IT WAS one of those quick trips that has become the norm in my life these days, I was out there again, I can't even remember where and when, just somewhere in Metro Manila.
As my quick trips mean just one activity and nothing else, and thus will entail a long layover before heading home, I also took a quick trip to the bookstore. I can't recall where, I just remember entering from the ground floor where it was really tight, and that the stationeries and pens were on the second floor, and there was even a third floor that I no longer explored.
After seeing that there wasn't any fountain pen that grabbed my fancy on the second floor, I went back to the first floor and browsed. Among the books I bought was a thin one entitled, "Lessons from Dad, John Gokongwei, Jr." by Lance Gokongwei with Yvette Fernandez.
I wasn't able to read it though because I was still finishing one other. It sat there, on my office table, still covered in shrink wrap cellophane, near-forgotten. Until I was looking for some documents and saw it. I removed the cellophane cover, but again, did not have time to read it. Until the other day...
I picked it up and it opened to page 79 where it read: "Don't give your children a sense of entitlement. Make them earn it."
"When I got back from college at the Wharton School, I started work as a management trainee in our food division. Basically, that meant I had to go out and sell Jack 'n Jill snacks to supermarkets. I was paid P2,000 a month. Since I had to go around the city, Dad let me use an old car, a Datsun, with a broken air conditioner. I may have been the son of the boss, but I worked harder than anybody else to prove that I wasn't just the son of the boss," Lance wrote.
I couldn't help but recall how the daughter of a woman who has shacked up with a rich married man developed the appetite for new cars, and she was not even working for it. But we're digressing.
And yet... it goes back.
On page 95 with the heading, "Live Simply," it says, "those who actually have money don't have to flaunt it."
I have to move on... I can't be stuck with that girl and her instant entitled state.
The book is a good read, actually, for it gives simple but very effective tips that are substantiated by experiences during the Gokongwei children's growing up years.
"Dad flew economy class for most of his life and only started flying business class when he gained weight and got too large to fit into an economy class seat," Lance wrote. "My sisters and their families also always still fly economy when we go on family trips together. I guess it's also to prove that they're all still skinny enough to fit into economy class seats."
Kuripot? Maybe. But definitely people who have a solid sense in between their ears. A family who were nurtured through hard work and were made to understand what hard work entails and what is most important in life: books, people, family, education, innovation, and most of all, work ethics and respect. It tells of the importance of listening, of investing on the right people and being humble enough to seek advice, of standing up on your own merits and not anyone else's, of getting your hands dirty and never balking even amid adversity.
To raise children this way definitely takes a lot of gumption, a far cry from how children of middle class families are being raised now, where a little whining will get a brand new smartphone of the best quality the family can afford, and partying to be seen and be seen is common fare.
For the Gokongwei children, they were honed to be resilient and innovative and be at the top of the class as a team player. "If you don't work, you don't eat," that is on Page 42.
saestremera@yahoo.com
