The following is an email which my dad sent to his high school classmates through their electonic mailing list. For many of us who are starting out with our careers, it's good to be reminded of the things that truly matter.

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To : "class70"
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2002 11:03:22 -0800 (PST)

Subject : Carpe Diem

Dear folks,

As I prepare to visit the remains of the father of a batchmate, I am drawn back to my own personal awakening a few years ago.

I was engrossed in career, in money matters, in winning the rat race and as you guys know, the higher you go up the corporate ladder and the more you have, the more the tension, the pressures, the minutiae that one has to attend to on a daily grinding basis. There are not enough hours in day.

And then all of a sudden my aunt died. Two weeks comatose in the intensive care unit and she was gone. She was an old maid and we considered her as our second mother who supported and helped out and cared for me and my siblings, all throughout our lives.

And as I stroked the hair of my comatose aunt, I had so many words of gratitude and love that I wanted to say. But her bloated body was struggling for its every breath and I could not reach her. I felt so frustrated, so weak, so powerless.

And the finality of death hit me with such force. Tapos. Kaput. An emptiness, a vacuum. I can never pull back time, even for just a minute, to express and show feelings that I had for a loved one.

I then looked at my two sons. PJ was about to graduate from college; driving his own car and leading his own life, we would have to twist his arm to attend family gatherings. I distinctly remember the days when he would happily sleep in our room. Now, we very rarely even get to talk to him. The little boy has turned into a man and I was at the office too busy to watch him grow before my eyes. I determined that I would get to enjoy my other son, Jem, a little bit more.

The pressures from the office, the growth of my sons, the death of my aunt all seemed to coalesce to goad me into a decision. Money or quality of life? How much is enough?

So I retired after 20 years with Ayala, 25 years of corporate life all in all. That opened my perspective on life.

Today, I am part of the “hatsun” brigade of the Ateneo— hatid-sundo of Jem [although next year, he’ll probably be driving himself]. In my retired state, I go to the office of my sister as consultant where I also do my e-mails in the comfort of an air-con room with a secretary. The best part is— it’s ten minutes from the house and I’m relatively free from the traffic which I singularly detest.

Kahit makulit at matigas ang ulo nila, I persevere everyday to see my parents who are now both 85. I even bring along my dad to the family office just to let him read the newspapers and doze off in the couch while I do e-mail and my daily chores. Looking at him humped over in the chair, I know that his life was given for his family, for us his children. Filled with gratitude, I try to do the many small things to show my appreciation, now— when they're still around.

In the end, if you really analyze it, these acts of gratitude are not for them, they’re for me! In my mind, sinubukan kong suklian kahit kaunti ang lahat ng pinagkaloob nila sa akin.

Guys, if you still have your folks, count yourselves blessed. Embrace them and tell them you love them. NOW. Carpe diem. Seize the day. It ain't ever coming back.

Best regards,

Jojo B

I sometimes forget how old I am. Being around my brother's friends, I am reminded that, unlike them, I was born on the last year of the age of hippies and Woodstock. I'd talk to them about The Perfect Strangers and Michael Jackson's songs when he was still African American. All I'd get were blank stares. I would often feel old.

It was therefore a pleasant surprise when, surfing through channels last night, I stumbled upon a re-airing of Voltes V [which they dubbed in Filipino]! Suddenly, I was seven again, calling out the names of my childhood heroes: Steve, Big Bert, Little John, Jamie Robsinon and Mark Gordon! I did not forget a single detail: Camp Big Falcon, the Japanese lyrics to the volt-in theme, Voltes's many hidden weapons. I even remembered the particular episode they were airing: when Mrs. Armstrong was killed when she piloted a jet into a beast fighter in order to save the Voltes Team from certain death!

The episode transported me back to those lazy late afternoons when, coming home from school, I would park myself in front of the television set, and, eating my merienda of chicken sopas, I would lose myself watching my cartoons on channel 13! Most days, it was Voltes V. On others, it was the RoadRunner! Sometimes, they would show re-runs of the Bugs Bunny series! I can even remember one particular episode when Bugs is unwittingly kidnapped by Marvin the Martian's flying saucer:

Bugs: Hello, ob-jay-dar, hello space probe, hello earth. . . . But if that's the earth, where the cotton-pickin-heck am I?
Marvin: Why, you are on Mars, isn't that lovely?
Bugs: Mars? You mean the planet Mars?

Indeed, it is only now that I fully realize that I am a child of the 1980's. We learned our English from Sesame Street, and our Filipino from Batibot. Our video games were the game-and-watch and the Atari. Ours was the time when computers had 5 1/2 inchs disks for memory devices, and [ctrl]-K-B had some significance as we typed our documents on WordStar. We were obsessed with Japanese robots: Voltes V, Voltron, Grendizer, Mazinger-Z, Mechanda Robot, Daimos. We pined for an Optimus Prime toy, and memorized the dialogue to the Transformers Motion Picture.

Later on, we graduated to G.I. Joe's and Robotech. We bought Nintendos and went crazy over Super Mario Brothers. We just had to have the latest Trapper Keeper designs, and we bought the latest casette tapes of Pearl Jam. The more baduy of us watched Bagets, and even, perhaps Mikee Cojuangco's Forever.

It was a magical decade.

Of course, most of us are working now, nearing age thirty faster than we'd be comfortable to admit. In a year, it will be a decade since many of us graduated from high school. Some of us have gotten married. Some of us have sired children. Some have become lawyers, or doctors, or film directors, or businessmen. And yet as varied as our careers have turned out to be, we are forever bound by the events and influences which shaped that magical decade. As John Updike wrote:

We took the world as given.
Cigarettes were twenty-several cents a pack,
And gas as much per gallon. Sex came wrapped in rubber
And veiled in supernatural scruples—
Call them chivalry . . . .

Psychology was in the mind; abstract
things grabbed us where we lived; the only life
worth living was the private life, and— last,
Worst scandal in this characterization—
We did not know we were a generation.

And so, children of the eighties, here we are. As we come to our own, as the torch is passed to us, I can only pray that we will leave our children with the same fond memories we experienced during our own coming of age. In the meantime, many of us will smile ruefully as we watch the next generation of children get hooked on the things that marked our own childhoods: Volltes V, among others. We may even watch the shows together with them, and for that brief thirty minutes, we will be seven years old all over again.

How the rain makes us remember. . . . How the rain makes us look ahead. . . .

Yesterday, I stood outside on the half-drenched concrete, watching as the clouds formed a mild grey above me. It was the first rain of the season. The pungent sweet smell of dry asphalt filled the air around me— it was the fragrance of parched earth— and I knew that the summer had finally ended.

What fascination I have with the rain can perhaps be explained by the melancholy musings that, from time to time, I find myself yielding to, evoking memory, heightening regret. Indeed, there is a certain sadness that accompanies the rain: a certain constant, dull, nagging loneliness that seeps into soul and being, intensifying longing, leaving one cold and wet. It is a loneliness that we need from time to time, I guess, if only to remind us that we are still human.

Just this morning, as the rain fell hard on my way to work, I remembered those comfortable drives, cold and fuzzy on similar rainy days, as I went early to Rockwell, when I was still a student of law. I remembered the simplicity and the rhythm by which we lived our lives, a simplicity which we did not then realize, because we were too caught up in our small petty issues. (If only we knew!) There was a comfort in the regularity of those days, a security of seeing the same people, the confidence of doing the same things. And I remembered also the mild excitement of the possibility that classes would be called-off, and the plans that suddenly materialized in order to pass the time. But most of all, this morning's rain reminded me of the people I left behind there, who surely went ahead together with me, but became, inadvertently (myself as well), different people. Who were we in first year law school, second year, third year, fourth year, do you still remember?

Indeed, it is some comfort to know that even in the midst of these seemingly jarring changes (I thought), it is still the same rain that falls. In that great cycle of nature, the water which fell upon our backs as we crossed with our books to our classes and to our friends, will fall again, as we cross to different places and seek wider horizons. It is this promise of the rain that I remember as I cross the street to work today, under a different and perhaps greyer sky than what I had known before.

Indeed, that the rain will fall is certain: a signal that seasons change. Yet in that change, I put faith in the fact that nothing is lost, nothing is wasted. As the Spanish say, nada se pierde, todo se transforma. The rain is a reassuring reminder.

A charming poem I found scribbled in one of my college notebooks. It's not by me, though; I think a college blockmate [or her then beau] composed it. Strange, what one finds in old college stuff.

Ano nga ba tayo
kung 'di alaala na lamang
na ikekwento sa mga
magiging apo natin,
kung sumagi man sa isipan?

Ano nga ba tayo
kung 'di saglit ng magpakailanman,
binabalikan,
natapos,
bago pa man mag-umpisa?

Ano nga ba tayo
kung 'di ang magkabilang hati
ng iisang buo,
naghahanapan,
hindi magkatagpo?

Aquí estamos otra vez, intentando figurar de cuál hacer después. Era un salto que intentaba reunirse todavía, a pesár de todo que se sucede ya, y a pesár de todo que será a ocurrir. Era probablemente más el concepto equivocado en mi cabeza— que este vez, él será diferente; que este vez, él será mejor. Y entonces trago otra vez mis orgullos y dudas, intentando convencerle que sea realmente un individuo agradable, un persona de mérito, un hombre cambiante. No puedo negar que tomaste un salto también; que habíamos tomado el salto conjuntos.

Pero el problema con conceptos en mi cabeza es que estan demasiado ideales y demasiado perfectos. Y como con todos cosas que sea ideales y perfectos, al fin, uno acaba decepcionado y descenso.

Y por eso, aquí estamos otra vez, en al borde de otro silencio frío, descubriendo el que ha estado mirando fijamente nosotros en la cara desde que: que tenemos relacion que, de largo desde, ha prescrito.

No, no está debido a la gente alrededor de nosotros. Y ni uno ni otro es él una falta del deseo en nuestras partes. Simplemente (y absolutamente tristemente), es nosotros— cómo tratamos de uno a otro, cómo no somos cómodos con nuestros historias; cómo no estamos seguros de nuestros futuros.

Entonces, por favor, no me digas que yo no intenté bastante, porque lo hice mucho. Más que puedes imaginarse. No me digas que no pensé de ti, porque lo hago, cada vez que yo soy solo o asustado o el lastimar. No me digas que me odias, cada pulgada y el alma de mí, porque yo sé que estás diciendo esto solamente porque estás enojado, o porque no sabes qué hacer también.

No me digas todas estas cosas, porque me demuestra que has faltado el punto de los dos de nosotros. Porque cada vez que dices estas cosas, me recuerdas que no tenia nunca razon sobre ti, en la primera vez.

After one passes the Bar, everything else seems so anti-climactic. Talking to our Managing Partner before leaving for a Testimonial Dinner the firm was tendering for our honor, I told him that passing the Bar seemed like a distant memory. Due perhaps to the humdrum of the work-a-day world, reality is dulled into a routinary rhythm of assignments and tasks, so that any previous elation is reduced to a simple statement of fact: we passed. I guess it's the classic human response to finally getting what we've long worked for. The satisfaction, while admitted, is not exactly what we thought it would be.

And so, while family and friends have suggested that I celebrate the event with a party, I opted to let the moment pass with a Mass and dinner at one of my favorite Italian restaurants. This was enough.

And so, as the weeks marched on from that fateful day in March, I went about my work and looked forward to living the rest of my life, without nary a thought that something was happening in the background. Perhaps it was because I was too wrapped up in the everyday routine of work and worry, I did not notice things happening around me.

It started one afternoon when a friend, Euge, texted me that he urgently needed to speak to me and whether I was free on the evening of 5 May 2006. I told him that I had a firm badminton tournament in the evening, but that I would gladly meet with him. He was being sued for perjury, after having executed an affidavit in a case he was handling. The complainant was blackmailing him in exchange for dropping the charges.

In the meantime, I overheard my mom talking to someone over the phone one morning, insisting that the person she was talking to attend a party she was throwing that same Friday night. I figured it was her high school friends planning a party. It seemed normal enough.

And so, as 5 May 2006 approached, I got more and more curious about my friend's perjury case. Almost nine months after the Bar, one gets rusty with the details of the law, and so I had to brush up on my penal code provisions, trying to think of possible defenses to his predicament. I was also informed that he would be meeting with the complainant that evening, and appreciated my presence in order to sort things out.

Deciding to skip our badminton tournament, I rushed back to the house intending to make an appearance at my mom's party. However, my friend was insistent: the complainant was already there. And so I drove straight to Seattle's Best along E. Rodriguez to meet with my friend, who promptly narrated to me the facts of his case. For over an hour, we strategized on how to handle the situation, thinking of the possible consequences which a criminal charge would cause.

The complainant, however, was taking such a long time in arriving, and so my friend suggested that we go to my house first to wait for him to arrive. I agreed, thinking that there being my mom's party at home, there would be food to eat anyway.

And so I arrived at the house, seeing all the cars parked along the street. My mom's guests, I thought. I entered the house with my key, with my mom meeting me, shouting “Surprise! Surprise!” I didn't quite get it: why was she shouting, “Surprise!” when it was her party anyway. It was not until I saw my law school classmates in the dining room that I realized that I was had. Big time.

The only thing I could say was, “Teka, anong ginagawa n'yo rito?”

Later on, I realized that even my good friend and classmate at the firm, Cheeky, was in on it. My mom had called her many times in the office trying to orchestrate the conspiracy. She said, later, that it was really hard trying to keep a straight face as I tried to discuss with her (quite seriously) what the elements of perjury are, and how we could mount an adequate defense!

While it was a decidedly tiring day, as it was a decidedly tiring week, it was great seeing people whom I had not seen in a quite a while, people whom I had been missing, people who, indeed, mattered.

I've only had another surprise party in my life (during my 26th birthday), and during both times, I couldn't help but feel the presence of the people that were there, and the good wishes which they brought. It was truly a comfort for the heart.

And so, again, as always, thank you to those who surprised me with their presence and good wishes. To my Mom, Dad and brother who surely instigated the commission of this conspiracy, and who surely found it difficult keeping the details secret; To Eugene, who actively participated in the conspiracy and spread the word of the party; To Cheeky, who tried really hard to keep a straight face at work, as my mom called her to confirm my plans for the day; To my lawschool classmates: Kerwin, Lynette, John, Ting, Perly, Ann, Shalu, Ila and Raffy, and, Gelo and Esel, who have always been there to share celebrations in each other's lives, over the last five years; To my Choirmates, the Rockwell Club, and my Poker Buddies (many of whom are busy preparing for the 2006 Bar): Itin, Leah, Paul, J.A., Gail and Owen, Chris, Simon, Gian and Yumi, who always seem to appear when reminders are desperately needed; To my unlikely law school friends (who stayed until six in the morning!): She and Miong, Xilca, Cayo and Helen, who never seem to have dull moments or heavy silences; and to those who could not attend but were there in spirit, who texted or sent messages, to those who never seem to forget. Maraming salamat!