Love in the time of swine flu

Critics suggest that Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez chose the cholera outbreaks of the 18th century as the setting of his 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera not only because the social upheaval that was happening then was the perfect backdrop to his story; but it was also because he wanted to promote the notion of love as a sickness that ravages a man’s being just as any other malady. Had he written the novel today, I wouldn’t be surprised if he would have compared it to swine flu or the A (H1N1) virus instead. For just like swine flu, love is a pandemic. It is an infectious condition that can quickly spread among people regardless of what they do and wherever they are in the world. But unlike other diseases where a vaccine is eventually developed, man has yet to find a cure for love. Moreover, just when it seems that man has learned to at least live with his love-sickness, it mutates in every generation. Thus do parents who suffered through it in their youth find themselves once more utterly helpless in dealing with their children’s love lives.

Many of our grandfathers grew up during a time when courting was governed by very strict societal rules. Aside from actually having to ask permission first from our great grandparents before they could even start courting our grandmothers, there were the mandated rituals like the pasalubong or the suitor’s gift-giving to the girl and her family whenever he visited; the paninilbihan or the period giving service to the girl’s family (as in fetching water from the well, gathering firewood, etc.); the harana or the series of serenades sung outside the girl’s house as she listened behind a closed window; and finally, the pagtatapat or marriage proposal and the pamanhikan or the formal agreement of the parents for their children to marry each other. After going through all these ordeals to win the hearts of their sweethearts, I wonder how our grandfathers felt when their children, some of whom are our fathers and mothers, suddenly got groovy in the ’60s and ’70s. With free love (and sex) came divorce which some commentators say led to Generation X’s disillusioned outlook on love. Generation Y brought with them courtship through texting. And if I am to believe others, today’s Generation Z is “googling before loving” and is always looking to “upgrade” (Microsoft style).

According to Wikipedia, I belong to either the Generation Jones or the Baby Buster Generation. These are the generations sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xers. While not as well-known as the other generations, I’d like to believe that my generation has a pretty balanced view on love and sex. In my case, I don’t consider myself a prude, yet I think I still retain much of the conservative views of the older generations. One would therefore think that my generation is probably the most equipped in giving out advice on love to their children. But as I look at the society my children are growing up in and where they will fall in love in one day — at love in the time of swine flu — there is one thing that has me in a quandary. And it is not that young people now seem to treat dating like endless shopping sprees; or that young women are much bolder; or even that (for some at least), “sex is no longer the holy grail but the ice breaker” in relationships. Rather, it is the growing notion that marriage is no longer forever. While I do accept that some relationships can’t be helped, in previous generations, people considered this as the exception rather than the rule. Today, it seems that more and more young people look at it as a given from the get-go. It is a message which I think the youth is bombarded with on a daily basis by popular media. And I worry how, as parents, we can ever hope to compete with Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives, or 90210. 

Yet while it may already be too late to win the war at the societal level, perhaps we can still win our own individual battles at the family level. If there is one thing that we parents can still do, it is to provide our children with something even better than the most popular reality TV show. And that is to show them, day-in-day-out, how we constantly try to be the best husbands and wives we can be. By doing so, perhaps we can teach them by example that although the song-and-dance of love may change across generations, as Frank Sinatra crooned, the fundamental things (should always still) apply. As time goes by.

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 I’d like to acknowledge the US radio show, “On Point,” hosted by Tom Ashbrook. The episode “Twenty-Something Love” provided some of the materials used in this article.

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