My Family

To many people, the family is the center of their lives. I know a person whose life revolves around her husband and her children. She would work overtime only if her husband would allow her. Another, a jet-flying finance professional internationally, gave up her high-paying job to be a domestic worker in the family home. Still another, childless, has taken on the tasks of caring for her nephews and nieces to goad them to finish their education up to college, and buying all their needs.

I used to make my family the center of my life, that is when I got married. I viewed it as my responsibility to be at home on time, to look after the food that will be cooked per meal, to buy the clothes, etc. But then, my ex- was incarcerated during martial law for political activities and it changed my whole perspectives. I had to take on a good-paying job and then look after my children on a part-time basis. Aside from just having a plain job, I also had to search for a way to get promoted so that I could earn well, like going through training programs that would improve my skills and increase my knowledge. Apart from that, I had to "drink" or "socialize" in order to be in the inner circle of power. Oh how I hated that, simply because I looked at my co-workers then as average, with my friends in the anti-martial law movement as more worthwhile recognizing for their intellect and respecting them for their commitment.

But now under a democratic dispensation, my perspectives have changed again as I look at everyone, regardless of whether they are working for the government or in a non-government organization, or any private entity, with great regard -- that is that they are entitled to respect of their human rights.

And my family, which consists now of my brothers and sisters, my children two of them, a boy and a girl, as well as my distant relatives -- I feel kind of connected with them in a different way. It is both a connection by blood, by intellect and by history. We have shared a lot in the past and can't possibly just cut off our ties. Notice how I don't mention my grandchildren.