Life today is really very tough. It’s more than the queues you always bump into in any government offices. While others could not feel it, it could sound arguable for me that even the least finesse I had was overhauled heaving the weeks that went by. Tough things were never the same. Strenuousness of everyday games wasn’t momentarily felt that the aftermaths had still fretted me for sometimes. It seemed I had been sporting all day long without that complacency unmindful that resting should have been the last leg of it all.

Life’s in the fast lane. But, where does the trip lead us? It’s all but an endless cycle of gone-bys.

It’s a never ending challenge for me making sense my daily classroom lessons to students who easily get bored with the mimicry of ideas they used to when they were yet elementary and high school. Teaching the broader perspective of literature is never fun without new media or without innovation. Take this instance, my nephew, Mojo, aged five who’s ever engrossed to watching HBO and Cartoon Network breaks leg to tell to anybody the movie or show he just watched. He’ll be anxious if you would watch the movie that he just saw for he would really want to tell the story rather than you’ll do the watching. At the very onset of his preparatory year for school he’s been living up a way of advancing himself to learning the tinkling of anything fast rather than doing what we used to in a very relaxing life 10 years ago.

While I was doing a round last Sunday, July 29, in Surigao City with that same nephew, I was keenly observing what has changed in the city for the past 7 years where I had my longest stay ever. There’s nothing much changed except for the new food chains and the new university. Behind the challenges of turning big metros like Manila, Cebu and Davao into sleepless cities, Surigao City remains to be laid-back. At least, I may say that the city still offers that serene and hassle-free life much that traffic never peaks. That Sunday just gave me few stops. My first stop was the Cokaliong’s office. While I was purchasing a ticket for my Cebu trip I was really startled upon noticing that the person behind the glass of the counter beside the cashier was that same nephew smiling at me managing to reach the keyboard. He said he wanted to play with it. The least I sensed was being thankful that there was no damage. My second stop led me to Metrobank’s ATM. Again, my nephew was so quick as lightning does; he got a hold of playing the keys of the machine and the welcoming voice of the machine-operated woman made him more enticed to press the keys. He said he wanted to play with it. My third stop was the nearest internet café to load up my cellphone. Just before I could give my number that nephew had already placed himself on to the network’s server tinkling again the keys. He said he wanted to play with it. No wonder the desktop computer they had at home was unused for sometimes that’s because, according to my sister, the mother, her two kids had been playing with it unstoppably giving it the damage.

Children today seem to be unusual. They do things which are beyond our expectations. They crave for things which are not for them. They are living life in the fast lane. They easily understand things. They easily spoil milk for coffee. They boil down imagination for real-life action. That enigmatic experience with my nephew is seemingly my overtime concern with students who also grow up living in the fast lane. They easily get bored but they do not fill in the boredom to liven up the moment. They always ask for something new but they don’t interact to expound the idea. They don’t want to be reprimanded but they always do things nonpolitically. They want the laxity of life such that they don’t want to read nor study. They’re nonchalant. All they need is for them to be over-spoon-fed. They live in the fast lane and for them living with it only needs few and passing lessons, lessons which they need only for what seem to be useful for them in a given frame of time. They’re living one leg behind idling it overtime. My nephew lives in the fast lane. He’s inquisitive to what’s exactly happening in and around him. He’s always got the whys to my answer. He’s maturing fast. He’s tekkie. He’s using it for fun. He’s got the balance of everything. For him, I sense, living in the fast lane is living in high spirit to embark into the new mind cycle after a taste of innocence.

There were those traffic jams, as always, in metro Cebu. I was on way for my seminar on E-Commerce at the University of San Jose-Recoletos. Organizers were hopelessly waiting for me because it was already 5:43pm and I was still in my class at the Nursing Department of the University of Cebu in Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue and the seminar should start at 5:30. Traffic jam was everywhere much that it was the 31st of July, payday. It was 6:11pm and I was still in Mandaue City which I should take more jams before reaching Cebu City. We had to take routes which should have been less used by commuters. Finally, we reached at 6:45pm. Everybody was all set for me to start the seminar. But, technology did not permit me to start the seminar right away. My laptop did not work with me so I need to have another unit to get all started. Another laptop was secured but nobody had brought USB-SD for data transfer. Finally, I remembered that my cellphone would work with the transfer. It did. Nobody knew exactly that my presentation was done on the eleventh hour; while I was giving the prelim to my nursing students beginning at 4:30, I was also working with my presentation. It gave me a total of 99 slides. I was helpless but I needed to finish everything that I could have something to present on that evening. Ingenuity buffed me to success. The finality took me around 8:30pm but all of them were engrossed of the new idea I presented. My seminar could have been that damaging and wasteful if I did not leave one foot on the fast lane.

My nephew gave me a lesson to ponder on: Life is not always the same. Somehow, it always coils to change, and it’s faster than before. Today’s race is not anymore a walkathon but a marathon. That’s why I’m always thinking ahead of making sense doing things in the fast lane. I always make sure that whenever hiatus takes in I should be on the ball to patch it that I will always be on the road. Because of it and the cycles of gone-bys, I must not delay. Still, I need to slow down and rest awhile! #