2022 – A Review

Dear PiePie,

I’m somewhat surprised that I wrote something close to the end of last year and it wasn’t an annual review. I suppose that the natural cadence of the world that I pointed out in the 2021 year in review was not quite as prevalent as I might have imagined.

So, what happened in 2022?

Well, with Covid abating and the world reopening, you manage to visit Cagayan for the first time on an extended trip. You got to spend some time in unfamiliar surroundings, with your grandma and grandpa from Mommy’s side. It was good, that you manage to see the world outside of the tiny island you’re growing up in, to soak in the seas of Palawan (although you hated the sand in your water shoes, or the salt stinging your eyes), to the noise and bustle of Manila and Cagayan. You still keep telling me that you haven’t seen the mountains though, whenever I try to teach you the word 山. We’ll need to stop bringing you to beach destinations I guess.

You went more regularly to school as well, although still only half-day and you were sick for vast periods from one ailment to another. You’re also apparently so shy in school, a far cry from the unstoppable one-person talking machine you are at home. Your teacher said, in the parent-teacher call near the end of the year, that you only just started talking to the other students in the class after months, and that you still get scared when the teachers scold the boisterous boys who are being rowdy. While you still cry and whine on the way to school, you are always happy on the way back. And I guess that’s all that we can hope for – I’d never imagine that fun was a criteria of school.

I do sometimes wonder, if we are so focused in making sure that you are happy that we forget to also steel you up for the real world. That we are rearing a princess who gets what she wants with whining. Everyone of us pursues our form of happiness, but we also only grow through discomfort and effort, which we tend to look back on and be quite appreciative about. So there exist a weird tension, where we want to be happy now, but that current happiness tends to fade away and what will make us happy later is to experience some level of discomfort and to overcome some sort of obstacle in the present moment. The obstacle is the way, as a book said.

I am writing this in a darkened cabin, on a long plane ride. As seems typical of me, I appear to be most reflective and melancholic during such journeys. Travel, it seems, mellows one. It is about hellos, to places and people old and new. But those hellos are tinged with the visceral knowledge that a goodbye will soon follow. Perhaps that is life in a microcosm. Or perhaps life is just one extended travel.

This year in review has taken an odd turn. But the mind tends to wander when given unrestricted space, and mine is wandering all over this darkened cabin. It is too late to be awake, but too early to sleep. And I shall end it here. Till next time.

Love, Dad