Life isn’t a ‘teleserye’

As a typical millennial kid, I grew up tuning in to teleserye every day. From “Encantadia” (which now has a remake) to “Mara Clara,” and sometimes even the monumental “Tayong Dalawa” — these were only a few of the teleserye that fueled my sense of imagination.

My playmates and I even made games out of them, picking a certain character and acting out their roles. With our innocent young minds, each episode was an invitation to bask and even linger in an exciting new world.

Thinking about it now, it’s quite funny how watching a teleserye kept me on my toes about a lot of odd things. The possibility that my parents might not be my real parents (this was probably why we hadn’t been getting along that week) or maybe my new crush (even though it was the first time I’d seen him) was that childhood friend who moved away, weren’t questionable.

At the time, I obviously wasn’t conscious about how these teleserye — with their back-to-back plot twists — are always pitched at the borderline between fantasy and reality.

These days, I only get glimpses of the teleserye my mom asks me to set up in my laptop for her to watch. Gone are the days when tomorrow’s episode or when the “abangan” would keep me up at night; now, I have the real world and my résumé to worry about.

Even so, I think growing up while taking a step back from all the contrived plotlines that have occupied my naïve mind for a long time has spared me from a lot of unnecessary drama.

Coming to terms with the fact that, more often than not, reality doesn’t play out as sensationally has been both a pleasant and unpleasant surprise.

For instance, a good amount of weight was lifted off my shoulders upon realizing that no one is constantly plotting and scheming against me because of a single mistake.

Then again, I am still in the process of grasping how, sometimes, it really might just be me that’s sabotaging my success and happiness — that I can be the most treacherous kontrabida to myself.

At this point, I’m quite aware that I can even come off as a kontrabida to someone else’s story, as I may not always be in the right.

But maybe, we really shouldn’t be going about life by labeling people as bida and kontrabida in the first place. Over the years, getting to know people has taught me that there aren’t always straightforward  kontrabida/bida in real life.

People can change for the better, but also for the worse, and contrary to the the ways of people in a teleserye, our character isn’t set in stone.

While the hopeless romantic in me still jumps out every now and then, I know now that there’s more to life than it being a romantic love story. Our life’s main purpose isn’t just to win in a love triangle, or to search for this one great love that would complete us and conquer everything.

Also, the usual tanan scene, which subliminally represents abandoning your life and your goals to be with someone, is a sweet gesture and all. But in real life, it can turn sour over time.

I think the constant emphasis on the rags-to-riches plot twist is also a worn-out and even misleading narrative that can make people lose sight of what they really want to work on.

The way I want to turn my life around is not necessarily by achieving fame, being wealthy or climbing to the top of the food chain, but by cultivating a healthy and balanced lifestyle that I could be contented with at the end of the day.

In this hypercapitalistic era, I think we habitually subscribe to a one-size-fits-all definition of success.

Likewise, the unending strain of revenge in teleserye plots is not actually the most reasonable way of attaining justice and fairness. When it doesn’t involve a lawsuit, I’ve learned that sometimes you can just give up and let go of someone/something that did you wrong, since there is no point in holding on to a heartache. Instead, you could take whatever it is as a lesson and as an example of what not to do and be like in the future.

Which leads me to my next point: the world really isn’t as small as it seems like in a teleserye. You don’t have to dwell in the shadows when you can move on to better places. Definitely, having amnesia or changing your face is not the only way to start anew.

Despite all these, I think the feeling of not knowing what to do with your life after being immersed in a blockbuster teleserye is not at all irrational. These TV dramas are quite entertaining and can give you a feeling of structure in your life.

However, the biggest takeaway that I got since taking a step back from all of it is: My life doesn’t have a fixed plot for other people to watch. At most, I don’t have to go through the motions of something and give the people what they want to see, which is, most likely, drama.

Every now and then, it scares me to fully comprehend that life isn’t a teleserye—that there’s really no definite narrative for me to follow. Nonetheless, what this can also mean is: My life is my very own project, and no one else’s.

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Joy Therese Gomez, 20, is a philosophy graduate from the University of Santo Tomas. Her research interests include aesthetics and ethics.