Overwhelmed

My German professor asks this one day: “In the Philippines, do your parents have a say about when you’re supposed to get married? Or how you’re supposed to get married? Say, if you parents tell you that you have to marry this person, would you have to?”

The class answers in the negative. A lot of head shaking occurs.

Professor: “But if your parents tell you that you can’t marry a person, you wouldn’t marry that person?”

The class nods. And everyone looks at each other, realizes a strange collective predicament, and laughs nervously.

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The funny thing about the Filipino culture is that there aren’t a lot of unbreakable standards. There are a lot of traditions and superstitions, but most, if not all, are subject to the preference of a fickle general public. At least, from how my Gen X brain sees it.

I was born in 1991, a decade or two after the OFW phenomenon brought back – in figurative balikbayan boxes – ‘alien’ ideas from overseas. Growing up, I read only English novels and spoke English 80% of the time. (Because I was in school 80% of the time, hanging out with friends who fancied the Cartoon Network, Goosebumps, The Babysitters Club, etc.) I swear I could hear Japanese songs playing out in the radio of my childhood. I can still sing Pizzicato Five’s Sweet Soul Revue and Globe’s Feel Like Dance – in garbled Japanese, of course. Although I studied Philippine History as an educational prerequisite for graduation, I can’t express in detail – more so with passion – the lives of del Pilar, Mabini, etc. In fact, I’m probably better at tracing the genealogy of Potterdom’s Malfoy Family – a true shame, since that clan’s but fiction.

When I matured – I daresay – it became common for people my age to get pregnant, to get someone pregnant, to get married early, or to work in a call center even when they didn’t want to. It became so common, in fact, that such stories – which started out as whispered news bits shared in the most innocuous of places – became fodder for dinner conversations with mere acquaintances. Something like, “Oh, by the way, Y is seven months pregnant. Saw it on Facebook. Seems she’s getting married this weekend.” And the reply goes, “Oh, good for her then. I hope she’s happy. Can you pass the soy sauce, please?”

This is not a condescending rant. At least it is not meant to be. Just because I have a degree, am not pregnant, and am not fearful for my financial future doesn’t mean I am putting my own lifestyle on a shop display window. This is simply an observation. The petty rambling of an overwhelmed 20-something in Manila, during an era of change so constant you don’t even notice it. I can name more talents from Johnny’s Entertainment than I can enumerate senators of the Philippines. I don’t know the latest updates about GMA’s health, but I have heard that Robin from How I Met Your Mother apparently can’t have kids. I don’t really know why my country doles out days off work, but I don’t complain because that only gives me more time to waste on Tumblr with other fangirls scattered all over the world.

Is it my fault I’m clueless, overwhelmed, and passive? Perhaps. It may be the fault of my parents’ generation, but its own ignorance can’t possibly be what it wanted for itself, right? In any case, I’ve always thought my situation ordinary. I wonder how many people out there realize the same about their own lives. Or existence, whichever.