Kith and kin

Friends and family. Kith and kin. Kaibigan at kamag-anak. We look to them for comfort and strength.

Yet every year I get text messages and e-mails from, well, friends and family telling me about how they dread reunions and office parties because friends and family turn out more like foes, the reunions filled with insensitivity, nastiness and meanness in what one work colleague described, in a message sent while in the middle of one such family gathering, as “penitensiya sa Pasko” (Christmas penitence).

It’s all the more difficult in societies like our own, with such extended social networks that make for large gatherings.  The more humans you put together in a room or house, the more likely there will be friction, and fire.

Worse, our culture dictates certain rules of “tiis”—patience amid aggravation—built on feudal hierarchies. Children have to bear with their parents, younger siblings with their kuya and ate.

But with 2016 going down in history as one of the most horrible of years, an annus horribilis, filled with strife and violence, uncertainty and fear, and with more to come in 2017, we need our kith and kin even more.

What’s been so horrible about 2016 is that it’s generated so much bleakness and despair so, more than strength, we will need friends and family to kindle some joy.

Let me offer some anthropological advice then on finding more joy in our social networks, particularly in the next few days’ reunions and parties and beyond.

Start with ourselves

We often complain about other people’s catty and nasty remarks without realizing we might be like the very people we complain about so let’s start with ourselves, being more conscious about what we say.

Balikbayan Filipinos should be extra careful about remarks like, “You know, this isn’t how we do things in the States …” whether about traffic or about caring for an elderly relative.

Be Pinoy and get back obliquely.  Defend someone else on the receiving end, as one of my relatives did once with her own American accent, “You know, that’s why Mike stayed on in the Philippines, and so did I, so we can do something.”

I’ve noticed too in American family reunions, stress comes from snide remarks.  In the Philippines, the stress can be generated inadvertently because we do so much teasing, which can end up being cruel. Be especially careful with remarks about people putting on weight, except with very close friends.

The converse is important too, commenting on how someone’s losing weight.  It’s often meant as a way of expressing concern but it’s terrible when you say that to the elderly, some of whom will look at the comment as something close to a death sentence.  Again, I come to the rescue and go, “Yes, we’re so lucky.  It’s so much healthier for the elderly to be on the lean side.”

People also don’t realize how irritating it can be when you keep asking, at family reunions, “When are you getting married?”

My 11-year-old son gave me ideas for next year’s reunions when he came home the other day wearing a T-shirt that read “No girlfriend, no problems” and apologized that he couldn’t find one that read “No boyfriend, no problems.”

Psychology offers insights for dealing with kith and kin.  Different people, different strokes, meaning we should rejoice in diverse personalities, including people who seem almost natural optimists while others are pessimists.  Live and let live.  Clans, societies survive because we have a balance of both kinds of people; we’d be reckless with too many optimists, and will end up paralyzed by total despair with too many pessimists.

Then there are people struggling with psychological problems, the most daunting being bipolar depression so when someone seems too ebullient, or too melancholic, be understanding and supportive.

Be prepared for people, relatives especially, who will never appreciate what people do for them. It’s particularly common with the elderly who have dementia: they will tell everyone how their children are starving them, or how they never visit.  Empathize with the long-suffering children.

But it’s another matter for people with narcissistic personality disorder.  These are the “I, me and myself” people with insatiable feelings of entitlement, and will keep finding ways to make people feel guilty for not keeping them happy.   Again, culture can be challenging because we feel so obligated when the narcissist is an older relative, or a boss.

Do what you can do but don’t feel guilty if you decide to walk away sometimes.  The worst thing that can happen is to feed into narcissism because the vampires end up consuming you, and other people.

Counting goodness

We need to move on, get a life so we can be kinder for more people.  Find strength in counting the goodness—people, events, places—in our lives.  (I grapple at times with the words “blessings” and “fortune” but that’s for another article.)

I was mentally running through the past year and thought what a good year it was.  Deaths and debts can make or break a year and this last year was good with no deaths among close friends and relatives, and making the final payment on a piece of property. Then I remembered this terrible emotional vampire who still owes me a hefty sum but thought, well, at least I got her son to graduate, and that I consider goodness in life.

Trying to remember goodness in my life brought in thoughts about other people who’ve had a year more horrible than the “normal” horrible, but I found goodness too in having them as friends because their tenacity has been so inspiring.

I was doing my mental inventory while in the dentist’s chair, having a cavity filled and a nerve pulled out.  I thought, my dentist brings so much goodness into the world.

Kith and kin need not be by our side all the time. I thought of the Inquirer folks, of how I keep running into our board chair Marixi Prieto not at the Inquirer itself but at all kinds of events and meetings outside.  I think of Tin Ang, who was with Inquirer when I started doing my column in 1997 and who I see once, or in a good year, twice, but is a friend too (and godchild), reminding me I’m late with my column, but assuring me that’s OK as long as you get the article in very soon.

We can choose our friends … and even our relatives.   With age, we learn to be more discerning, and to find ways to define our friendships.  For Filipinos, that is not always easy with the diaspora, with our dearest friends and family living thousands of miles away.

Yet we do find ways to nurture those relationships, thanks in part to e-mail and Skype and Facebook.   We don’t just survive, but thrive, and that is great goodness.  Knowing the limits of all those technologies, we just might better appreciate the times we do get together, face to face, in reunions.

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