Are your pencils sharpened?

My phone buzzed at 6:06 a.m. with a text message from a good friend saying, “All ready to leave for your school. I’m excited,” with a smiley face emoticon at the end. By “Your school,” he had meant UP where I took my master’s in Creative Writing and where he was headed that fateful morning to take the entrance exam for law school.

“Law school? Whatever for?” I asked him several months ago considering that he already has an MBA and that he is in his mid-40’s. I thought at the time that it was his skewed sense of humor — an endearing quality — or a pronouncement based on impulse because of a life-altering event that had befallen him, namely: the unraveling of his marriage. But then again, I have never known him to be the impulsive sort.  There has always been a deliberateness to his decisions and actions. I have known him long enough and closely enough to determine this. We are best friends. So, somehow, I knew this statement wasn’t one to be brushed off.

He did have a short stint in law school some 20 years ago but he claimed that it simply wasn’t for him at the time; hence, the switch to business school. But recently, his muse came in the form of a lady lawyer who has inspired him to pursue a law degree.

He told me one day, just after having met his new lady friend, that “There are so many battered men out there and you know why? Because here in the Philippines when marriages end it’s always presumed to be the fault of the man.”

“Isn’t it?” I said, without missing a beat. It was more of a statement than a question.

“Of course not,” he replied with seeming ironclad certainty. “People just assume that the man is always the bad one so the woman ends up with the better part of the deal. You should hear about all these cases where the wives are total bitches or are the ones with boyfriends and they end up with the all the money and all the children, leaving the husband derelict and alone, while she enjoys the fruits of all his labor — his labor.”

“And? You will be a superhero to their hapless fate?” I teased.

But he was dead serious — alarmingly so. “This is my plan: I will earn my degree and when I do, I will set up a practice solely devoted to helping such men, pro-bono.”

“Great advocacy. Profound purpose,” I told him.

“Yup, it’s going to happen,” he said — again, with such certainty.

I was dumbstruck. I knew he had a passionate, take-charge side, but I had merely glimpsed it on rare occasions because he does lead a charmed life — until the separation from his wife, which, by the way, was his decision.

So I wished him luck on exam morning. He was in excellent spirits as he called me on the phone and delivered a blow-by-blow account of the atmosphere over at the exam venue. I could sense major apprehension but not regarding the exam itself, because he is, after all, Mr. Smarty-Pants. I’m convinced he lined up twice when the heavens bestowed intellect upon us earthlings. Anyway, it was the “age thing” that unnerved him more.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he confessed. It’s all the excitement, I guess. I set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. but I woke up at 4:30. I’m here already. Good thing I’m early; I have a parking space. Guess what? I’m the oldest one here.” 

I thought: Yeah, big surprise there! But I didn’t dare say anything — yet.

“Man, they all look so young, like they’re straight out of college. They’re all in shorts and chinelas. I’m the oldest one here,” he said over and over.

So I said to him, adhering to our perennial repartee script, “Surely, they’ll say ‘Good morning, Sir’ to you because they will think you’re the professor.” (We don’t do pity parties. It’s more of a soldier on/claim your kingdom and hoist the flag kind of friendship.)

He laughed as he always does, no matter what his mental and emotional state. He simply laughs to make sure he never unsettles anyone. He is generous that way.

“Wait,” he said excitedly. “There’s someone else who looks old. He’s wearing a checkered shirt and boat shoes. S***, he’s old. Now I’m happy!” 

“How about viewing? Is there viewing there?” I asked him to lighten the mood even more. “Viewing” is what we call girl-watching and it is one of his most favorite things in life.

“No. None. There’s a girl here with a bodyguard, who got out of an Expedition.”

I thought: Stay away from that one. One false move and you’ll have a heavyweight on top of you doing a choke-hold. I didn’t dare say it. And what? Spook him some more?   

Then he said goodbye and proceeded to the auditorium to sit for the exam.

A few seconds later, my phone buzzed again. It was he saying, “I even brought an eraser and a sharpener.  That’s how prepared I am.” That has always been his way of calming everyone down — himself included — using his trusty old sense of humor. My thoughts went with him inside that auditorium.

I was settling down to do some lazy Sunday TV watching when my phone buzzed yet again. This time he cracked, “I sharpened my pencils with a Hello Kitty sharpener for maximum effectiveness.” And then he was incommunicado for four hours.

Could it have been serendipity that arranged for HBO to show the old Billy Crystal film, City Slickers, that very same morning, where one of the lead actors, Daniel Stern’s character said, “When you’re 40, you are what you are and you stay there”?

I was mulling this over and over and thought to myself: Not quite. My best friend currently sitting for his law school entrance exams is living proof that, no way, one is never stuck — at least he shouldn’t feel stuck. Midlife shouldn’t shackle us. It is the halfway mark where we need to reassess our lives. It really should be an impetus for change because when else are we going to make major adjustments? When we’re freakin’ 60? C’mon, it’s the “now or never” moment.

I remember how my father used to tell us, “Get serious only with a man who already knows who he is going to be.” It’s been stuck in my consciousness ever since. I mean, does anybody south of 50 really know for sure that he already is who he is going to be?

Of course parents need the assurance that their future sons-in-law will be good providers and responsible partners; not free spirits forever in pursuit of a dream. But don’t we all come to several points of reckoning at strategic turns in our life with the major re-reckoning — or should I say “wreck-oning” — happening somewhere at midlife? Isn’t it that proverbial bend in the road where a considerable number of us do a 180-degree turn into a drastic lifestyle change? No surprises there: that’s why the midlife phenomenon has achieved infamy of tragic proportions. 

It’s a worn-out cliché: everything happens for a reason, but a psychologist friend, Bernie Nepomuceno, who is one of the wisest people I know, said that, “No matter how one resists change, it will happen. One may not even realize that he is stuck in a situation that has no more growth opportunities so that he is blind-sided by some event that dislodges him from his comfort zone. Little does he know that that is the trickster’s hand (One of the archetypes in Jungian psychology that is a wise albeit playful and rebellious provocateur). The trickster rearranges things so that one may find his true calling, his true love, his rightful place in the universe. It is a journey, a process that doesn’t end until he does find his place. One cannot stop it; the energies in the universe conspire to lead him to where he should be.”

It’s a terrible thing — being stuck. True, many of us have incredible resistance to change due to a multitude of reasons: fear of public judgment and censure; fear of the unknown; fear of the pain and suffering it brings upon those dear to us; aversion to stress and chaos that change inadvertently brings at the start of any new endeavor; or plain and simple pacifism. 

Even if we are at our most miserable or most desperate, whether in a dead-end job, a toxic relationship, or literally in nowhere land, the familiar is still the popular choice — it’s the devil we know. So we convince ourselves that, yes, this is where we belong, no matter the pain and the burden that it has become or the destruction it causes. 

Courage is a beautiful thing that very few have.  What everybody else has is a choice. But without the courage to act on it, it remains simply that — a choice.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.