My Second Wind
This article appeared on the March 2001 issue of May Magazine.

By Jim Paredes

It's like driving without a rear view mirror. That's what it's like to be in midlife. You work, you parent, you husband, take care of your self and do what you have to do just as you've been doing them. Then it just sneaks up on you. It's like one day you just woke up and you were forty something, and nobody told you or warned you what that would be like. Sure, there are friends your age, but basically you are in it by yourself. And if you were half-observant, you would have probably realized by now that your parents' experience of mid-life not only seems awfully out-of-date and irrelevant to you---it doesn't seem to apply in this millennium. It's like reading the wrong manual for the wrong appliance. They can't help you. Or at least it seems that way.

The way mid-life encroaches its way into one's life is pretty insidious. In my case, I started noticing our house phones ringing more often and my teenage daughter rushing to answer them before I did. And then, her teenage barkada started hanging around the house, especially this particular boy who seemed extra close to her and extra polite to me and my wife. "Hey! I'm cool. I can take that. She's really growing up", I reassured myself without connecting the whole scene to my aging.

Then there's the music on the radio which all of a sudden I could not relate to. Too shallow. Too boring. Too conformist. Too different from the music that defined my generation. "Why, when we were making music in the 70's we were more imaginative, and bold. We had a statement to make. We had a purpose blah blah blah..", I think to myself as I notice how I sound just like my parents when they lamented their children's taste in music. The big difference though is while my parents complained about my generation's rebellion, I now complain about this generation's passivity and conformity. After all, we had First Quarter Storm, the NPA, the Manila Sound to brag about, and all they have to show are rave parties, alternative music (so-called), shabu, and ecstasy. Oh what a sorry generation and a sorry world they live in. And I catch myself noticing how critical I've become.

One of the glaring changes I seem to have undergone is the fact that I enjoy hanging around bookstores now more than music stores. Time was when I would comb ALL the titles in all categories in music shops to find cutting edge stuff-avant garde artists that radio would never dare play. Now, I go straight to the world music section, avoiding all others as I choose my selections with only two criteria: artists I have never heard and WILL NOT hear through the present mass media that peddles only the commercial, the familiar and the banal--- and artists who DO NOT sing in English. I have become a snob! I have retreated into my own cocoon of esoterica.

And in the bookstores, I browse extensively through the self-help section looking at every book that talks about the inner life, the new frontier that I am now interested in. It was M. Scott Peck who started my journey some ten years ago when my concept of midlife was something cute and remote. Midlife then was something that happened to other people--getting older, losing their hair, gaining a paunchy tummy, hardly partaking of thrills below the waist. Somewhat like a cartoon sketch, I thought. I read The Road Less Traveled and was led to explore concepts of maturity I never understood nor cared for. Two of them spoke of accepting that life is difficult and that delaying gratification was a virtue. While I thought they were true concepts, I only grasped them intellectually. After all, I was in my mid-thirties with a great career, terrific purchasing power, good looks, more or less happy marriage and family and a trophy public life. What was difficult about that?

It was my daughter's depression that crashed into the dream world I was living and shoved Scott Peck's truth into my face--- that life can indeed be difficult. All of a sudden, my sweet little girl changed to a withdrawn, despondent and dark person. Where before she was transparent, she was now evasive. Where before she was always after our attention, she was now secretive, and fiercely private. Everything about her happy disposition seemed to have changed overnight. And this was so evident in the change in her choice of CDs which used to be regular teenage pop music to dark gangsta rap that spoke of killing and violence with every other word an expletive. Her friends were the type that you worried your children would hang around with. Her school work was pathetic and almost every week, our attention would be called because she acted up in school or skipped it.

There was indeed trouble in paradise. It was at this point that I suspected mid-life had arrived. All of a sudden, I felt less than a winner-unlike the pop icon public life I was living. I was now just another failed parent called to find the solution to a puzzle that I had no idea how to solve. Family counseling opened up a new world, a reality that was pointing to unfamiliar directions. It was calling me to authenticity, to being real and present to my daughter's needs and the family dynamic I was unwittingly fostering that was causing all this to happen. It was calling me to what Carl Jung was warning against. It was asking me to look at the unlived aspects of my life that seemed to show symptoms in the way my daughter behaved. I was being called to go into another realm of existence where the solutions to my predicament may lie. I was being called to grow up, to get real.

That was the first real clear call. But being the way I am, I did not see it's real significance. I saw it as ONE problem that must be addressed, and after that things would return to normal. And in many ways, things did return to the way they were. Thanks to my daughter's bravery and our guided family therapy, she was once again her happy self. Once again, my family was fine, and I was, thank God still making lots of money. I had my travel perks thanks to APO which performed abroad quite often. Furthermore, I had my artistic outlets with the albums, concerts and TV shows that kept coming in. I was still youthful-looking, had a more or less flat stomach, and no serious ailments. So what was there to worry about? But deep down, I now sensed an intense calling, a something that was tapping from the inside of my head, and it had a lot to do with the question that asked "Is this all there is"?

During one family vacation at the El Nido resort, I caught a glimpse of an answer when I was hesitantly introduced to the world of scuba diving. I use the word hesitant, because while I enjoy snorkeling, I actually feared the depths. But one brief intro dive changed that. Soon after returning to Manila, I immediately took a diving course, got certified as a licensed scuba diver. Soon, the sea depths that I once feared slowly had become my friend. The whole experience of conquering my fear opened the gates where my unlived life lay waiting to be rescued. It was liberating, to put it mildly. I felt so alive and powerful engaging my fears. It wasn't long after when I branched out into photography with gusto, and peddled my pictures to Metro in the hope of getting one tiny photo published. That was all I was aiming for. To my surprise, I got an offer to shoot a cover and so was off to a good start in a side career in photography. I had also started taking up the practice of zen meditation. At around that time, I also went through the Integrative Learning seminar offered to all ABS-CBN talents then that introduced me to a clearer consciousness of who I was. This gave me the courage and confidence to further walk the edge, so to speak.. It changed me forever. Not long after that, I wrote and released a solo album ( a long-held fancy) entitled Ako Lang, and got more intensely focused and amazed at my inner growth. I was unstoppable.

The end of APO's stint at Sanglingonaposila, the noontime show, was a huge turning point. That was the crucible, the test, the reality check that forced me to reframe my view of everything. It made me really discern what was real and valuable to me. It was a watershed in my life, now clearly and increasingly defining itself as a long journey to somewhere more unfamiliar and mysterious. Minus the comfort of a luxurious salary from TV work, and the ego massage that fame and success in showbiz had constantly showered on me for thirty years, I was confronted with one of the greatest challenges ever; and that was the challenge of meeting myself! Who was I really, without the canned applause of life in a studio, the gold and platinum records, without APO Danny and Boboy even, and without every attachment I could think of---money, fame, family, ego, image, illusion, delusion that I was plugged into. It was an anxious time.

I went deep into myself for the answers mainly through zen meditation which I practiced almost daily. In this oblivion of silence, in these sojourns into stillness, into the darkness of zazen, I glimpsed a reality that was powerful, mysterious, permanent and full of joy. I had met my true self, and marveled at my true nature.

And as a testimony to this new-found calm which I found seven months after the closure of APO's TV show, I released my first book entitled Humming In My Universe: Random Takes On Everything. Writing a book was another barrier crossed. Another thing I did was embark on a teaching profession at the Ateneo College of Communication. Aside from all these, I am now also facilitating seminars on creativity, accepting public speaking engagements and doing creative commercial work for a few companies needing music, and creative ideas for corporate communications. Then there is still APO with its concerts and recordings.

While I admittedly am earning less income than I was two years ago, I feel a sense of freedom, not unlike the sense of exhilaration after a bungee jump. And while I know I am fully into midlife and more of my unaddressed issues will soon surface and ask for a hearing, I possess the energy and the wisdom to face them, perhaps even own and finally integrate them as parts of me.

Midlife is like standing in front of a merry-go-round where unresolved issues and aspects of my unlived life pass before me asking me to have another chance at them. These are issues that had been swept under the rug, the unspoken fears, the fantasies on hold, the call of the wild that now demand to be heard. They wish to seize the opportunity to be realized before my body becomes too weak to do accommodate them. These parts of us that we have not heeded can be quite insistent and impolite. And depending on the degree of their repression, they can startle us with how they express themselves. What remains hidden becomes fate, Jung once said, so don't be surprised if say, affairs are suddenly attractive. Or it could be a religious revival, or some esoteric form of spirituality that could entice. Or it could be golf, or a trip to an ashram, or a serious addiction, a crazy hobby or a new business or the urge to paint, to ballroom dance, to leave your wife and home, to simply drop out of everything.

In my case, midlife has become the unleashing of second wind, the conscious and deliberate use of new energies. When I stare at what seems to be more and more a spot rearing a naked crown on top of my head, I am spurred to action to live the rest of my to-do list. When I see former classmates confused and lost in the storms that midlife can bring, like drinking, womanizing, etc., I have the urge to clarify my mind and soul through meditation. When I wake up in the mornings feeling heavy and tired, I go to the gym and pick myself up. When I see the crisis I will face financially if I don't do anything soon, I am brought to an understanding that the universe listens and takes care of our needs while I help it along by following leads that show up.

I am a new creature out of my shell and the world is only as small or as big as my courage will allow. Midlife makes one take this to heart as it reminds me to focus on the truly important issues. My time with my loved ones as I sit with them chatting, laughing at the dining table is precious, as the smell of the earth after the rain-or the soft touch of my wife's face, and the full attention I have when I exercise, sing, compose, make love, jog, take a shit, write, shoot photos, eat, analyze a problem, pray, lust and.you get the picture? And with every blessing I acknowledge, I get a greater understanding of how this crazy, abundant universe really works. And I credit all this to the grace and gift of having been around for 49 years---hopefully just half of my life.