BY GREG CASTILLA – TBT stands for Throwback Thursday. People use TBT in social media, like Facebook, to share old photos of themselves to reminisce the past or for nostalgia. In my column today, I am “posting” a TBT article that I wrote ten years ago not for nostalgia, but to offer a different perspective on how life has evolved at least for me.
A good life is what we dream of. But just like a dream, it doesn’t last long. It even takes away something that we want to keep. There’s excitement in many things that we do, but they don’t last. The experience of watching our children grow is something that we want to keep. But the excitement is replaced by apprehension and fear once they become teen-agers. Often, however, the act of taking away the experience unfolds slowly – sometimes painful, sometimes not so painful – only to be replaced with memories.
Memories are what bind us to many things in life: to our friends, to our experiences, to our loved ones. Memories are reflections of how we’ve lived. I’m grateful that I’ve experienced the good and the bad, the joy and the pain in life. I may not have gotten everything I wanted or everything I dreamed of, but I got much more than I could ever imagine. All this are etched in my memories.
In high school, my classmates and I didn’t only learn, but we experimented. Our hormones, like raging bulls, set us on fire. We learned how to drink and smoke. We tried to be daring and unrepentant. We thought we were invincible and wanted to be independent. We wanted a life of our own but we were not ready. We sometimes made bad choices – couldn’t avoid them really – but they became the foundation of our future because we learned how to convert those mistakes into opportunities. This is what separates a boy from a man – the ability to learn from one’s mistakes. What is missing in Gloria Stefan’s song when she sings, “We seal our fate with the choices we make,” is we can unseal our fate if we learn from our bad choices. So, in life, there’s never a closed door, only an open door, only opportunities.
At one point in our lives, we made major decisions – jobs, marriage, divorce, having children, buying a home, migration. We didn’t want to make mistakes. But mistakes happened. Some of us failed but we got up. There was a lot of excitement as dreams were realized. We were tested but we managed to survive and came out stronger. How we picked up the pieces when we failed oftentimes determines the quality of our life. That quality will pass on to the next generations.
As Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw puts it, “Life is not a brief candle for me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
Growing up, you realize that it’s your passion for something that sets you apart from others. As you pursue your passion, you condition yourself to sacrifice your family, a high-paying job, and even your life. But life has a way of testing yourself. And it won’t stop testing you until you realize that there are other ways to make yourself useful. You come to terms with your own vision of life vis-à-vis what you’ve learned from your experiences, from others, and from books. Life then becomes what you want it to be. Your life is your choice. To paraphrase Rev. Harry Ward Beecher, it’s like an artist dipping his brush in his own soul, and painting his own nature into his picture. It might be different from others, but it’s yours.
With the passing of time, you revisit your childhood, your teen years, and your adulthood. Armed with experience, you begin to appreciate why a child cries or why the poor remain hopeful. You see the glass as half-full, rather than half-empty. You understand the wisdom of your parents’ advice. Now that you are your parents’ age, you appreciate them more. Your children and grandchildren become the focal point of your being, knowing that soon you will be gone and they will be on their own without you. What a scary thought. But life is never permanent. It’s a journey. And just like any journey, it has its ups and downs, its beginning and end.
I wish I were young again. I wish I could turn back the hands of time. This is part of the dream that would never happen. I would never be the child again who would go up the stage at the end of every school year to receive a medal from my teacher. I would never be the young activist again who was ready to sacrifice everything to alleviate the poor from poverty. I would never be the immigrant again who had to endure subtle forms of racism because of the color of my skin. But I can always hope for something new, something better, and work for what I hope for.
Hope helps us see things differently. We may not be able to do everything, but we can always hope and do something. It may not be in our power to deal with everything that comes our way, but we have to start somewhere. Let’s start with our relationships.
We don’t let go a relationship just because it’s not perfect. The shaping of any relationship is always a compromise. If it fails, it’s because we fail. Life becomes meaningful only in relation to others. As children, as adults, as parents, and as grandparents, we will always be surrounded by people whose love – or lack of it – will shape what kind of children, adults, parents and grandparents we will become.
Then the temporariness of life flashes in our screen. Children move out and marry. Relatives move to other places. Friends are forever gone. Grandparents are bound to their wheelchairs. Mortality creeps in not with a vengeance but as a destiny. Life is not easy. Life is not fair. But life has been good. And it never seems enough.
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