My three hour tour…

Now, when you first hear what this post is all about today, you may get a little giggle.  For you non-Americans who are reading this, you may not know what this is about, I am not sure.  I hope you’ll bear with me. I was born in 1962.  For some readers that makes me a young kid still.  For others, that means I’m already an old man, it all depends on when you were born!  Back when I was a kid, in the late 60′s and early 70′s there was a TV show that was really part of the culture of people my age.  I’m talking about Gilligan’s Island.  For those who don’t know Gilligan’s Island, which is probably not so many readers, it was a TV show about a group of 7 people who went on a 3 hour boat cruise from Hawaii.  The cruise ended up being a lot longer than 3 hours, though! You see, the ship got caught up in a storm and capsized.  The passengers and crew ended up on a deserted island, which came to be known as Gilligan’s Island.  Gilligan was a sort of bumbling fellow who was the first mate on the boat.  He was a likable guy, but pretty inept. Anyway, this group of “castaways” as they were called, were stranded on this island with no way to communicate with the outside world.  The world thought that the crew all died in the storm. The other day, I happened to see that the movie, “Gilligan’s Island: The Rescue” was on TV, and I had my son watch it with me.  I wanted him to see the TV show that was popular when I was a boy.  Frankly, the story was kind of stupid to me now that I am older, but still it was fun to watch it with my son. Basically, in this movie, the castaways had been stranded on the island for 15 years already, when it happened that they were finally rescued.  They were taken back to Hawaii and there were huge celebrations as people welcomed them back to civilization.  After the celebrations ended, they all went their separate ways, except for the Skipper and Gilligan, who still stayed together in Hawaii.  The story shifted to different parts of the USA to show each of the castaways and how their life was going now that they had been rescued from the island. For each and every one of them, they found that the world had changed so much and they missed the simple life of the island.  They did not have much in common with their friends from their previous life before the shipwreck.  It seemed that they all had a much clearer connection with the other people they were stranded with on the island, and very little connection with their life prior to the shipwreck! Of course, while they were stranded on the island, they all had learned about how to live on a tropical island.  They learned how to eat the tropical fruits that were growing on the island to provide for the nutrition that they needed.  They learned how to drink the coconut water, how to build huts from bamboo, etc.  Frankly, although I had never thought about this until seeing the movie, they learned a lot of the same things that I have learned since living in the Philippines.  Of course, their learning was in order to survive, while my learning was only by observing how people do things here, for learning due to my curiosity about how things work on an island. At the end of the movie, all of the castaways got together again for a reunion in Hawaii, and they again decided to depart on a cruise tour.  Of course, as you can surely guess, there was a storm again, and they were all stranded again.. on the same island where they had spent 15 years!  They were all back together again.  This was the end of the movie, but surely they must have spent the rest of their lives together on the island.  Maybe they are still there as I type this! While watching the movie, I was surprised, and did not expect it, but as I watched the travails of each castaway as they learned about how their homeland had changed in 15 years, my mind started thinking about my own situation.  I have lived in the Philippines, on an island, for 13+ years, almost as long as the fictional characters of my childhood TV viewing.  I know that a lot has changed in the USA since I left.  I doubt that I will ever go back to the States, though, so does it really matter? I have been thinking this over for a few days, since seeing the movie.  I finally came to a conclusion.  Sure, things have changed in the USA, but it really does not matter to me.  What matters, though, is that I have changed.  I have changed a lot.  Those castaways on Gilligan’s Island changed too.  It is not only that “civilization” had changed by the time they went back, but they had each changed in a way that even if civilization had stayed the same over the course of 15 years, they still would have been uncomfortable upon returning. I’m not going back, at least I have no intention to.  Could I, though, if I wanted to?  Yeah, I am sure I could make the adjustment, and there would certainly be an adjustment for me to make.  But, I am quite comfortable in my little island here in the Philippines.  Really, as far as things like technology, the Philippines has changed a lot since I’ve been here.  We have most of the modern conveniences that the USA has, albeit a few years behind.  But, we also have traditional things here.  We have a slower pace of life.  We have a place where we know our neighbors.  We can sit back and enjoy life a lot more than we could in the States. Yeah, I’m happy here.  I’m not going back.