DEAR CHICO AND DELAMAR… I’ve always dreamed of starting a life of my own, which I thought I can do when I graduate and get a job. Finally, I’ll be graduating from college this April and I’m really excited.

Since my mom died of cancer six years ago, my dad never fails to remind me to live and enjoy life. He didn’t want me to dwell on the loss too much. That stuck in me. So the plan is, when I graduate,
I’ll do everything that I thought I deprived myself of doing.

But then the past few days, my father keeps on nagging me, that it is now my turn to take care of him, to provide for both of us, etc.

I’m an only child and all I wanted is to experience more of life because ever since it has always been about school and studying. I appreciate what my parents, or my father, has done for me, I really do, but I’m raring to start a life of my own. I’m afraid that if I don’t do this now, it might also be too late for me. How am I supposed to do that without hurting my father? – Rick

CHICO SAYS...Life is rarely the black-or-white deal that we often paint it to be. Often, it is a symphony of multitudes of shades of gray.

Reaching for your dreams hardly means leaving everyone from your past behind, as if they were dead weight that will slow your launch into the stratospheres of success. And including your aging father in your future plans hardly means giving up all your dreams to work hand and foot in a lifetime of servitude.

If there is one thing you’ll learn in the journey through life, it is to compromise. We hardly get what we want in the package that we demanded it to be. We hardly get the success without the requisite sacrifices, without the price we begrudgingly pay. We hardly get the partner in life we yearned for without the accompanying headaches that come part and parcel with the assortment. We hardly have a hand in the people and situations that come into our lives, and even those that we do get to choose, we realize we get the chaff as much as we do the grain.

I’m not the grim harbinger of reality checks, because life is not all gloom and doom. All I’m saying is situations are never as simple and linear as we often expect them to be. Life is beautiful and life sucks, all in the same breath.

Back to your situation, you don’t necessarily have to choose between your career and your father. There is a way of juggling both at the same time. You’re still very young, at the dawn of your working years, and there are still many opportunities that await your fresh output. Don’t get me wrong, life WILL eventually hand you moments when you do have to choose ala Sophie’s Choice, where you practically have to choose between your left and your right hand, but this is not one of those moments...yet.

I am a firm subscriber to the thought that the responsibility lies from parent to child and not the other way around. Your parents’ responsibility was to raise you, and your responsibility will be to raise your own children.

But that said, can I really turn my back on the people who raised me well and gave me everything they could in their power, especially if they are in dire need of my help? Of course not. I will help them in any way I can, not because I am beholden to them, or because it is my responsibility to take care of them as they took care of me, but because I want to and because I love them. It will be love and not gratitude that will fuel my passion to take care of them.

For now, life isn’t making you choose. Maybe in the future you will have to choose between your father and your career, but the situation then will be far different from what you have now. For now you can forge full steam into your career, maybe a little burdened by a passenger you need to tow behind you, but it can be done. You set aside what you feel is rightfully yours, and then you share only what you feel you can apportion without resenting the beneficiary. Then adjust accordingly as the situation dictates.

A life journeyed alone will definitely be easier, but not necessarily fuller.

DELAMAR SAYS...I think your father is deeply in mourning. Having lost your mother to cancer and now facing life alone heretofore without his lifetime partner, it is understandable that he feels well, scared to be left on his own.

Worries about his finances whether it will be enough to last him into the twilight of his years or just worrying about much needed companionship as he gets older of course, will start to play in his mind more and more as the years go by.

It’s not so easy to grow old alone. Much of what we say when we are young and strong take a different turn when we are old and getting weaker by the day. So if before he was more willing to see you go off on your own now he would rather keep you beside him. In your 20s you will not understand how he is feeling. You are young, you have your strength, and your life is just beginning with your future ahead of you. The world is yours to conquer. It won’t always be this way.

Your father was once a young man and I’m sure he never thought that he would grow old and see his life behind him. What’s worse is to see his life behind him without his wife and partner by his side. And with that comes certain fears. I say this because it is important to see your father’s point of view. You have to understand why he seemingly has changed his mind when before he would be the one pushing you to go off and explore the world and live your own life. Maybe he doesn’t want to lose anymore than he already has.

My advice is to be understanding. He needs this right now from you. You are his only family left. He will cling to you because there is no one else. Be patient with him as losing a wife and/or husband is not easy especially since he saw how the cancer took his wife’s life. Thought of his own mortality must be plaguing him more now as he is older and the threat of you leaving is more and more real. Since your mom is not around anymore he wonders who will be there for him when he falls ill or even if he is just lonely.

Still, of course you have your own life to lead. You need to live the life you want as much as he had his turn when he was a young man. So what can you do? Talk to your father about your plans. I think it is good to tell him what you want to do and where you want to go.

Just make sure that you don’t leave him altogether. Try to help out as much as you are willing in the financial department. Give or promise a certain amount but only as you want and able. And when you tell him of your plans make sure you start the conversation with the very words he told you years ago. Start with, “di ba sabi mo sa akin dati…”

Make sure you remind him not because you are “nanunumbat”. It is more like reminding him that you need to take your chance out there in the world as he has told you before. It was him who gave you that idea and he needs to acknowledge that.

You deserve that chance as we all do. We all have to go out into the world and make something of ourselves. Still, family is family. We need to be there for each other in good times and in the not so good times. It is a delicate balance between our obligation to ourselves and what we think is our obligation to our family. So, inasmuch as I urge you to explore and all that, just make sure that you have one eye on your father’s well being.

Talk to him about your plans. Make sure you are open with him so it doesn’t catch him by surprise. The next time he tells you about now you have to stay with him and provide for him state your piece without being disrespectful or arrogant. Tell him that that wasn’t what he told you years ago when he was urging you to live your own life.

Call it out so he is aware that he is placing a responsibility on you that might be too much. And then re-assure him that you won’t just abandon him. Leaving is one thing, abandoning is another. Make sure he understands that there is a difference. I hope he can see that his fear might be making him cling to you too much. I hope he sees that he needs to be strong for himself as well because his son deserves his chance at going out there to make his way into the world. Just talk to him about what you want to do in life. Be open about it so he sees that this is important to you. He needs to see beyond his fear and see that his son also wants to do what he sees fit with his life.

(Chico and Delle welcome your letters. Write to: youth@mb.com.ph or fax through 527-7511. Listen to the Dynamic Duo Monday to Saturday, 6  a.m. to 9 a.m. over Monster Radio RX 93.1)