Life, Day by Day

I just got home from a dinner date with high school classmates, one of whom is visiting from abroad.  Although there were just the three of us, we had a lot of fun reminiscing about our younger days and sharing stories about our lives now.  It dawned on me as I was driving home that although we have long been living separate lives, there will always be ties that bind us together, just as some of these also bring up ghosts of our past.

Ever since the news of the crash of the airplane carrying DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo just off the shores of Masbate flashed on TV, a lot of mixed feelings arose in me. I do not know the man, nor am I familiar with what he has accomplished, but somehow his death became a personal loss. More so when all the stories about his exemplary life as a public servant started to be told. This country and people need men like Secretary Robredo to bring us out of the rut that we are in.  And what made this so sad was the fact that just as the light at the end of the tunnel seems to grow brighter for the Philippines, one candle was abruptly snuffed out, thus dimming the way once more.  I think I am really grieving for this country's loss.

As I am making more progress on my parents' respective family trees, I am also discovering a lot of family secrets...or maybe they were not really secrets but just got buried in the past.  As I unravel our family histories, I realize that human behavior then was not much different from what it is today. The only difference is that in the past there were clear cut rules on appropriate behavior while in this modern age, what is right and wrong has become relative. The poignant movie The Age of Innocence is a good example of how relationships and it's complications were handled by the middle and upper class in the 19th to the mid 20th century. There was a standard of behavior that put emphasis on importance of family and respect of society. If you fail to observe these, you are banished, exiled or marked as a persona non grata doomed to be set aside and ignored by family and society the rest of your life.  In the past, arranged marriages were common and if you're lucky, you m...