Above-Air Thoughts

Oh well, here I am, 36,000 feet in the sky, waiting for this very long flight to end, and we have barely covered half the distance from New York to Seoul. I keep closing my eyes, hoping sleep will finally come, but it never does. As I mentioned earlier, this was my second time passing through JFK—not by choice, but because the airfare made the route worthwhile. From New York, I am flying to Seoul and then finally to Manila.

I paid a little extra for an aisle seat, and now I am especially grateful that there are several empty seats around me. At least I can change positions frequently, stretch my legs, and move around when I need to. Being trapped in a middle seat for a sixteen-hour flight is not for the faint of heart. The first meal was surprisingly good and more than made up for the breakfast and coffee I missed after getting up around three in the morning. My stomach is satisfied, my body is tired, and yet my mind refuses to shut down.

So I write.

Leaving the Weight Behind

Despite the exhaustion of this journey, I feel an enormous sense of relief. Much of the financial burden of maintaining my Florida lifestyle and home is finally coming off my shoulders. I still have my rental condo and other responsibilities in the United States, but returning home to the Philippines should reduce my regular living expenses dramatically. More important than the money, however, is the feeling that I will be able to sleep better at night knowing that family is nearby. There will be a different kind of security waiting for me there, along with good food, rest, familiar surroundings, and plenty of opportunities to exercise and remain active.

I don't particularly care about surrounding myself with a large circle of friends. I will certainly miss my American friends, but I have never needed constant company to be content. Much of my life has been built around solitary activities—walking, reading, writing, gardening, working on my computer, meditating, and simply thinking. I have always functioned well in solitude. There is a difference between loneliness and solitude, and over the years I have learned that solitude is often where I thrive.

Even good things, however, eventually come to an end. My American life was good to me. But perhaps it has simply reached the end of its season.

Money, Family, and What We Leave Behind

Before leaving, I had an intense discussion with Carl about protecting my U.S. investments and properties and eventually determining who should benefit from them. The conversation bothered me because it seemed to focus too heavily on which nieces or relatives should receive what after I die. I don't like the idea of favoring certain relatives over others without good reason, nor do I want the relationships I have with younger family members to become distorted by thoughts of inheritance.

It would be a terrible ending to a life of hard work if people eventually valued me more for what I left behind than for who I was to them while I was alive.

I have always believed that people should work for what they have. I certainly had to. An inheritance should never become someone's financial plan. Whatever eventually comes from another person's estate should be regarded as an unexpected blessing, not something to anticipate, calculate, or quietly wait for. Money accumulated through decades of work should not simply become an excuse for another generation to spend without understanding the effort and sacrifice behind it.

Perhaps that is another reason I feel so strongly about going home now. I want to enjoy what God has allowed me to earn while I am still alive. I want to use it responsibly. I want it to provide security and comfort, certainly, but I also want some of it to serve a purpose beyond myself.

There are people who genuinely need help.

I have never believed that money exists merely to be accumulated. Whatever financial security I have today came through work, sacrifice, opportunity, and, in my faith, God's grace. If I have more than I need, then perhaps part of the responsibility that comes with that blessing is knowing when and how to help someone else. That was certainly true during the years when my own family needed help.

This is what I hope the younger members of my family eventually understand. I want them to work hard, build their own lives, and learn the value of money through effort. If they someday have more than they need, I hope they will remember the people who helped them when they had very little and extend the same generosity to someone else.

Carl tends to think much more about protecting and distributing assets after death. Perhaps that is simply his practical way of looking at things. But sometimes the conversations make me uncomfortable because they sound as though my death and the distribution of my possessions are already being planned while I am still very much alive. I don't want that way of thinking to influence my nieces and nephews. I would rather influence them toward hard work, independence, gratitude, compassion, and affection for the people who helped them during difficult times.

Ultimately, I will ask the Lord for wisdom. I cannot control what other people think about money, nor can I know what is truly inside another person's heart. What I can control is what I do with the years, resources, and opportunities still given to me.

Thinking About Jim

Perhaps these thoughts about money, death, and what we leave behind are also connected to Jim.

Here I am, thousands of feet above the earth, thinking about a man who was alive only a short time ago. Jim had tried, in his own limited way, to save something for retirement. Yet from what I understood after his death, whatever he had accumulated may not even have been enough to provide the kind of burial or memorial I imagined for him.

I also thought about his mother. She is elderly, and losing a son is already enough of a burden. Having to deal with his remaining financial affairs, debts, paperwork, or other obligations would only add another layer of difficulty. Perhaps some of my reaction comes from my Filipino upbringing. In my culture, death can become an enormous family and community event. There are wakes, prayers, visitors, food, contributions, flowers, tears, stories, and expenses. People come together. Sometimes there is almost too much drama, but underneath it is the desire to honor the person who died and accompany the family through grief.

Jim's death was handled differently.

His body was donated, and there was no immediate send-off resembling what I grew up seeing in the Philippines. At first, I struggled to understand that. But I also have to remind myself that people and families grieve differently. American grief can sometimes appear restrained or businesslike from the outside, but outward restraint doesn't necessarily mean an absence of sorrow. Jim's sister told me that the family hoped to honor him later, perhaps in February. I hope they do.

And perhaps Jim gave something valuable even in death. If his donation helped medical education, research, or another human being, then there is something beautiful in that as well.

Jim was a good man. In terms of honesty, loyalty, and quiet affection, he was one of the best people I have ever known. He rarely demonstrated affection openly. That simply wasn't his way. But after knowing someone for thirteen years, you eventually learn to recognize affection even when it isn't spoken.

The Six Years We Shared as Friends

I will probably never know Jim's entire story. He was private about much of his past. I believe he would have answered me if I had asked, but I rarely did. I respected the parts of his life he didn't volunteer.

When I first knew him, he was struggling badly—homeless at times, dealing with addiction, and seemingly without much direction. I don't know what his life had been like before that, and perhaps there were happier chapters I never knew about. I can only speak about the thirteen years in which our lives crossed.

Of those years, I like to believe that the last six were among his most stable.

For that, I am deeply thankful.

I thank the Lord that somehow I was able to provide Jim with a place where he could experience stability, routine, friendship, and a sense of home. I don't say this to portray myself as his rescuer. I made mistakes. There were times when I probably helped in the wrong way. There were situations involving addiction in which compassion could easily cross the line into enabling. I didn't always know the difference, and I certainly didn't handle everything perfectly.

But Jim eventually found a measure of stability. In his own quiet way, he recovered enough to work, live more normally, and build a routine. That may not look like a spectacular success story to the rest of the world, but considering where he had been when I first met him, I consider it meaningful.

And now I wonder whether there is another reason the Lord is gently directing me home.

### Maybe Retirement Is Not the End of the Assignment

There may be people back in the country of my birth who, in some completely different way, need what I can offer. I don't know who they are. I don't know what form that help might take. I may never encounter another person whose circumstances resemble Jim's, and perhaps I am not supposed to.

But I am willing to remain useful.

It is easy to think of retirement as the stage when we finally stop working, slow everything down, enjoy what we accumulated, and quietly prepare for the inevitable end of life. I have thought about retirement that way myself. There is nothing wrong with resting. After decades of work, rest is deserved.

But perhaps retirement doesn't necessarily mean the end of one's usefulness.

Maybe there is still an assignment waiting for me in the old country.

When I look backward, I can see a strange continuity in my life. The Lord carried me through the poverty and difficulties of childhood and the painful years of college. He gave me the opportunity to work in the United States, where I worked extremely hard and was eventually able to help my struggling family when they were close to financial collapse. Circumstances allowed me to bring my sister to America and help her establish a life here, even though her journey later became complicated by failed relationships, illness, and ultimately cancer.

Along the way, I also encountered people living on the margins—people who were homeless, struggling with addiction, lost, or simply trying to survive. Sometimes I helped. Sometimes I probably enabled behavior I should not have enabled. Some people disappeared from my life without changing at all. Others failed despite every opportunity offered to them. And at least one of them, Jim, managed in his own modest way to build a more stable life.

I was never perfect in any of this.

I made mistakes. I failed. I went through periods that felt like hell and somehow came back from them. Yet when I look across the whole landscape of my life—the poverty, education, immigration, work, family obligations, friendships, losses, mistakes, successes, and people whose paths briefly crossed mine—I can still see something beautiful running through it all.

I see the work of the Lord in me and, occasionally, through me.

And now, while sitting inside an airplane 36,000 feet above the earth, somewhere between the life I built and the country where my life began, I find myself wondering what comes next.

Maybe going home isn't simply about cheaper living, better food, family security, gardening, reading, writing, and enjoying retirement. Those things are important, and I intend to enjoy them. I have worked for this season of my life.

But perhaps there is more.

Perhaps there are still people I am supposed to meet, things I am supposed to write, kindnesses I am supposed to offer, and work I don't yet recognize as work.

I don't know.

All I know is that something has brought me back toward the place where my story began. I don't need to claim that every tragedy was deliberately arranged to send me there. I don't believe the people I loved had to die so that God could deliver a message to me. Their deaths were painful realities that changed the circumstances of my life, and those changed circumstances forced me to make decisions.

But perhaps faith is not always about understanding why something happened. Perhaps sometimes it is about asking what we are going to do with what remains.

Jim is gone. My sister is gone. My Florida home is behind me. Much of the life I spent decades building is now shrinking into memories as this airplane carries me across the world.

Yet I am still here.

And as long as I am still here, perhaps my work isn't finished.

So yes, there may be a reason I feel myself being drawn—or perhaps gently pushed—back to the old country.

I suppose I am about to find out.
2026-09-19 23:28:46
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