The Road to 40 Day 279/365: Home and the Future

I had an interesting conversation with Vino that led me to understand a bit of how he sees his world.

Growing up, I never thought about leaving the Philippines. I didn’t even think about moving to the province. It’s like I’m in my own Truman Show situation, and I was content with that.

I rode a plane three times when I was young. It was a round-trip flight from Manila to Bicol, but the flight going there turned back because of bad weather, hence I flew three times.

The next time I got on a plane was 2009, when we visited my sister in Singapore. It almost didn’t feel real as it happened. Even as I saw Singapore, I didn’t have goals of moving here.

I took up Philosophy wanting to pursue law and politics, but when ideals clashed with reality, the desire to enter politics died, and pursuing law died with it. While it’s true that there are other opportunities that law school would open up, I didn’t think I’d manage to finish that path knowing that I don’t have my end goal.

Still, my goal remained to build a life of my own in the world that I have come to know.

However, I had to move here at some point because Che bet on herself to make it here. I didn’t have the same luck as her in the corporate world, but I get to live my dream of being a present dad to our kid.

I don’t know if life would be this comfortable if we stayed in the Philippines. While it’s sad that we don’t get to be with our family and friends as much as we would want, living away from everyone allowed us to just focus on our family.

For Vino, I’ve always wondered how he sees life. I had siblings growing up, and as a middle child, I got to enjoy relationships with both of them. At some point, it was my sister and I against the new kid. When she got to an age where we were just different, I was able to be the big brother to our youngest.

The foundation of Vino’s life is so different from how I grew up as well. He doesn’t have siblings to mess around with. He’s a foreigner in a country that he has known as home all his life. He knows he’s Filipino, but he feels the Philippines is a destination rather than his true home. He loves Vietnam despite spending about a year and a half there.

He’s traveled to more countries than my mom has, and he’s only eight.

I asked him if he was going to build a home for himself in the future, where would it be?

“I’m not sure. I don’t know all of the places yet.”

It caught me by surprise, maybe because I was expecting a more direct answer. However, I’ll take what he said.

It’s amazing that at his age, he understands the endless opportunities the world offers. He loves Singapore as his home, but having lived in Vietnam and knowing that he is Filipino, he knows that there are other ways to live life.

Right now, he still enjoys playing and being a kid, and maybe the future is too far off for him to worry about. Heck, I didn’t know I’d be where I am today when I was eight.

I’m happy that he’s more open to possibilities than I was, and I hope he continues to have that desire as he grows older. He’s still too young now to really map out a path for himself, but I truly hope that “become a YouTuber” is not set in stone for him, unless he really works on his skills to make that work.