by Eugenio Jose F. Ramos, MD

With the horrible things that preoccupied us at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we probably didn’t notice that good things also happened. The sky cleared up, ambient noise disappeared, expressions of love came spontaneously and often, priorities were rearranged under forced discipline in a lockdown, and aggravations in our head cooled down. Today, after the worst is over, we are hopefully able to see the past and the present with more clarity. Bad things did happen to good people, and bad people are still around to put us on our toes. The rich are as comfortable as ever, and the poor have remained despondent. Regardless of the lessons, the good and the bad will flourish. Depending on the default mode of our orientation, we are either grateful for the blessings that we have or perpetually stuck in a recurrent state of inadequacy. When we think about it – if we give ourselves time to reflect- our needs are simple, it is our wants that confound us.

Back home, we have a 10-cu. ft.  frostless ref and a 10-cu. ft. freezer in our kitchen, and a smaller ref by the bar adjoining our living room. The freezer is north pole to me as well as my wife who is a busy physician like me. All 3 appliances are open for exploration, a source of both pleasant and unpleasant surprises when necessity beckons. One Christmas, my wife discovered a turkey at the freezer’s farthest end of the uppermost layer. Carbon-dating fixed its ice-age at 18 months. I had heard somewhere that a turkey becomes most tender when aged in the freezer, which saved the day for our cook. We had a tasty unplanned turkey – at least half of it – that Christmas; the unfinished half was probably kept in the ref beside the freezer – a half-way-house of sorts– for a few more days after Christmas, unless the people in the kitchen finished it off right after the dinner. (If nobody remembered a whole turkey, who would remember half a turkey!).

The big frostless ref is opened more frequently, of course; no ice to dig food out of. After I bought a separate hot-and-cold water dispenser, however, I have been opening it less. When I do, there again is another reason for consternation! When our children were very young, the ref chronicled their “unfinished business”, e.g., half-empty tetra-paks with straws sticking out, half-consumed cake slices and sandwiches, or unfinished glasses of milk from the breakfast table, perched randomly on containers and boxes the contents of which are eventually smelled, taste-tested and vetted for human consumption. Any ounce of doubt lands the food into the garbage bin. Since the ref is frostless, no ‘icebergs’ serve to remind us that another cleaning is in order. The memory of the last cleaning is not the basis for the next; there is no such memory. Cleaning the ref becomes imperative only when molds are discovered, and everything else inside quickly causes dread. The ref has become a parking lot for over-ordered food deliveries and uncompleted overindulgence, a snapshot of abundance that hasn’t travelled down the gastrointestinal tract. Last week, for instance, I saw 2 half-empty bottles of salsa of the same brand in 2 different locations inside. Since the salsa lover is my son and he would only open the ref to look for what meets his eyes, and since his mother seldom opens the ref herself, the likelihood that a salsa “out-of-stock situation” in the pantry would trigger a trip to the supermarket is real; it happens all the time.

The smaller ref by the bar is south pole to everyone because we rarely linger in that part of the house. It is an exclusive repository of fruitcakes, chocolates, and other sweets. Almost all are gifts and pasalubongs (by their glut, we no longer doubt why diabetes has become an epidemic). Our fruitcake collection is enviable – from the ones that look expensive by the nature of the nuts that they embed to ones that are given as a token of get-it-over-with thoughtfulness. A first-in-first-out policy in serving fruitcakes is employed, some of which have been in the ref for 2 years (not because we like to hoard, but because nobody remembers that they are there). I tell the househelp to serve the fruitcakes to people who drop by the house – especially their own relatives – along with the ground coffee from the hinterlands that has lately become another common giveaway. But they always forget because other than the fruitcakes (just half a dozen so far this season, welcomingly replaced this year by rum cake), there are still cakes in boxes on the kitchen table that must be given away first. Indeed, sugar is the common ingredient of most giveaways every Christmas, poison only to those who can resist putting a slice in their mouths. The cakes at home are in addition to the “thank-you” cakes that my wife and I regularly receive (with resignation) from well-meaning patients in the clinic and the hospital. We give them away to our secretaries, the nurses, and the residents, preferring to focus on the pleasure of giving instead of the adversity that sugar causes – something like offering present gratification over the health hazard that may or may not happen in the future. All in the spirit of Christmas!

But this is not just about food in and out of refrigerators, we can check our closets, too. We see clothes and neckties, scarves and barong materials, hats and accessories, and shoes and belts – all gifts – in random states of disarray, some still in boxes, used no more than once or never at all. Among many of us, our living rooms, bathrooms and bedrooms, too, are a repository of air purifiers, scented candles, Occitane hand lotions and soaps, kitschy decors – accoutrements of style that clutters the senses. Every Christmas, we exchange gifts with friends and family; we give, and we receive. In some instances, we give because we received. The usual giving-and-receiving cycle becomes a closed loop among friends and colleagues – an picture of urbanity that conjures exclusivity and inaccessibility to many Filipinos who have to work for daily wage. It is, in fact, an insensitive exchange among materially blessed people with big refrigerators that are seldom opened, and closets that are full of unused clothes and dusty boxes. We in the medical profession give each other gifts because we refer patients to each other. We love to give gifts to people we appreciate; we relish receiving gifts from people who appreciate us. But the gifts, themselves, we seldom need, rarely use, or eagerly consume.

But, of course, it is the thought that counts!

As we elevate humanity from the pits of materialism and captive utilitarianism, and acquire the sophistication for simple decency and civility, how we wish that in time people would learn much simpler ways of expressing profound gratitude, and to expect nothing more than the sincerity and sufficiency of such a gesture, without having to give or receive in excess that contributes to  waste and clutter. Waste aggravates global warming and environmental degradation, not to mention molds in refrigerators, poor health and obesity, decadence and misaligned values.  Why can’t we give because it is the right thing to do, and not because we must? For whom do we give, really, when we give away what we have in excess, what we don’t want, or when we no longer have space in our homes for the next batch of gifts and purchases for the holidays? What joy is there to give away what we don’t value other than it saves us space?

I still practice, on occasion, a ‘panata’ to load my car’s front seat with fresh goodies – even the ones I like to keep (good fruitcakes, included) – and drive around during the Christmas season. At traffic stops, as the street-children swarm around the car, I bask in the opportunity for redemption. In their younger years, my children would join me in the car – with the toys that they initially did not want to give away. Seeing their faces glow as they handed over their favorite toys to the street children was bliss. Giving to refresh our values and reorganize our priorities is not really a selfless act, but it’s a good start. They say it is wrong to give to these mendicants; it will spoil them. Mother Teresa had a rebuke to this: “What’s wrong with spoiling the poor? We have been spoiling the rich all these years!”   

We, physicians, have been spoiled for a long, long time more than we care to admit. We have been receiving blessings that are easily overlooked because we mix them with – or mistake them for – what we think we are entitled to receive. The pandemic seems to have evolved a new way of adapting to the virus of materialism that sets the lucky ones apart and further spurs social inequity. No doubt, the medical profession makes us more comfortable than most. The rest of our fellowmen are not as fortunate, hanging by the clutches of inequality and uncertainty amid our abundance. We now see blatant greed undisguised, as colleagues give in to the vulnerability of their needs and the vagaries of their want.

Perhaps, we should be less dependent on freezers and frostless refrigerators so we could discern what is fresh from what has molds, what we should preserve from what we should let go.  Unless we find the time to reexplore where we came from and how we began, who can tell how many succulent turkeys there are buried in the thick ice of insensitivity, just waiting to be rediscovered – to awe and transform us!

What becomes of us as the years pass? Do we become what we like to be or do we end up with no choice but to like what we have become?

A life that exceeds 80 years is likely a celebration of fulfilled aspirations; a life cut short at 50, a tragedy of wasted possibilities. Taking a good look at our individual lives, we see a single snapshot when we look back; we see a series of milestones when we look ahead. Like train-stops that serve to remind us where we are in a journey, these milestones keep us aware of both time and distance, specifically what is left of them. Stephen Covey has an excellent way of summing up all these milestones in a phrase: To learn, to love, to leave a legacy. With so many things to aim for and too little time to accomplish them, how we balance the various elements in our lives within the limitation of time ultimately determines where we find ourselves – and how people find us – at the end of the journey.

Milestones are embedded at the back of our minds when we enter college and most especially when we choose our profession. Things that have to happen have to happen at certain time frames. We are one thing when we are 16, but we are something else –or supposed to be something else- by the time we turn 21. When we finish college by 21 or 22, a whole new set of milestones take shape as we decide on one career path over another. We make a big deal of turning 30 as we imagine reaping the perks of a promising career in the years that follow.

By the time we turn 40, life begins to take on a new meaning. We begin to peak and acquire a certain standing in the community where we circulate. Many assume bigger roles in the associations where they belong; some look forward to becoming their leaders. We go through the so-called midlife crisis at around this time when we perceive a mismatch between our dreams and our achievements so far. The pursuit of success becomes complicated because success assumes diverse definitions, some of them perverse.

As we turn 50 – as I did in 2006 – we seek to simplify things by realigning our definition of success with what really makes us happy. Happiness becomes more personal, closer to the self than to the dictates of friends and family. Retirement crosses our minds more often, just as health concerns become more real. Eventually we turn 60, and senior citizenship confers on us the privileges of the 20% discount and a sharper focus on the generic drugs with the best price for our blood pressure and cholesterol. With luck and a more disciplined attention to the warnings of decline, we may make it to 70, then 80, and, why not, 90. A hundred years is, perhaps, too much to aim for but as the years add up we learn to appreciate the numbers in a much grander way.

Numbers influence the decisions that we make – both the major and minor ones. We celebrate milestones depending on the numbers we associate them with. Our 1st birthday – and the 1st birthdays of our children- are painted in our minds with balloons and clowns and a birthday cake with a single lighted candle at the center, recorded for posterity by a videocam that is permanently stuck on the father’s face, and orchestrated by the mother who throws herself at the frenzy of the moment. The 100th birthday is absolutely an even bigger day – this time for the offspring of the clueless celebrant who may not even know where she is or who her children are. Indeed, the first birthday and the 100th are occasions celebrated not by us but by the people whom we take care of or who now take care of us. In-between these milestones, we either grow and gain mastery doing great things, or occupy space and flaunt a lifetime of insignificance.

The first year of marriage is bliss, with adjustments and difficulties overpowered by love if not by passion. The first wedding anniversary is an exclusive romantic occasion that every wife looks forward to and every husband who values peace should never forget. The first anniversary of an achievement – and even the first death anniversary of a loved one or a respected individual – never passes unplanned, unacknowledged, or unprepared for. People always remember the first; the second seldom comes close. The first of anything is almost always imbued with passion, commitment and great promise for the years to come; the second that follows is usually soon forgotten.

Ten years of marriage, happy or otherwise, is a milestone for couples who learn to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies. A decade at work calls for an award or recognition, if not for excellence, at least for loyalty and resilience. A lot of things go into 10 years of any endeavor. We come out of it whole or broken, but we come out different either way. Time changes us; we learn to adapt. When we can’t, we learn just the same.

We expect certain changes – progress, if you may – as we move through the numbers, because we like to believe that time confers on us wisdom or even just recurrent opportunities to redeem ourselves. At 18, we become legal; at 21, we go mainstream; at 25, we think of work and survival; by 30, we start a family; at 40, we look forward to comfort and achievements; at 50, we consider things greater than ourselves; by 60, we expect peace, quiet and security; at 75, we count our blessings. We bracket the numbers in our lives with the sparkle of our hopes and aspirations. Twenty-five years is silver; 50 is gold; 75, diamond.

In time, 100 will become the norm as medical science and technology assume a major role in the ‘evergreening’ of the human species. As we struggle through the wrinkles and the sagging breasts and unreliable tumescences; as we attempt to renew ourselves – with tablets and injections and vegetable-cum-fruit juices and all sorts of anti-oxidants– we may have to establish a new order in the way we count the numbers. When 60 becomes the new 40, and adolescence extends up to 30, joie d’ vivre could put our world at risk of being crowded with people who love life but only for themselves!

As the number of our years moves onward, we have a choice of not allowing ourselves to do more of the same things that keep us safe and comfortable. We can open our eyes to the reality that a lot in our lives, no matter how important they may seem, are spent on things of little consequence – transient things with no significant impact on the community where we live. We can bravely opt for substance rather than form, and enhance instead what we can no longer extend. If all that science can provide is a longer life for moneyed people with overstretched faces and overblown egos, 100 would be to plastic what 75 is to diamond, and people who refuse to see it would never know the difference.

What becomes of us as the years pass? To be sure, we become older and richer in years. Everything else depends on whether we can count on ourselves to go for what counts the most -in an era where what counts is masked by distractions ironically created by an obsession to accomplish more with so little effort and in the shortest time possible.

I turn 57 today, not at all affected by the cursory “ Happy Birthday!” greetings that I receive or do not receive. It has been 7 years since I got all excited and uptight about turning 50, presently disappointed with myself for having let the years pass without the fervor that defined the previous decades of my life. How time flies, and how it unnerves my state of unreadiness.

Unreadiness for what?

For the time when time stops, I guess, and the numbers lose their meaning. When we can no longer look forward and add more numbers, and can only look back and see, with clarity and surrender, that there is only the here-and-now to experience and savor; that there is nothing we can do about the past and there is no future to look forward to, and all we have is ourselves, hopefully with the people we love and the things that matter to us, in the present as it presents itself.

June 19,2013