest back that I can recall was when we just moved to a new town east of Manila, Philippines. All I can remember was I had a brother a year older than me named Danny and three more older brothers Ferdie, Rod, and Lauro, in the order that they got involved with my childhood, and I had two sisters, Nene and Ate Belen.

I think I was only five years old then and we lived barely having nothing much but the clothes on our back. Later in life, my older brother Ferdie and sister Ate Belen would tell me the whole story why we ended up poor as a rat and starting over again in a new town.

I can remember the bare existence I came to see facing me right before my eyes but maybe because my young mind has no archives yet, everything were simply amusing to me than anything else, question keep arising in my mind, the whys and wherefores are like captions in every picture that my eyes can compose. Perhaps its because I was gifted by God with a very fertile mind, it kept a vast archive of pictures with captions and questions that I would later use as reference for my future decisions in my my life’s journey. Yes, I consider life more a journey than simply an inevitable existence and I honestly believe that the journey has a definite end.

How I Got to Start School

We were so hard up and my parents and siblings were too busy trying to find a way of living that they forgot that here I was growing up and needing to go through life’s normal channels, like school and careers and society. I remember one day I was relieving myself in our bathroom where I had to face a small window to do so and noticed that there were a lot of children at the big house at the back of our rented room so I asked my eldest sister, who has always been with me at home ever since I can remember, teaching me how to read, write, and mathematics, what is going on at the back house. My sister told me it is the start of the school year and the children are there for their first day in school. I asked my sister if I can be included in that school and that is the only time that they realized that I was already seven years old and needed to be enrolled for my first grade in school. We went to the school and inquired how I can be enrolled and among the requirements was a birth certificate to show that I am already of school age. Again, my family remembered that they have forgotten to get my birth certificate and had to get an alternative baptismal certificate from the Catholic Church. This time, they realized that I also have not been baptized, so my father hurriedly got two of his fellow bus drivers to come and become my baptismal godfathers for a quick ceremony intended simply to comply with the school’s requirements. Luckily, we got the baptismal certificate and I was accepted for my first grade. Later in life I would realize that much of my growing up years, I had to carve my own path and needed to gather as much knowledge, not only in school but in life, so the world was huge encyclopedia to me, with my mind archiving photos and moments in my waking hours and days and years.

My First Job

I did excel in my first grade because my sister had already taught me how to read, write, add, subtract, divide, multiply when I was around five years old, so my teacher decided to use me to teach a student with infected ears, Emilio, our daily lessons, since I was ahead of our lessons courtesy of my sister. This is also because maybe my teacher cannot stand the stinking smell of my classmate Emilio’s infected ear. In addition to this, my first grade teacher, Miss Estanislao, assigned me the task of buying her afternoon tea from a store next-door to our school, a bottle of Royal Tru-Orange and a pack of Skyflakes biscuits. Because we were so poor and we live just next door to my school, I never had any money for my snacks as I eat much at home before school, so I would not need snacks while in school. However, my fertile mind kept asking what the Royal Tru-Orange tastes like that my teacher wants it everyday, so I devised a way to be able to get the answer by sipping a bit from the straw on my way back to school. However, I noticed that every time I do so, bubbles stayed on the part of the straw above the soda line in the bottle, so I had to push them back to the bottom with a blow of air. Perfect, she would not have a clue that I sipped a bit of her soda. There was no way I could have a taste of the Skyflakes biscuits as its packaging was good that there is no way I could tamper with it without getting detected, so I had to accept the fact that I can never taste it so I kept my mind out of this idea. Funny that I have forgotten about this that an intimate friend of mine had told me lately that my age, 54 is actually the exact number of holes in a Skyflakes biscuit. This is an early lesson I would apply in much of my decisions in later years, that is you can achieve something you want without any problems for as long as you cover all the possibilities of the act. Of course, the purpose of the act is another thing, that is the reasons and the necessities of our acts would be dictated by the values and philosophies that we develop through our growing years. In my case, I had to put together all the pieces of the puzzle of life’s values and philosophis from the stories I heard my mother and father, in that order, would tell other people that I keenly listened to and kept a good archive in the back of my mind, hoping someday I can pick some clues from these archives for my future decisions to make in my life.

I did finish first grade at the top of my class and I was even part of the graduation program where I was part of a group that performed the native dance “maglalatik” and went up the stage with my mother pinning the “First Honor” ribbon on my chest. Luckily, a professional photographer snapped a shot of the event and sold the printed copy to my mother and this photo is part of the memoirs of my eldest sister Ate Belen.

The Realities of Life Unfolds

By my second grade in school, my heart and mind still at its purest form, I came face-to-face with pressure from my peers in academic excellence, so to speak. At this early age, I began to see beyond the basics of my social existence. I became aware of the importance of relationships in school, the community, and the world in general that would be critical to the recognition of your own existence. That it is not enough that you can master the lessons of the day in school and you will be assured of a hefty meal and comfortable bed to lay yourself to rest at the end of each day. I started to be see that academic excellence alone cannot be a guarantee of a good life, you need relationships and connections to the decision makers to enhance or at least compensate for whatever shortfalls you may have in your skills and capabilities, and that is what I did not have being a total stranger in this town with no known roots except my affinity to my uncle Martin, who runs a small bus company where my father worked as a bus driver and my brothers as bus conductors, bus inspectors, and carwash (actually bus washer) workers.

At this time, I came to realize that parental support in the community is a plus factor for being recognized in school as I saw relationships between my closest rival for the top honors in the class and their parents’ relationships with the teachers and staff of the public school i was attending. Somehow, their families knew each other while they have never heard of us except when the bell rings when they hear my family name, Manahan, and they tend to remember my uncle Martin, who owns the bus company aptly named Happy Valley. So, even though I am standing right in front of them, I do not seem to be someone or something of value except for reminding them of my uncle Martin, who owns the bus company. Almost always, the introduction ends with them remembering my uncle Martin than taking a closer look at me and my skills and achievements in school.

These hard realities of my early existence somehow distracted me from pursuing “academic excellence” and I started to focus on my relationships and existence in the community. This is the time I started to scout for people who could posssibly provide me the support that I would need in order to be recognized for my skills and cabilities. Having lost the focus on achieving “academic excellence”, so to speak, I slid into the second best in my second grade. I could not care any less who gets the top honors, I was busy head-hunting allies who could rescue me from being swallowed by the system. I looked around me then and realized there was no one I could hang on to for support in the school and community. I seriously considered establishing a personal relationship with the pharmacist on the shop next to our rented house because I had always liked the way she had carried herself, her kind words everytime we meet and the dignified way she dealt with her customers. But I never had the courage to get closer to her than sit in front of the pharmacy with my dog, Douglas. It was post World War II and almost every dog in the Philippines was named Douglas, after the saviour of the Philippines, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, with his welll remembered line “I Shall Return”.

On the other hand, my second grade teacher Miss Edna Jocson, the aunt of my classmate Nida Jocson, was always being fetched by her suitor, Mr. Cruz, also a teacher at the intermediate school across the block. So I never had a chance to even try to get closer to her and introduce myself as the son of a poor couple with much talent and skills in our daily lessons. Miss Jocson and Mrs. Cruz eventually got married and my second grade teacher became Mrs. Cruz. Mr. Cruz later became my gardening teacher in the intermediate grade. Again, he never remembered me as a former student of his new wife Mrs. Cruz.

By the third grade, I was lucky to have an old-fashioned single teacher Ms. Senga, who finally recognized my skills again and gave me all the advise I needed to refocus on achieving high grades in my academic studies. She further boosted my self-confidence by making me her student assistant in charge of distributing textbooks to my classmates and getting them back into the bookshelves after use. At the end of the school year, long after I have finished third grade, she would ask me to help her do the inventory of the textbooks issued to her for her third-grade classes and return them to the property custodian of the public primary school.

(pssssttt!, “this would be a long story, i am just in the first ten years of the 55 years i have used up and still using, so you have to wait patiently till I find time to continue, thanks for keeping me company, I promise I shall continue and finish this piece long before yours and my own life’s journey end”

POSTED BY PALABOY NG SYDNEY AT 6:32 AM