The Changing Measures in Life

It has been a day since I went through that exhausting series of errands: a laboratory visit for my blood-type test, a stop at the Toyota dealership, breakfast and lunch, a walk around Clark, an application for my birth certificate, and finally picking up my laundry. None of those things sounds particularly strenuous by itself, but by the end of the day, I was completely drained. I suspect the real culprit was not the errands but the heat. I felt exhausted, sweaty, dirty, and uncomfortable—the smell of perspiration, the gritty feeling on my skin, the general stickiness of being outdoors in this climate. Thank God for a cold shower and for finally having my blankets back from the laundry. I slept deeply through most of the afternoon and into the evening.

I also managed to control my carbohydrate intake somewhat, which is good considering how much rice I have been eating since returning to my ancestral home in the barrio. Old habits have a way of returning along with old surroundings.

Despite the exhaustion, I accomplished several things I had been putting off. I kept up with my meditation journal, which is important to me, and since last night I have been working on the closing of my Florida house, now scheduled in two days. If everything goes smoothly, I should finally have access to the proceeds from the sale and can move forward with buying a new vehicle here. Having a car would restore a certain freedom I have been missing since I arrived. I would no longer have to spend so much time exposed to the heat while going to the market, stores, government offices, or wherever else I need to go. I could drive to an air-conditioned mall, take a longer trip, or even check into a hotel somewhere for a change of scenery. I would once again have the freedom simply to get in the car and go. Hopefully, that happens sometime next week.

I have also been thinking about going to Manila for a few days. Being cooped up in one place for too long is not healthy for me. I need variety in my life, just as I did in the United States. I don't want to live in a tomb while I am still alive. I want movement, new scenery, different experiences, and occasional breaks from the routine.

But there is a caveat.

Somewhere in the back of my mind are lingering temptations to recreate the life and pleasures of my younger years—to exercise as intensely as I once did, wander around endlessly, stay out late, and perhaps chase the kinds of good times that belonged to another stage of my life. But I have to be realistic. My age, energy level, and physical limitations have changed the equation. Yesterday was proof enough. A handful of ordinary errands in the heat left me completely exhausted. It would be foolish to expect my body to perform as though I were half my present age. Accepting that is not surrender. It is simply recognizing reality.

This morning, I woke up to the usual flurry of activity among my older brother's family. That, too, is something I have to get used to. I admit that it irritates me sometimes because I became so accustomed to a quiet life in the United States. When Jim and I shared the same house, we hardly spoke to each other for long stretches of the day, and perhaps that was one reason we lived together so peacefully. We both respected silence. Our conversations were mostly small talk and occasional short discussions before each of us returned to his own world. Jim had his sports on television, his beer, and his cigarettes—not all the time, of course—while I had my video editing, meditative writing, websites, and, for many years, social media.

Perhaps that long attachment to social media is also why I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with it.

I find myself growing tired of people documenting nearly everything under the sun, especially when ordinary experiences seem to be presented as demonstrations of status. A trip becomes an opportunity to mention the cars. A family update becomes a catalog of houses, properties, accomplishments, and possessions. Then, almost as an afterthought, God is invoked as the source of all these "blessings."

That is where I become uncomfortable.

There is nothing wrong with being grateful for what we have. There is nothing wrong with owning a nice house, driving a good car, succeeding in business, or celebrating the accomplishments of our children. But I sometimes wonder where gratitude ends and performance begins. When does thanking God quietly for what we have turn into announcing our possessions so that other people will admire—or perhaps envy—us? I cannot answer that question for anyone else. I can only ask it of myself.

And maybe that is why I am grateful that I have gradually escaped much of social media's pull. I have drastically reduced my posting and now try to share only things that genuinely interest me rather than every passing detail of my existence.

There is another kind of social-media behavior that bothers me even more: the constant judging and condemning of other people in the name of God. I see acquaintances proclaiming their religious beliefs while simultaneously attacking people whose lives, identities, politics, or values differ from their own. I have even watched an old coworker move from political posts into repeated condemnations of LGBT and transgender people, often wrapping those judgments in religious language. Whether I agree or disagree with someone's beliefs is almost beside the point. What troubles me is the certainty with which some people assume that their personal judgments are identical to God's.

Ironically, I often don't even unfollow these people because I know them personally and don't want to hurt them. So I scroll past the posts, shake my head, and move on.

Then there are those who seem obsessed with views, followers, likes, and engagement, constantly thanking their "supporters" as though they have suddenly become celebrities. I sometimes laugh at it, but underneath the humor is something I find genuinely sad. Social media has created a strange world in which numbers generated partly by algorithms can begin to feel like measurements of human worth. Followers become status. Views become validation. Ordinary moments become performances because apparently no breakfast, shopping trip, vacation, or afternoon stroll can be allowed to disappear without being documented for an audience.

Of course, I have participated in this world myself. That is why I cannot pretend to stand completely outside it.

Perhaps my criticism of other people is also telling me something about myself. Maybe I am becoming the stereotypical grumpy old man, increasingly irritated by things younger—or simply different—people consider normal. I have to admit that possibility. Age has a way of making us compare the present with the world we remember, and memory is hardly an impartial judge. We tend to polish the past while magnifying everything that annoys us about the present. So perhaps some of what I call wisdom is simply age talking.

Still, something deeper continues to bother me, and it goes beyond social media or this particular town. It is a cultural shift I have noticed in many places: the growing tendency to measure a person's value through money, possessions, visibility, influence, and status.

I notice it when I travel through town with relatives and the conversation turns to businesses, hotels, quarries, supermarkets, properties, and the families who own them. Stories circulate about how certain fortunes began, how businesses expanded, how political connections were cultivated, and how money gradually translated into influence and respectability. Some of those histories are complicated and controversial, and I do not pretend to know every fact behind them. But what fascinates me is how easily wealth itself can eventually become evidence of virtue in people's minds. Once enough money has accumulated, people often stop asking where it came from. Success becomes its own justification.

That, perhaps, is what bothers me most.

Money becomes not merely something useful but a certificate of importance. Wealth becomes proof that someone has lived correctly. A large house, another property, a business, an expensive vehicle—these become visible evidence that a person has "made it." People admire the finished mansion without necessarily asking about the foundation underneath it.

I sometimes miss a simpler standard, perhaps partly imagined through nostalgia, when qualities such as honesty, integrity, hard work, intelligence, wisdom, respectability, and fear of God seemed to carry more weight. Today I met one or two old acquaintances, and before long the conversation turned to properties—what they owned, what they were building, what vehicles they drove. Guiltily, I played along and acted impressed.

The funny thing is that I have accumulated material things myself. I am not writing this from a hut while wearing sackcloth. I owned a house in Florida. I still have property. I am preparing to buy a new vehicle. I spent decades working in America and benefited from that life. So it would be hypocritical for me to condemn possessions themselves.

The difference I am trying to understand is between 'having' something and needing other people to 'know that I have it'.

That distinction matters to me.

Whatever I accumulated came through decades of work, opportunity, sacrifice, good fortune, and, from my perspective as a believer, the grace of God. I do not feel compelled to use those things to establish my position relative to another person. When I meet someone, I don't want to mentally calculate whether he has more than I do or whether I have more than he does. What would be the point? Eventually, both of us leave everything behind.

Maybe Ecclesiastes has been whispering into my ear again.

"Vanity of vanities."

Everything we accumulate, display, defend, compare, and brag about eventually becomes somebody else's problem to sort through.

That brings me back to what I am most grateful for. The gifts I increasingly value are not the things parked in a garage or recorded on a property title. They are the quieter gifts: meditation, writing, reading, creating stories, building my little websites, gardening, learning, thinking, and expressing what is going on inside my mind. These things do not require an audience. I can write a story and post it on a website I created myself even if hardly anyone reads it. I can meditate without announcing that I meditated. I can read without photographing the book. I can enjoy a garden without needing strangers to admire it.

For me, that may be one of the great lessons of retirement.

I spent much of my life working, acquiring, accomplishing, moving, and preparing for the next thing. Now I am entering a period when perhaps the better question is not, What else can I accumulate? but What can I appreciate without needing anyone else's approval?

Maybe that is why writing like this has become so important. Meditation and writing give me somewhere to place all these observations, frustrations, temptations, judgments, contradictions, and occasional bursts of grumpiness. Without them, I might sit around staring at the walls, chase pleasures that no longer fit the person I have become, or return to the very social-media habits I criticize.

Instead, I can sit here and write.

And perhaps that is enough.

The world can continue counting followers, properties, vehicles, bank accounts, views, businesses, and whatever other measurements it chooses. I am trying—imperfectly, certainly—to use a different measuring stick.

At this stage of my life, I would rather measure wealth by peace of mind, freedom of movement, the ability to create, the health to walk another mile, the presence of family, the wisdom to know my limitations, and the quiet assurance that I can sit alone with my thoughts without needing the whole world to applaud them.

And above all, I remain grateful to God—not because I have something to display, but because I have been given enough to live, enough to think, enough to create, and enough time left to understand the difference.
2026-09-26 01:31:11
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