Glancing back at tradition.

Looking forward, naturally.
Perhaps its because I’m graduating, and so are friends; others are starting out on careers and marriages. So I’ve been thinking about the future; career ambitions, daydreams of kids and family life, strategic financial plans to retire early… I am sure I am not alone in looking forward in this sense; peers would also be doing the same. So looking forward is normal (or so I’m trying to convince myself here).


Glancing back at tradition
So how about looking back? I’ve been charged so often for being nostalgic so often its hackneyed. And sometimes I relent and admit I’m too “sentimental”. But today, I was not apologetic about looking backwards: looking at snippets of a culture that ran through my dad and his brothers, my grandparents, and more ancestors down the line. Today, I was blessed to share in that culture, rituals that make that culture, that possibly might, and likely so, die during my generation.

Tampines, where I spent some time of my toddling years. Somewhere I hold quaintly in me.

Today, my family (or more like my grandparents) celebrated the lunar winter season with a prayer session in the Taoist tradition. For years now, as the oldest grandson of the family, I go through the motion of the rituals, having hardly any clue all these years of what I was doing. And since Taoism isn’t my religion, there was lesser impetus to figure out what was going on. I just went through the motion.

We offered incense, wine, tea, food and paper money to the different deities in the Taoist tradition at the altar that has been a prominent feature at my grandparents’ flat since a young boy. How this altar figured in my toddling days was that I was to keep away from hot burning incense. Now it makes so much more sense.

Surely this whole process is interesting and intriguing to me, where each part of the ritual has its own rules. For instance, waiting 10 minutes after offering the tea and wine before offering paper money so as to allow “digestion time” for the deities. But because I’m in a way detached as its not my religion, these religious rituals were at best, interesting and intriguing. Yet, what went beyond interesting was the respect offered to my ancestors.

Ancestral worship is rather commonplace across most religions; as Catholics, we too have “All Souls Day” as a close similarity. Yet, what struck me today was that these ancestors I was offering incense to on behalf of the family, were direct family; these were ancestors that were with the same surname, these were ancestors that included my grandfather’s father and grandmother. At that moment when I offered the incense at the ancestral tablet, I felt what a terrible pity it would be if my children would know nothing of all this.

The struggle between tradition and relevance
I believe we are in an age where forces such as consumerism, media and social-networking tools tend to complicate and possibly tear away at the process of deep self-discovery of a personal identity. Simply, it would go something like: I’m a Nike-crazy and Grey’s Anatomy-gaga person (I’m not!). Yet, its totally possible too that these forces help with making self-identity more definitive. Again, simplistically, Facebook allows us to change our status by the minute. Yet, these forces often do not encourage us to look back at the road we have taken to get to where we are, to appreciate the social construct from which we came from; where our parents, and their parents, came from. Possibly, such traditions as the one I experienced today, may be one such means to allow our past, our heritage, enter part of the self-defining process.

I won’t provide any suggestions as to how to do this. May go into a cheemalogy rant. But what I know is I somehow hope my children will know a little of their heritage, of being part of the “Foo” family, and possibly of being Chinese. But one challenge tradition has to face is the one of relevance; how relevant is tradition in self-identity, and possibly family identity?

I will ask the question, and leave it as that. How does it figure in your family? Is family even relevant in an era where heterosexually defined families may be challenged? I don’t know. Perhaps you’ll like to share with me. Please do.

regardless of relevance, the reality is that my children will take this surname, inherit its heritage.

Uncle T