In his heart and mind, he is retired. He started being retired when his close friend told him one evening not long ago how everyday from hereon is just added bonus.
He found this statement rather intriguing, even cryptic at first. All this time, he thought of life as being ahead of him. He had been trained by his “modernist” upbringing to be forward-looking, to build for the future. Sacrifice today. Ensure tomorrow. Be the best you can be! Just do it! These were the slogans of his age.
And then one breezy night over wine and everything else, his friend suggested to him something which translated in his mind into a question: Have I lost sight of the present for looking too far ahead into the future?
This comes, of course, after the mainstream post-industrial-revolution mindset, which turned humans into something called the labor force. They worked in the factories, or were professionals, when they were not managers, CEOs, or entrepreneurs. He joined into this lifestyle without any doubt he would succeed inside it. He had all the necessary credentials, the equipment, so to speak. He had the brains, good education; and what he might have lacked in good looks he more than made up for by dressing himself well along the taste of his chosen lifestyle. Semi-hippie-fringe but intellectual, simple, rugged, hill-trekking, music-loving, and good-loving, sun glasses and all.
He was always hardworking and, in his own way, ambitious. He was going to change the world, which idea translated in time to: He was going to make it better. He was going to matter in life, and so on….
And then one drunken evening, one of his closest friends asked him: Haven’t you done enough?
He must have been completely inebriated but the thought resonated in his mind like a silent echo. It recounted a summary in stages of everything he had ever done. And then it hit him that his friend was absolutely right. His life was moving simply on inertia, the momentum resultant of a lifetime direction he had set for himself at the earliest parts of his life.
He did not realize until now, how he had done and achieved everything he had ever set out to do, every goal he ever set for himself when he was young. His friend was right: Everything from here on is only added bonus.
He still needed to do more, of course.
But in his mind and heart he knew that on this fateful night, he was retired. He resolved to do from hereon only those things that were good to do because they truly mattered. And he would know they truly mattered because they would be fun.
He learned to cook. He cooked just simple things at first. But soon he got better at it. He figured out the adobo and the beef steak Filipino. He is still a bit away from paella but he will get there. It is the least he expects of himself.
Cooking is only physics plus chemistry with a bit of aesthetic philosophy sprinkled lightly over everything. And then he felt the strange peculiar pleasure from watching his favorite people enjoying a meal he had cooked. It was for him exactly equivalent to watching a true art-lover buying one of his works.
All his life he was always engaged in educating his children and looking after them. He drove them to and from school and soccer practice. But where he used to feel this was added sacrifice, now he saw how this was entirely their life together. This was it. He started getting to know his children better and found them extremely fun. They are now his barkada. However did he allow himself to miss out on all these all this time?
Does he ever wonder if his time is better spent earning more money to ensure his children’s future? He does. But there are other things his kids need as much as his money. If he teaches them well they can always make money themselves. And he must accept this as fact: fatherhood-time never translates well into currency. You cannot put a value to it.
But as he sees it, he is not doing the fatherhood lifestyle for his kids. He is doing it for himself, to cure what ails him in body and spirit. He needs his children more than they need him. In the short time between now and the beyond he intends to learn from his kids the final secrets of life.