We have a lot of titilaps (safeguard stories) from our culture that almost always admonish the youth and set their parents as role models worth imitating or remembering for their efforts. For centuries, this culture and these safeguards have been crucial to our people in preserving wisdom and good citizenry. They helped us be proud of our heritage and people alike.
The foundation that kept this heritage alive was the fundamental truth that we live on an island, at the mercy of wind, waves, disease, misfortune, and famine. These stories have collectively kept our people going despite the hardships. Each season, they reminded the next generation to take up his father's tools and further his efforts for the wellbeing of the family. For centuries, this system has stood. For generations, these stories have inspired great men and women. Made our elders people to whom great respect and honor should be given, which is written into the fibre of our culture.
Then came the period following Westernization, when the generations that followed no longer had to sweat through the same labor of husking copra and selling it to Westerners for some money to provide for their families. Slowly, laborious work was replaced by Western money, commerce, and industry. Hard labor and the efforts of our ancestors gradually became forgotten.
The new generation basked in the newfound wealth that Westernization brought. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Our people had struggled for centuries, and it is fitting—and awe-inspiring—to know that at one point they crossed the threshold into better times.
What isn't awe-inspiring, however, is the realization that prosperity can cause generations to forget the hardships that shaped them. As circumstances changed, those titilaps began to lose their relevance to the generations that followed. We now see new parents who grew up in the age of prosperity imposing their own ideas of parenting upon their children. Some of the newer generation of elders have lost the character that should request, no, demand that respect.
Whether it is through furthering their new lifestyle and thereby leaving a negative example, or failing to pass on the legitimate values of our humble culture to their children, these parents have, in many ways, departed from the inn (motherhood) and sam (fatherhood) we were taught to honor through the titilaps.
Growing up, I was told by an elder the phrase, “Opwe lifich pwe atin fan no”—be aware and be ready, because you live at the mercy of the waves.
My ancestral island, Nama, was not an atoll, nor did it have any hills or mountain. It was a single low island daring to stand amid the high seas between Mortlock and Chuuk Lagoon. We lived at the mercy of the ocean, and our ancestors understood that survival depended upon preparedness, hard work, wisdom, and the willingness to endure hardship.
These are the kinds of motivational lores and stories that, unfortunately, have become esoteric to the new generation. The new parents are no longer as connected to our ancient heritage or to the true meaning behind it. And when that connection is lost, so too is the responsibility to pass those customs and values on to their children.
For generations, our ancestors used these stories to teach their children how to live, how to endure, how to provide, and how to become worthy members of their families and communities. The titilaps were never merely stories. They were safeguards—living vessels carrying the wisdom of one generation into the next.
The challenge before us now is not to reject the prosperity that has come to our people, nor to romanticize the hardships of the past. It is to remember the wisdom that those hardships produced, and to ensure that the lessons of our ancestors do not fade from memory simply because the circumstances that created them have changed.
Westernization brought many luxuries and benefits to our small islands, but it also came with risk of addiction, laziness and forgetfulness of the past. Our titilaps should be the reminder of our strength and power both as individuals and communities to rise above and thrive.
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