The Sunshine Post #19

Hello dears!

I’ve been spending a lot of time with old friends lately, and it’s been so nice. I’ve met a lot of great individuals in the past years, but it’s good to be with people who have known me since I was in kindergarten, playing in the swings and wearing pigtails. I tip the waiters here a lot because my friends and I get so engrossed in our conversations, we end up drowning out the whole restaurant with our laughter. Home is where you are with people who can emotionally blackmail you because they know you so well.

But I think this is the reason why a significant part of me dreaded going back home: I’m not particularly wealthy or anything, but I’m pretty spoiled here because of the people around me. My friends treat me incredibly well, especially because we’ve known each other since we were really young. I am very grateful especially for my guy (and gay!) friends who on the whole have entertained my every whim and fancy. Who else will teach me all about cars, the stock market, the recession, and all these other boring topics that need to be patiently explained to me? Who else will bike all the way to my house to give me vegetarian sisig out of the blue? (I guess he felt that I would starve here in Manila. Aww.) For everything I ever wanted to do, I always knew I had someone who can offer help should I need it.

I think that’s one aspect of living in a developing country that I am grateful for – having so many friends and a very strong sense of community. Being blessed with all these people made me deal with a bad boss a lot better, at least in some self-preserving psychological way. Dude, if my friends ever meet you, they will rip you apart for what you did to me!

As one who left home and spent years alone, one of the many experiences that stayed with me was working shifts for the yoga studio I frequented. Because money was tight and I couldn’t pay for classes anymore, I signed up as one of their workstudies – work a few hours every week maintaining the studio and you get free yoga. Woohoo!

As a workstudy, I mopped sweat off of floors, wiped mirrors, did hundreds of loads of laundry (You never know how many towels yogis would use, but man! It’s a lot.), cleaned sweaty mats, washed strangers’ used clothing and underwear, dealt with different bosses and teachers, fielded off sexual harassment (Some idiot on the phone; I’m ok, by the way. I told him I do taekwondo. Haha.), and once fell down the stairs while taking out the trash during a night shift when we were closing shop (Ouch!). I put on my happy face and gamely dealt with customers at 8 in the morning on Sundays -- surly New Yorkers who wouldn’t look twice at the girl behind the counter, swiping their credit cards and politely asking them whether they wanted a Vitamin Water or a Zico. There were so many nice people in yoga, though – if you must do customer service, do it in a yoga studio because people are generally nicer. It’s bad karma to be crabby in yoga.

I never thought much of that back then, but now, I think it was a good character-building experience. Where social hierarchy goes, people in customer service are generally placed down there in the ladder. I guess it’s not viewed as extremely intellectual, although I would argue that learning how to deal with different people’s moods and demands while being as amiable as humanly possible is a mind game in itself.

It feels very humbling and validating as a human being to know what it feels like to be in that position where you looked after people who only had their own interests in mind as paying customers. Your feet are more firmly planted on the ground because you have wiped that ground (in my case, with diluted Sol-U-Mel, yo. The smell was pretty addicting. Mmmm.) The best friends I’ve made in New York have all been waiters, bartenders, and hostesses while pursuing their dreams in acting, singing and musical theater. And they have been the most down-to-earth and fun people I’ve met.

I think everyone needs to have a job in customer service at least at some point in their lives, if at least to know what it’s like for people to think of you as “lowly” and “menial.” Everyone needs to be on the other side of the counter. I think that when I’m off to another foreign land all by myself again, I would choose to work in one of these service jobs, for a few shifts at least, in some café or diner or dojang whether I needed the money or not. It may sound crazy, but I think I have to remember what it’s like to feel just how cold humanity can be to you when they think you’re beneath them. Just to keep me real.

I think it’s what makes it sometimes difficult for me to be with a lot of the people I used to hang out with. A lot of my peers are driven in their luxury cars, are waited on hand and foot and have never mopped anything in their lives. They’ve not known real independence from their families because it was not necessary, and I can’t help but feel that this limits their perspective on the world. How can they help make the world better if they themselves have never struggled? They see poverty and hardship only through the tinted windows of their bulletproof BMWs.

We all run in the same circles too. I think that’s the annoying fact for us nomadic ones: you can never be anonymous. Everyone is related in some way; it’s like we’re inbreeding, yo! Gross. I think that’s one reason why there’s no sense of wonder when it comes to celebrity; we’re probably connected in less than six degrees anyway. My friend’s mother-in-law is the President, for crying out loud. (Eww, by the way.)

I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but I know that I will never be able to look at myself in the mirror and be proud of what I have accomplished if everything was handed down to me, or if things were made a bit easier by virtue of the life I was born into. I think that’s the curse of any oligarchy: mediocrity of ambition because you’re given so much so young, it’s hard to want for anything else. I still believe that we should live each day going beyond what we think is possible – to challenge ourselves whether we can be something bigger, something … more. To be passive and complacent because you were born into privilege is like becoming a bonsai – it’s purty, yo, but it’s not going to help curb global warming like a fully formed oak (oh fine, coconut tree).

I think that’s one reason why, despite me loving it here, I am itching to go off to other places and I won’t stick around home for long. I don’t want to feel content to the point that I will never want to be something more than what I am expected to be. I’m happy that my years in New York woke me up to the fact that I didn’t dream big enough; that I could be so much more than some chick with a PhD applying for tenure in 10 years – it’s not wrong, but I think I was created with this thirst for originality for a reason. I know that for the rest of my twenties and perhaps thirties, I will be traveling and seeing the world, meeting all of these fantastic friends while perfecting my craft and always pushing myself to go further beyond what I thought I could do.

In a way, though, I’m happy that all of these “paradigm shifts” happened to me now, even though having your life change over and over again made me think that someone up there became way too happy and excited rolling the dice of my life. I’m exhausted, man, but not yet broken. I’m so happy that my Quarter Life Crisis is over before my quarter life even began! It was over before I knew it, and I didn’t have to torture myself bracing for it to come.

At the very least, I know how I would want to raise my kids. Whee! I cannot wait to be a mom! Ohmygod, you guys! Can you imagine what fun I would have? I would make my babies organic sandwiches using that Sanrio toaster than burns Hello Kitty’s face on the bread and lots and lots of vegan cupcakes (of course), read them international bedtime stories, teach them sign language (one word every night), and give them at least 20 hugs a day. My kids will learn at least four languages from birth, can fix toilets and change car tires, would have read issues of the Economist, as well as the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and Confucian literature before they go off to the prom, and will all have black belts before they have their driver’s licenses. As a summer job, I will send them to Maria Grizzetti’s house where they will learn about cleanliness, organization, and proper gourmet cooking. Half of them will take after me and will be very bubbly and hyperactive, while the other half will be a lot more serious and sensible and take after their dad* whose personality is much tamer than mine.

* (One would hope, right? One crazy person is more than enough in any marriage).


Lots of love,
Cathy