Crossing bridges and pre-departures

Yesterday I celebrated my 53rd birthday, or if you’re Chinese, then it was my 53rd and 8th months of life. It has also been a year of being rudely reminded of the fact that people I know personally and who are my age have started to take their “terminal leave”.

Last Saturday I mentioned this to a group of good friends, some young, some older, and I pointed out that people my age were now within “THE ZONE”; that time or point in life where death begins to be an undeniable occurrence, leaving you thankful that it isn’t your name in the obituary or your body inside the casket.

Aside from the personal and social obligations, the catered food and the impromptu reunions, I think some people go to funerals for purposes of confirmation that someone did die and as a form of “dark” thanksgiving that they were left behind but alive.

My friend Willie Soong was quite startled by my casual reference to being in “THE ZONE” since he was at least a decade older but not wiser than me. Willie responded with: “if you’re in THE ZONE, then where does that put me?”

Without batting an eyelash I replied: “In the pre-departure area!”

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The summer heat has been punishing just as it always has been, but I now realize that the only reason we have the impression that it gets hotter each year is because we get older each year.

From the “can’t touch this” crowd of sun lovers who are out to get a tan and unafraid of skin cancers, we have now become the ice cream and butter crowd.

Soft, yielding and melting!

In my younger days I often wondered why the mature fashionista only partied at night. Well, I now know that wrinkles can be a national preoccupation for those 45 and above and how heat and glare instantly give us a migraine!

The real indicator of how we have become the “ice cream and butter crowd” is the fact that many people at our level have spread “the gospel of cool” as in open your air-conditioner and don’t bother yourself thinking about the bill because it would be cheaper to pay the extra P3,000 to P5,000 a month instead of a big hospital bill because of heat related disorders.

Life has certainly changed when air-conditioning finally became a form of preventive medicine!

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Since I am officially past the age of having a “mid-life crisis”, I don’t think anyone can accuse me of mingling with the young in order to stay young. But I would certainly suggest it to parents as a way of crossing bridges over the generation gap and to learn what we need to learn and not just what we demand from the young.

The first thing I discovered was that our problem was not about a “generation gap” but “our generation” creating a time gap. We have committed the same thing we accused our parents of doing; not having enough time for us!

Generation gaps are not some phenomenon of Physics that come out of nowhere. Generation gaps occur when one generation shifts time, attention and relations to other priorities and thereby abandon their children and create a “separated generation” from what was once just a single unit called the family.

 The second thing I realized is that parents can’t deal with the fact that their kids “don’t get it”. Whether it’s a rule, a principle, or a system of doing things, parents are angry and bewildered why their kids can’t get the rhyme or reason. Hanging around a younger generation of men, I noticed how those who have a lifetime of mentoring, act or think more maturely than those whose parents died or were not around to mentor their sons.

The mistake is to start branding people as dumb or immature. The even bigger mistake is to tell them what you think and call them names. If you take the time to understand how one achieves maturity, then we would all realize that it is all about time and time is about age, about time invested and time spent on a person or with a person.

Don’t expect a person to mature simply by reason of age. They simply get older, not smarter. Having your kids around as workers or employees may give them training but not necessarily mentoring. Having them around all the time does not make them closer either.  

We will all reach maturity in terms of years passing by unless you draw the winning number before the zone, in the zone or at pre-departure. Interestingly many of us will also struggle or hold back in some areas. Some choose to do so by being a kid at heart, an adventurer, an aged athlete, a relentless dreamer or a romantic. There will always be a part of that child in us that refuses to grow old. 

This summer, I’ve joined my daughter in a beginner’s art class under Fernando Sena who once showed me that even an old man could learn to draw while I interviewed him on “Straight Talk”. God-willing I hope to join her at the Surfing Academy if only to make a complete fool of myself as the whale on a surf board to give her a few laughs. Then I’ll get even by bringing her on a fishing trip and have the pleasure of watching her squirm as she places the bait on the hook.

In between that, I hope to convince David Feliciano to teach me and train me how to become the oldest Drift driver in the Philippines. Only by doing things with them can we cross the bridge and close the gap! So go ahead make a fool of yourself and have the last laugh!