Breaking the Cycle

Over the holidays  I came across two people  who made me rethink about the power of breaking generational bondages and cycles.  One was a lovely lady who works with poor, inner-city kids in a program that helps them get to college.  She was  proud to tell me that all of these kids that were offered scholarships were the first in their respective families to have earned a college education and to land fine jobs.

The other person  is my nephew, S.  S is the type of person who says “I love you” to everyone and had been trying, these days, to get his disinclined uncles to say “I love you” back to him. His mom told me that as a little boy he had started this “I love you” thing going on with his mom’s folks back home and from there, people in their family who were unused to this kind of affection have since then become overtly and verbally affectionate.

For my part, I grew up in a household where there was  not a lot of hugging or kissing or professions of love among its members. Confrontations and  heart-to heart talks were unheard of.  I guess the same is true for the rest of my clan.  Love was assumed.  It was never said, and rarely demonstrated.  “I love you” expressions were cringed at.  As a child, nobody had ever taught me to kiss my parents hello or goodbye. Ilonggos-- especially men--rarely say  “I love you” or venture acts of affection to their sisters, and brothers and nephews, nieces, aunts and uncles.

I  have always thought that there was something essentially wrong with these ways.  So with my own family  I have broken the cycle. In our household, love is both said and shown in many tangible ways.  In our home, love can be heard, seen, touched and felt in so many words, in so many hugs and kisses.  The same is true with my siblings’ and my cousins’ families.

My mother, her mother and her mother’s mother lived by the simplest of means.  They never touched college.  Our generation, however,  have, for the most part, a college degree.  Education had been the key that opened for us more doors of opportunity  than were open to  the generations before us.   Because of this  we have proverbially “enlarged our territory” and conquered the world.

The cycle has been broken.

And so, as we start a new year and a new decade,  may we shatter bonds and break the cycles that have shackled us in the past and move on to new and better ways.