One of the most endearing qualities of the Pinoy character is the seeming inability to have a bad time. Anyone who's ever been around Filipinos can tell you: it's (almost) always a party. In everyday conversation, the simplest exchanges become opportunities for jokes and laughing--seemingly straightforward items like asking a policeman for directions, or trying to find your size at a shoe store. It might throw some westerners off at first, accustomed as they are to the straight-to-the-point, all-business, no-beating-around-the-bush-because-goddammit-I've-got-a-conference-call-at-9:30 way of interacting with others, but it's really a beautiful thing, and one of the things the facilitates (or is facilitated by) the slower pace of "Filipino time."
I've noticed that this jovial spirit permeates every aspect of Filipino culture, and seems to explain a lot about society here. For example, a few weeks ago my great uncle (brother of my lola) passed away. The custom here in many parts of the Philippines is that for 7 days following someone's death, the body is displayed in the home (in a coffin of course) and every night visitors come to mourn. Of course, any time you get a bunch of Filipinos together, it is expected that there will be food, and unless they're Mormon or Iglesia ni Kristo or something, there will probably be alcohol as well. And so rather than a depressing collection of mourners in black crying because their loved one is not with them anymore, the 'lamay' as it's called here in Borongan, becomes a celebration of the person's life, or maybe just life in general, or maybe just another excuse to get together and enjoy food and drink with loved ones.
One night at the lamay, everyone is talking and laughing and enjoying themselves, and one of the uncles jokingly says to my lola, "you don't seem very sad for someone who is mourning the death of their brother." She smiles, throws up her hands and says, "What can we do?" To me this is the most liberating facet of the general philosophy that seems common to the Filipino people. It's the spirit of bahala na, which translates roughly as "don't worry about it" or "come what may" but might be translated a little more precisely as "hakuna matata." It's sort of an optimistic fatalism that encourages the light-hearted acceptance of things as they are. In short, not taking life (or oneself) so damn seriously.
This manifests itself in other ways as well, and some of them, I admit, don't immediately tickle my fancy. Specifically, this commitment to always joking and laughing results in a pronounced reluctance by many to talk about serious problems. One night I was drinking with my uncles and aunties and some of their friends, everyone enjoying themselves, when the conversation drifted to tourism, or rather the lack of it in Borongan. We started talking about why it's a good thing Borongan hasn't been developed, and comparing it to Boracay, my Uncle Erwin, who is a policeman, started talking about the prositution and pedophilia that goes on in touristed areas of the Philippines. To me, this was an incredibly interesting topic, as human trafficking and the sex trade are some of the gravest social problems here in PI, but within minutes, everyone else had abandoned ship. The conversation takes a serious turn and immediately everyone tunes out. Now I realize that the concept of a buzz kill isn't exclusive to the Philippines, but here it seems there's almost no appropriate forum for the discussion of serious matters.
Or perhaps it's simply that serious matters should be approached lightheartedly. One of my uncles is an alcoholic. Actually, by American standards most of my uncles are alcoholics and nothing is made of it, but for one of them, it's viewed as a serious problem, since he suffers from cirrhosis of the liver and nearly died during his last stint in the hospital. Sometimes, while my uncles sit around for hours drinking brandy, they'll start talking about the aforementioned alcoholic uncle and what can be done, but while they no doubt have serious concern for their brother/cousin, they joke about it. They might be proposing legitimate solutions, yet they laugh as they do it.
I guess it's just this: we have to laugh, cuz if we don't, we'd cry. Maybe the result is that a little less shit gets done. Maybe serious concerns don't get the attention they merit. But at the same time, there are probably a lot less people here with ulcers. On the radio the other day, there was a story about the rankings for countries with the happiest people. Costa Rica was number one, the Philippines featured in the top 10, and the United States was somewhere below 100. Makes sense. Why else would Americans need all those big-screen plasma TVs and shiny new cars and expensive meals? It's got to be compensating for something.
I know there's an American inside of me, with all that entails, and I'm not ashamed of it. But just for the sake of experiment, I'm going to abstain from iPods and processed cheese and interest payments for a while and see if the little bugger doesn't starve to death.
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