Goodbye, Little Sister

I was away when you were born. I was away when our mother brought you home. I was away for so long, too long, but I am glad I got to meet you.

I remember our introduction, and the way your big, bright eyes watched me. I remember your radiant smile at the words “Lovely, this is your other big brother.” I think that was the moment you captured me.

You were a nexus of positivity. Nobody could remain in your presence and stay miserable. I remember many an evening returning from an exhausting workday, just plopping down next to you, and you’d turn towards me and smile, and my heart would soar. How readily you smiled. How heartily you laughed, even when you were the one being made fun of.

You’d get excited at the idea of wearing shoes and of going on car rides, to the extent that everybody did their best to keep up a constant supply of both. Your sheer delight at being put behind the wheel, albeit of a parked car, is one of those pure things the fondest memories are made of.

Oh, and what cheek you had. What spirit. Should anybody stare at you too long, you would laboriously articulate “Look elsewhere” (I suspect your other brother is to thank for that one).  I really enjoyed the way you’d snap at anybody who came too close to your food, or bothered you when you were feeling cranky.

All in all, you did not have the mentality of one who is a prisoner of her own body. Your affliction waxed and waned, waxed and waned, and through your ordeal you kept fighting. You bore it all. The medication that tasted foul and left you in a daze for hours, the scans where you had to stay still and found it really, really hard to, the painful physiotherapy… This past couple of years, I’ve seen you shoulder a burden most adults balk at, and you’d been at it a while already. You were bravery given human form.

This past Saturday was the last time I got to say to you “See you later, little girl.” Even as I write these words, I can’t help but desperately hope your occasional 3 a.m. mad laughter from one of your dreams would wake me up from this bleak reality from which you are removed.

You were in our mother’s arms, surrounded by many who loved you, when you went.

I hope you knew. I hope you were aware of our love for you. Despite the times when our words couldn’t reach you, I hope you knew from our actions how much affection and admiration we all had for you. I hope you knew that you were a paragon of beauty to us. You lit our lives like a second sun.

At ease, little soldier. You fought valiantly. Nothing can harm you now.

Hanging out with her big bro,
Lovely Sandra Mankono
August 5th, 2004 - February 1st, 2014

Sins of the Father

As an avid consumer of popular entertainment, I have noticed an interesting trend in the way stories are packaged. Ancestry plays a critical role in almost every narrative, in that incidents tend to “keep it in the family.” Fair warning: the very nature of this post means I will break one of my religion’s most sacred tenets. In other words, there are spoilers ahead.

Final Fantasy is one of my favourite game series. Its original plots and novel cast for each instalment mean that even after 15 games, the same-old-stuff effect is minimal (well, XIII was horrible, but never mind that one). Even in those games, though, the protagonist almost always has to deal with the failures of his or her forbears. In FFVIII, Squall’s world faces destruction because 17 years or so earlier, his father failed to properly seal the sorceress Adel.

This is Adel. Yes, the game does state "sorceress".

In FFX, Tidus is forcibly sent to the future after his father failed to stop the cycle that turned a Summoner’s Final Aeon into Sin (I promise this is the sentence that will make the least sense today).

This isn’t limited to video games. Cinema and television have shown the same tendencies. Anakin Skywalker’s failure to resist the Dark Side plunged an entire galaxy into chaos. If you have not guessed who eventually had to fix that (you mean you didn’t already know?), your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired. In 24, Jack Bauer discovers the events of Day 5 and Day 6 were masterminded by his own father, and has to stop him. We find out Pirate Lord Jack Sparrow’s father is Keeper of the Pirate Code. We find out Olivia Pope’s father is the Spy to End All Spies, and that her mother was is an informant a terrorist.

I could go on for pages, but let’s just say I am willing to bet that a bloodline storyline will crop up in any media franchise that goes on long enough.

I hear this one is all about genealogies now.

Engrossed though I get in those stories, that particular plot device strikes me as a misguided way to raise the stakes while at the same time making things “personal.” Luke is not merely facing an Empire led by a pair of Sith Lords; he’s going against his own father! [Gasp] Now it’s serious.

While you might argue that I show very little faith in humans, I don’t think people really can make the distinction between fiction and reality anymore, what with the way we all picture ourselves as the main characters in our own grand adventure. Maybe a part of us really believes the sins of our fathers are ours to atone for. Maybe society actually expects us to. It seems an uncomfortable burden to bear, but we do derive a large part of our identity from our ancestry, so it is possible that perceived blemishes in our family trees would weigh on us, and that those behind the stories wish to convey that aspect of things.

Or maybe I am reading too much into it and the creators simply want to make the protagonist easier to relate to. I mean, which one of us isn’t plagued by self-doubt because one ancestor failed to toss a ring into a volcano?

Looking Past the Pain

I remember the year my studies were interrupted as the worst year of my life. Beyond the family crisis and subsequent estrangement with my father, I was jealous of my peers’ continuing academic journeys. Mostly, though, I had lost something I believed was a key to progress: structure. I went on to learn a lot on my own, but that path was riddled with hurdles.

The first obstacle I faced was my own nature: I am the kind of person who would rather secure conquered ground – sometimes unnecessarily – than attempt to conquer new territory. In school, you are explicitly told what you need to learn, and there are ways of finding out whether you do. Not so when you are on your own. Nobody is going to tell you there will be a data management test in a fortnight. Other hurdles were the ever-evolving nature of software engineering, and the fact that I could not keep up financially. Picture this: in 2006, I had no idea what Ruby on Rails was. Hell, I was only peripherally aware of PHP, one thing the company I now work for can’t do without (well, we could; we won’t). By the time I finally felt comfortable with one tool, I’d learn it was fading into obsolescence. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Nevertheless, it was all I had. There was no other option. I stayed the course, and learned. I am not an expert yet; that is still years off. But I am confident enough now. More importantly, I learned the value of discipline for myself, by myself. Frustrating, painful, why-do-I-even-bother discipline. Whatever skill you are going to master, whatever vice you are going to give up, whatever healthy habit you are going to adopt will come at that price. Talent and enthusiasm are great, but they each come with a risk. Talent is especially dangerous, in that it robs you of the incentive to work hard and of any sense of achievement when you do. Enthusiasm fizzles out fast, no matter what those frozen smiles on workout infomercials would have you believe. Also, the law of diminishing returns means that the same line of pep talks will only take you so far.

You need something else to keep you on track, something that will help you not lessen the pain but remember its purpose. Vision. Obsessive determination. Those will keep you going through the sleepless nights, the friends that feel deserted and desert you in return, the miles walked, the pennies pinched, the aching muscles, the self-denial. Incoming understatement: it is difficult. It is painful. But the good news is, the more you do it, the better you become, both at the goal you set and at staying the course.

Discipline (n): the continuous choice to suffer by taking action, in order to avoid greater suffering through regret.