Reach

By Matt Pana, guest contributor In 2003, studies showed that the average height of a Filipino male was 5 feet 4 inches.

It’s safe to say that we’ve grown beyond the national average. Despite our stature, we as a people have become larger than life. We proved to America that we are the best dance crews. The best pound-for-pound fighters. The best singers, capable of sharing the stage with Motown legends and Rock royalty.

What all these examples have in common is their ability to reach. Capturing an audience. Mass exposure. But you will never reach what you truly desire by lying on your back, or living on your knees. You must take a stand. Stand for something. Your passion. Your dream. Standing upright. Not just a straight body, but a straight morale.

Every movement you make is an extension of who you are. Extending yourself. Every muscle. Every thought. Stretching yourself to your limits. And the more flexible you are, the more options will be made available. Dodging obstacles in your way. Fitting into scenes and situations you never thought you would fit into.

Sometimes, you may need a lift. Sometimes, you may need to climb. Every step, every rung off the ladder is a standard you set for yourself. While there are no shortcuts to quality, remember that there is a difference between setting standards and taking the initiative to reach them. Being proactive, rather than reactive.

A wise man once told me the key to success is growth.

“Grow. If you’re not growing, you’re either a rock, or you’re dead.”

Now think of that one place. A clinic, a classroom, a cubicle or a concert. Your environment should give you the freedom to grow. Your very own greenhouse. Here, your surroundings must be transparent and nurturing. Clear and encouraging. With those key elements. You will need light, giving you vision and direction. Your source of energy. You will need the right temperature. Not too cold and unforgiving, yet not too hot and bothered. You will need the right resources. Air. Water. Giving you a moment to breathe. Giving you a moment to replenish.

Today, size does matter. But I’m not talking about lengths or widths. I’m talking about the lengths you can withstand. Failure. Criticism. Patience. Timing. Because no matter how far you may be, if you can see it, it’s still there. That dream. That goal. In your grasp. At your fingertips. And once reach that high, you may have to hang on for dear life.

Don’t look down. Never let go.

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Matt Pana has performed in 2 countries and traveled 11,000 miles by ground as drummer for the band Mitchell Grey. Each week, he sits down in-person with performers and personalities. Episodes include exclusive music, road stories, and humble beginnings. His latest mission is to inspire and cultivate local artists, with the launch of his new YouTube channel. Episodes will focus on three key elements: eating food, telling stories and making music. Matt has since returned to his roots, drumming for indie-rock band Wyland, recent winners of The Break Contest. You can catch them performing at the Skate & Surf Festival Main Stage, as well as New York, Philadelphia and their native New Jersey.

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The original version of this post originally appeared on Matt Pana's blog.

Photo credit: TitleTrakk.com

26 Shades of Grey

“Tall hair, don’t care.” That’s pretty much been my mane (hah) mantra for the past few years. My hair has been my identifier and probably what I get the most comments on, from strangers on the subway, coworkers, and even GQ style gurus.

“What’s in there?” I get asked all the time. Well, I always say it’s where I keep all of my secrets. It’s really nothing more than some fiber gum and really strong hairspray… but I’ve recently discovered that there’s something else in there. Ready for it?

A bunch of grey hair.

It’s an old lola’s tale that using gel would eventually make your hair turn grey. That’s what I was told growing up, but I actually don’t remember a time when I didn’t use hair product. Actually, scratch that – I went through a phase in freshman year of high school when this unfortunate thing happened. I guess I saved some money on hair product, but I now see it was at the expense of my dignity.

In any case, I was looking at my hair in the mirror one day and noticed all the grey strands of hair jutting out. I had a quick "OMG" moment, but then stopped myself from plucking them because another old lola’s tale I grew up with was:

“When you pluck one out, three more will grow.” Was it three? I don’t remember. But it was along the same vein of:

“Don’t shave your mustache or it’ll grow coarse.” What? Damn, lola, enough with the hair advice and just let me live.

Seeing myself in the mirror, 26 years old and growing grey hair made me think back on the days when I was eight or nine years old and we were still living in the Philippines. My dad liked to play this game with my older sister and I, where he would have us sift through his hair and pluck out the grey hairs. We’d get money for each one we’d find. In those moments, my dad was literally a giving tree, with pesos growing out of him.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not at like, silver fox status or anything. I have eight grey strands, and if I had kids of my own to bribe with money to pluck them out, they’d probably decline and say that their reward would not even be worth their effort. But I guess it was just a sobering thought to realize that growing old is a very real thing, and it’s no longer some imaginary rite of passage that seems light years away. It’s here.

I’ll be my dad pretty soon, but I’m also realizing that that’s not a bad thing at all. I’m keeping the grey though. My new mane mantra: "Grey hair. Don’t care."

Photo credit: Webmd.com

Raising the Minimum Wage

Seattle recently increased its minimum wage to $15 an hour, joining other states like California and New Jersey in the quest to fight poverty in the United States. Concern about an increase in minimum wage stems from worries about the rise in unemployment and prices in order to supplement higher salaries. Advocates of raising the minimum wage say that an increase to $10.10 would reduce poverty and allow low-wage workers to buy basic necessities such as health care for example. These basic necessities will drive the need for welfare programs, thereby raising the standard of living. With more money in their pockets, not only would productivity increase, but people will be able to spend more on goods and services, thus stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and job stability, and decreasing income inequality.

However, the other side is that increasing the minimum wage would do the exact opposite and kill the job market. In order to supplement the costs, companies will start cutting back on their employees and trying to find alternative technological ways to replace those workers, in effect, increasing unemployment. Therefore, in an attempt to help low-wage workers gain more money, minimum wage actually actually damage their chances for finding jobs. In addition, a higher salary would result in higher prices, so goods and services would cost more.

There’s a Catch-22 when it comes to discussing minimum wage. Studies negate certain aspects of each side which complicates fair judgment. A study by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) showed that an increase in minimum wage to $10.10 would only raise the prices of goods and services by 2.5% or less. San Francisco and Santa Fe are perfect examples in which there was little effect on employment after their wages increased to $10.74 and $10.66 respectively. In fact, in a viral video concerning Walmart, raising the minimum wage of its employees to $10.10 would increase the price of products by only a cent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAcaeLmybCY

However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its own report saying that a higher minimum wage would have little effect on poverty because only 19% of the increase in income would go to families below the poverty line, while 29% would go to families earning three times more. Most minimum wage earners are from middle class families, debunking the myth that those in poverty occupy most low-income jobs. There are countless more studies that negate each other that it makes it difficult to come to a conclusion on which one is correct.

Each state and each city are different, so the effect of an increase in minimum wage may work in one city but not in another. But as more and more cities are deciding to increase their minimum wage, others are following. Slowly but surely, we will be able to see for ourselves which argument is true within our own community, whether it's the side we anticipate or not.

Photo Credit: Annette Bernhardt

The Circle of Trust: Sticking to Your Own Kind

“You are the company you keep,” as the popular saying goes. The people in your circle of friends are a reflection of you, and you of them -- not just personality-wise, but often times physically... and in turn, culturally. I might be generalizing too much here, but I feel that most people tend to “stick to their own kind” when it comes to their best friends.

For the record, I don’t think any Pilipino makes a conscious manifesto to only be best friends with other Pilipinos, nor do I think that white people or black people do the same. I think that certain elements cause that to happen -- things like your geographic location, whether or not you were close with your family, etc. Now don’t get me wrong. There are a handful of people I know (myself included) who definitely stick out like a sore thumb in their group of best friends. For example, one of my good friends, Andrea, is Colombian-American and it has been a running joke that she collects Pilipinos for friends, as many of us who are her closest friends are of Pilipino descent.

Maybe this will help explain what I mean a little bit better:

I’ve reached the point in my life where everyone around me is getting engaged and married, and I’m just over here thinking, “I can’t wait to binge watch Veep in front of my laptop because I can ugly-laugh and eat in front of it all I want!” I go to the weddings; I see the photos. White bride, white groom, white entourage. Pilipino bride, Pilipino groom, Pilipino entourage. Black bride, black groom, black entourage.

Again, I’m not saying that all these couples are racist, but it definitely sparks a dialogue on the topic of race -- a dialogue not meant to accuse or attack, but one that tries to question and understand. The question I was prompted to ask myself was, “If I were to get married, what would my entourage look like?”

Well, other than the fact that my wedding would probably be unconventional right off the bat, I think my entourage side would look a little like it were a United Nations General Assembly group photo. No lie. And note, I didn’t say an ASEAN group photo. In fact, for the sake of this blog post, I imagined that I was getting married today (...because that’s not awkward at all) and made a list of who would be standing next to me. I came up with nine people. Only two of them are Pilipino. Insert gasp here.

So if it’s the norm in society, why don’t I have all these Pilipinos around me as my best friends? Well, for starters let me reiterate that in no way am I saying that I’ve failed in not having only Pilipinos as my best friends, nor do I feel that others should and always do stick to their own kind. A few concrete reasons come to mind: geographical location and where I studied.

Had my family stayed in the Philippines and not moved to the States when I was younger, then yes -- my best friends today would probably be all Pilipino for obvious reasons. My family (thankfully) settled in New Jersey a stone’s throw away from New York City in a town that did not have a large Pilipino community. As a result, I grew up in a public school system that gave me the opportunity to be in class with every color in the box. I was in a youth group that was predominantly comprised of Pilipinos, but I didn’t quite find my best friends there. When it came time for college, I decided to attend a university in Long Island that was 63% white, 7% Asian (and out of that Asian percentage, probably about .5% Pilipino). My college had no Asian Club, let alone a Pilipino Club.

My two best friends from home - German and Angela - are not Pilipino. German is Ukrainian-Israeli American and Angela is Peruvian-American. We are the children of immigrant parents. We speak the language of our forefathers. They may not be my Pilipino best friends, but in a way - they are. They understand what it’s like to grow up as the different one; they honor the sacrifices their parents made in facing the unknown and moving their families to a new country; they appreciate traditions and respect culture. They take their shoes off when they come to my parents' house. Here we are purchasing cupcakes for my pretend wedding.

My closest friends may not be my own kind culture-wise, but they are my own kind personality-wise. Friendships are based on experiences and emotions. And for most people, it just so happens that they are cut from the same cultural cloth. I don’t have any glamour shots of my best friends and I taken in swanky studios circa 1998, but I do have vodka shots ready for them when they do finally take their place next to me on my wedding day. Oh wait, I forgot that was just a pretend wedding. Nevermind.

Photo credit: rebelliousbrides.com

Family Talk: Unearthing the Past

I used to think my parents were straight up crazy. Case in point: I was eating lunch with them one day in a humble sandwich shop, begrudgingly listening to my mom give me financial advice about something or another. Suddenly, her face turned stone serious. She looked me dead in the eye and started whispering in Tagalog as if it she were embedding her message in some secret code. The only problem was that I’ve never been able to understand Tagalog, a fact that she of all people knew very well. “What...?” I replied bewildered and frustrated, “I can’t understand you.”

She then drew her words out slowly.

“Hindi...wag…”

I looked around the nearly empty store to see what diabolical agents she might be trying to hide this classified information from. There was nobody but the cashier and two other customers well out of earshot.

“I… don’t… know… what… you’re… saying…”

At last she switched back to English, lowered her voice even softer and divulged:

“Do not ever enter your credit card information into a cell phone app.”

I was not amused.

“What? Why didn’t you just say that? Nobody here or anywhere cares that you’re warning me about entering credit card information!”

“Shhh!”

I pocketed that scene into my head as another one of my mom’s ridiculous antics, and it was only later that I understood why she was behaving so abnormally. I was reading The Gun Dealer’s Daughter by Pilipina author Gina Apostol and casually mentioned to my parents that it was set in the Philippines during the Marcos regime.

“Yes, they called those of us born during his rule Marcos babies,” explained my mom. “And you weren’t allowed to saying against the government. People were really disappearing.”

A blunt blow of realization hit me. I never fully imagined what it was like for my parents growing up through a tyrannical dictatorship, whispering in codes for over twenty years. For a land-of-the-free baby like me, the reality of their past was unfathomable.

Throughout my childhood I’ve heard very little about my parents’ younger years in the Philippines, as if starting a new chapter in their lives necessitated silence from the previous ones, and my assimilated American self didn’t need to know about any of it. Now that I’m older and have shown them I am interested in my roots, the stories are finally starting to slowly trickle out.

For me, the differences between their lives then and now are almost inconceivable. I’m talking traveling salesman to comfortable couch potato, grass mats to memory foam mattresses, farm living to strip mall-studded suburbia. Equally shocking are the tales of their struggles as undocumented immigrants, such as how they were manipulated by their employers and faced the threat of deportation.

The stories I’ve heard, however, are merely snapshots of the big picture. I realized that I know very little about my parents, barely anything about my grandparents and practically nothing beyond them. It’s almost shameful to think that I'm in the dark when it comes to understanding my own family’s history.

That’s why my latest personal quest is to unearth the stories on my family’s past and find ways to keep them alive in the future. It’s exciting really. What lost adventures are waiting to be uncovered? What patterns might I find, what quirks, what tragedies, what might I see reflected back in myself?

I bet there are lifetimes of lessons to learn. I would be gaining a better understanding of who my parents are as people, and preserving a unique narrative that can’t be found in any textbook. What it really comes down to though is that I’m looking for a good story. And the stories that touch us the most, whether in books or Facebook news feeds are those that we can relate to. What’s more relatable than the epic saga of the people who made you?

Photo Credit: Big Fish Games