My dad and his 12 siblings grew up in a pretty independent
household and produced different personalities – from strict, traditional
disciplinarians to fun, but almost too carefree uncles and aunts.
It was a very well defined division that I was told as a kid
to stay away from some uncles because “I would grow up the wrong way.”
These are the same uncles that made me sip my first taste of
beer when I was in the third grade, and later urged me to have my first bottle
in a family gathering while they distracted my dad nearby.
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| Not even half of my family, but our batch of cousins was close to complete, and one of the younger ones had a baptism of fire of sorts on this night |
Approaching my 34th year of life, I think I grew
up to be a pretty decent human being despite being exposed to these “bad
influences” in my life.
You can’t get burned if you never touched fire, and I
believe that my dad and his siblings became the people that they are precisely
because they learned when they got burned by their mistakes.
As such, I hung out with my uncles, because despite their
carefree nature, they are very much concerned about our well-being, and they
didn’t want us to fall to the same pits they had to climb out of.
Good or bad, here are some of the lessons I learned from all
of them, including my dad:
1. Vices are inevitable.
Getting my first sip of beer in the third grade and getting pushed
by my uncles to drink when I was in my first year in high school might seem
irresponsible, but hear me out.
Being as exposed as they were growing up (they lived in the
heart of the town and had regular mah jong players frequent their house), they
understood that habits and vices are almost an inevitable part of one’s life.
Instead of finding our vices in drugs or smoking, they chose
to expose us to beer early hoping for either of these two outcomes:
a. We don’t like it and hate it so much that when we get
older, we’d think that it wasn’t worthwhile.
b. We liked it, and find it enjoyable, so we’d have this
vice instead of the other two.
For the most part, it was a pretty good batting average as
there are only a handful of us who picked up smoking (probably less than 10 in
40 kids).
We all grew up to drink though, but I can bet all my fingers
that you will have a good time when you join any of our sessions.
2. You can choose your friends, but never your family.
With such a diverse family, it’s natural to have
personalities that would clash from time to time. In my lifetime, I’ve seen
some of my uncles and/or aunts not talk to each other for extended periods of
time because of said differences, but would eventually get together like nothing
happened.
Most arguments are of petty causes brought about by ego, but
there are some that led to serious issues. However, more than drilling the
concept in our minds, they showed through their actions and camaraderie just how
thick blood is compared to water.
They are not the most affectionate bunch, and admitting
fault in any way almost never happens, but despite those, we learn to get over
differences because we are a family.
3. Do anything you want, as long as you can stand by it.
This is one of the most important things my dad always taught
me, as his dad taught him.
With such a big family, they had to figure out independence
from a very young age. As a result, almost every one of them grew up to be
self-made people who enjoyed a degree of success in their chosen fields.
Growing up, my dad never imposed rules on me. He wouldn’t
tell me to study or sleep early on a school night, what mattered to him was
that I woke up for school and passed my subjects.
In a way, it taught me my limits. I had the freedom to do
what I wanted, but considering their own careers with however little that they
had, there were high expectations from our generation to achieve or exceed
their achievements.
I couldn’t be thoughtlessly irresponsible because though
they held a safety net to catch me, they made it very clear that they were
letting go after the catch.
With so many considerations before acting, I carry close to no regrets in life, because I know that whatever I did was the best possible action at the time that I did it.
4. There are no problems in life,you create them.
My grandfather imparted this to his children, and I believe it
is one of the main reasons why we’re generally happy people.
It’s basically his version of Occam’s Razor – don’t
overcomplicate things.
For my grandfather, we create our own problems by worrying
about things. If you’re hungry, you eat.
If you can’t eat, you find a way to
eat instead of finding excuses why you’re not eating.
You hate your work? Leave or suck it up. Can’t suck it up
but can’t leave? You created your own problem right there.
It seems too simple to be life-changing, but I believe it
helped me become a person who never carries burdens.
5. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, but never stop planting
seeds.
One of my uncles is seen by his older siblings as someone
who is too carefree to be considered as a “role model.” However, he never took
it upon himself to be a “role model” and instead treated me and my cousins as
he did his close friends.
During one of our sessions, he shared how much of a
rollercoaster his life had been. He said that in his youth, he got to
earn more than the average person of his age and indulged in things he enjoyed
– mostly drinking in bars.
Looking back, he thought he was too generous for his own
good, and regretted that he wasn’t able to buy himself insurance or invest in
something worthwhile, because eventually, those funds ran dry, and a
complicated turn of events pushed him out of employment for an extended period
of time.
He shared his cautionary tale during my mid 20’s, because
while he enjoyed our company, he wanted us to take the chances that he
neglected to take when he was our age.
He didn’t regret being generous though, because at the end
of the day, it made him and the people around him happy.
6. How we are shaped greatly affects our choices in life.
Most of the men in our family had flings apart from their
significant others, and they stuck together to keep those flings from their
respective partners.
I always wondered why they did it, since my aunts were
family when they got married, and during one of our sessions, it was explained to
me why it was natural for them.
Of the 13 siblings, not all of them were my grandmother’s
kids. However, I grew up not knowing this because of their close bond, and even
if it was shocking, I didn’t care to know who were not my grandmother’s
children because it really didn’t matter.
That was the culture that they grew up in – being open and
accepting of my grandfather’s infidelity. I wasn’t brought up that way, which
led me to feel indifferent about how they cover for each other.
I realized that our life choices are shaped by our
environment, and not everyone was brought up the same way that I was.
It helped me have a better appreciation for the diverse personalities in my
life.
I've imposed my morals on people as if I am infallible, but I know now that what I know to be naturally right might not be as easy to do when one grew up in a radically different environment.
7. Cheating may be caused by the unlikeliest reasons.
When I had a chance, I asked one of my uncles why he cheated
on his wife.
I expected something about unhappiness, growing distant,
losing physical contact, or something like that. But I got a totally different
answer:
“Because I had the power.”
In more modern terms, it was basically a flex.
He didn’t have to, he could have chosen not to, but he did,
because he can. Going back to the previous point, he grew up in a culture where
infidelity is not that big of a deal, and so when he had the chance, he did it
himself.
I've seen how cheating affects both parties, and I dread the idea of my wife experiencing it. Understanding the causes of cheating might help me navigate away from it, and it was enlightening to know that the real world does not always adhere to clichés.
8. People are more than their titles and social status.
My dad and my uncles treat everyone with respect, and those
who have reached a management position won the hearts of their subordinates
precisely because they are treated as people rather than underlings.
They are equal-opportunity bosses who don’t look at which
school you came from or your previous work experience. If you believed that you
can handle the job and subsequently prove it, you had a chance to work your way
up.
My dad promoted people who would otherwise be found
unqualified by other bosses, and in return, they showed everyone else in
management that my dad did the right thing.
My dad and his brothers are so
well-loved by their respective subordinates that we were treated like royalty when
we are first introduced to them.
It helped me gain the confidence to converse with just about
any type of personality. It taught me not to be intimidated by rich business
owners and never look down on a street vendor or a utility man or the waiter at
the bar.
Names, titles, and social status don’t really matter when
you’re talking to people, because like my dad said, we all breathe the same air
and our farts all smell bad.
9. It’s never too late to make things right.
In Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, he posits that ideally,
one should be both feared and loved, but admits that it is difficult
to achieve, and that if one needs to make a choice between the two, he should
be feared rather than loved.
One of my uncles best illustrated this idea in his lifetime
as a father. He was the type of guy who would make you feel like you killed a
person if you leaned on his car and chose to be feared in order to establish
his dominance.
However, at some point, he became such a teddy bear that almost
nobody believed he was actually trying to make a change for his kids.
When before, my cousins would cower in fear when their dad got
home from work, they eventually looked forward to hugging him when he comes to
the door, and I believe they still do to this day.
We sometimes tease him for trying to make up for his past a
little too much already, and while he’s dangerously close to being on the negative
spectrum of the “loved” part (i.e. subjects take the liberty to do what they
please) at times, I believe he is much closer to the ideal than where he was
earlier in our lives.
It showed me that it doesn’t matter what your situation is
or how old you are, the key to achieving a goal is to start working towards it.
10. Never stop playing.
One of my uncles was known for his unlucky streak in
gambling.
He bet on card games, horse races, and whatever he can bet
on, but he wasn’t always lucky. They even told me a story that he once walked
all the way from Sta. Ana Racetrack back to their home in San Juan because he lost all his
money on the track and didn’t have money to go back home.
Win or lose he always kept a smile on his face, and would shout
his classic line “whattalayp!” (“what a life!”) whenever he lost.
He always believed that he would win somehow, and while it
didn’t always end up winning, he happily accepted his fate and looked forward
to another chance the next day.
One day, that chance didn’t come for him because he was
abruptly taken away from us.
I knew him as a person that put his family above everything else
despite his habit of gambling (he’s gambling so that he could give more than what
he can for his family anyway), and someone who always believed that things will
turn out for the best if you persevere (which explains why he keeps gambling).
He understood that playing means there will be winners and
losers, and that no matter how high the stakes, it’s still just a game.
Some people can take games too seriously that they forget that
it’s just a game – win or lose, we’re still going to live another day, and play
another game.
In life, no matter how far down we think we are, we just have
to believe that our time will come.
It may not be tomorrow, it may not be soon, but you’ve got
to persevere because we can’t win if we stop playing.
11. Embrace your flaws, and the world can’t harm you.
My aunts and uncles are probably the some of the most
irritating people you could be around with if you take life and body image too
seriously.
Once, one of my uncles loudly chanted “Defense!... Defense!”
to encourage his visitor who was playing my cousin…in chess.
When I was a kid, they would laugh at my face while I cried
and later on, my sharp chin would be their favorite thing to make fun of.
I remembered getting hurt, feeling ugly, and felt really
insecure about my whole personality.
However, when I came to an all-boys school in high school, I
realized that the words bullies might use to hurt me are the same things that I’ve
been teased with all my life, and so nothing got to me.
I was a skinny nerd and a new kid in a harsh high school environment, but
somehow, I blended in with any crowd I chose to be part of.
No matter how harsh my family seemed to be when they made fun
of me, it somehow helped me not to think too highly of myself, and made me
embrace the flaws that I couldn’t do anything about.
Ultimately, it became the armor I needed to face all the
cruel people of the world.
==========================
I know I learned a lot more from them, but these are some of
the first ones that come to mind.
Maybe I’m overthinking their actions, but nonetheless, I’m
thankful to have grown up under their guidance, directly or indirectly, and I can
only hope that I would be able to pass on their best lessons to my growing boy.
