sigh, nakakainis ang bunso namin

My bro, 21 years old, 4th out of 5th year in a major at UCLA that he hates, cannot come to grips with telling our parents, what he really wants to do in his life. Hell, he can't even really tell me what he wants, and I'm close to him.

He chats with me, wonders how I got to a point in the relationship with our parents, where it's fairly cool. I do my thing, they don't complain too much about it. I don't think he was paying attention when I was having the all difficult, tell-dad-you-don't-aspire-to-the-same-things-he-wants-from-you when I was going through college. Then again he was 13, what do 13 year olds care about.

It takes time and it takes talking. And right now, he doesn't want to talk.

So he's in th computer science degree and he hates it. And he's love the community and theater work and wants to do that for a living. hmmm...get a degree in computer science, then work in the community...this is train wreck with my parents waiting to happen.

I can see it happening. My dad will ask him why he doesn't get a job in computer science. My brother will say because he hates it. My dad will ask, then why did you do 5 years of it if you hated it. My brother will reply, because you told me to. And my dad will say, "I didn't tell you to be unhappy." Then my brother will be pissed to no end because for the last 5 years of his life, he was trying to make my dad happy.

My parents don't have a problem with community work. They just care if you can pay your bills and live in a safe neighborhood. If you can do that, they don't really care what you do. They want to make sure you're in a good relationship and that if you choose to have kids, you have the means to take care of them and raise them. How you do it, well that's up to you.

It's funny, growing up, our dad was quite the authority figure who planned out our lives, ensured that we were model students and pressured us to go for the best schools. He would not settle for anything less. But I soon came to realize that life was not so linear, and saw myself on this one way track that I needed to jump off of and in a hurry. My initial plan was going to physical therapy school. My father would cut out articles about physical therapy for me, about how it was the job of the future and that society would need plenty of physical therapists.

Then, I attended a seminar about what physical therapists really do and I knew then, damn, I don't want to be a physical therapist. The next thought being, I'm screwed! I'm 12 units away from completing this major that points directly at being in the physical therapy or sports doctor field and I don't want to do it.

I had other interests. I wanted to do community work. I wanted to write. I knew I didn't want to follow the footsteps of my classmates into selling insurance or being a "consultant" whatever that meant.

So, I figured, just get through this major and get out. So I did. It has a nice fancy sounding title, "Human Biodynamics" which my parents barely pronounced and had no idea what that entailed. They just knew I was out of a nice big prestigiously named university.

Soon after, I went to look for a job. I lived at home, I wanted to move out. To move out, I needed money. Seemed simply enough. To move out, I need to get money. I had some contacts at the university and used them to get this job on campus. It paid enough so I could save money to rent an apartment or at least a room. I didn't have to wear corporate suits or dress up much. It worked and satisfied my goals and needs for 3 years, then I got another job at the university doing something I like to do more, plus it gives me time to do the stuff I really want to do.

During those years, I learned how to save, pay my bills, cook for myself, do laundry. I'm still working on how to keep up with household chores and get orchids to bloom, but I got the major stuff down.

My brother wants it all. He wants the work in the community to pay his rent. He believes that his network and community will back him up if things get rough. (That's fine, more power to him.) And he wants my parents to understand how important community and theater are to him. Yet, he is too afraid to tell them this. And I ask him, then how are they ever going to know?

Both me and my sister had our "talks" with dad. The initial confrontational talk where we said, "no, we don't want to do this anymore." In our minds we thought he would freak out and kick us out of the house. But what really happened was more something like, "OK. Then what DO you want to do?" And that was really the scary part, we didn't know. All we knew is that we didn't want to do this (be a doctor/physical therapist). And when he asks that, you feel really dumb as if you've lost against your father.

Looking back, I realize, it's not a competition. Dad is part of our team. It's not us vs them. And as soon as I came to see them as people with fears and mistakes, they came to see me too. Dad only cuts out these articles about our degrees because this is what he thinks we want to do. And he thinks this, because, well, we hadn't yet had the courage to tell him, we didn't want to.

Somewhere, in our years at college, we changed. And we forgot to tell our parents that we changed. I realize now, they were only going by the best known information to date.

And though my brother is getting on my nerves in this chat we're having online, because he's really avoiding my questions, and I sense he's running away from his fears, and epitomizing his fears in our father, in the end, I know, it's something we all go through. Something he has to go through like one of those rites of passage.

Before we leave, I tell my brother, mom and dad for as long as they live will always get your back, you just have to tell them in which direction you want to go.