It is Sunday today, ordinary time, except that the sky is not clear and the sun has not come up yet even at 8:00AM, which brought me to the mood of writing. I am here, sitting on a dinning table in quietness, next to gorgeous roses with ginger hot water, just eating naan bread and writing. I want to write about where I am now, America.
Yesterday my roommate asked me: “how long have you been in the states?” and I told her “Two and a half years”, not long but definitely not short. To me this were like twenty five years due to the length and the depth of experiences I have got. Coming here, it is like a reality check for what I imagined in the past. The people I had seen through movies, the culture people have talked about and the houses I had found in beautiful calendar images. It is also where I am taught what it means by challenges, by competition and by greatness. Here is what has helped me to understand of who I really am through experiences.
If I would have to leave this place, the thing I want to carry the most is people. It struck me to find another place that is this diverse, in which people come from all sorts of different places, from all walks of life, with different background and culture. America in me is always a land of the ambitious, the hard-working and the interesting, of innovation and of opportunities. My uncle said that “you can find almost anything the world has here” and I cannot deny, it is where one can get access to any resource, easily if not obvious.
One time waiting for a bus, I met a Vietnamese person who is around 60 years old. He was asking me whether this was the bus 180 station and we started talking. Although he is older, he pictured me the image of my dad if he were coming to this country, not speaking much of English and having to try so hard to make a living. He was on his way to a gas station to work. He also shared with me that his children, given that they were in 30s and 40s still had not got married just to wait until the day they can make it to America.
It went beyond my curiosity and got me to think a lot about why people have sacrificed so much just to get here, even when I have been here, I am still very open to go to another land. To answer my question of why his family was fighting to come here, he said “I would rather suffer here than in Vietnam”. At this point, my mind was blown, WHY? He did mention about the wars in the past and how communism did not treat them well. Sometimes, when people suffer too much they just need an escape with a might-be-false hope that the grass will be greener on the other side.
Maybe they wanted the welfare offered in America or maybe they think about a brighter future for their children with access to better education and job opportunities or maybe both and more than that. They are not wrong in believing in those, however, life has lots of elements in it and at the end of the day, they should still question what matters the most to them and what makes them happy. There is no joy without suffering. It is not to say that people should choose to suffer yet they should choose to live their lives and suffering is a part of it. Moving to a different country means that we will have to start everything again, adapting to a new culture, learning a new way of life, changing job or even career and build their network all over again. Sometimes, we even have to get into to understand whether it is what you want or not.
I never regret of coming here, not so much because of the rosy side and the perks here but surprising because of how normal it is here too. I have met a lot of immigrants and their children who have strived to build their future and to make impact, who care about the world as a whole, not just America. And not just them, even native people here, they are just really nice and polite, authentically even though sometimes it made me feel like superficially. If they ask someone for help, no one will say NO to you, except that it is beyond their capacity or morality. America has taught me much of how I should always do the right things that align with my values, how it is okay to different as long as I am still who I am. You can make your own way into the world, pursue your interest and cultivate your talent here. No one will judge you for doing that. You can totally have your own perception of success, happiness and beauty here, not one size fits all. And yes, you do not have to worry much about being fit more than being adaptable and defining your values. You have to know how to make money here, because it is important, you cannot do anything without it, just a practical side of life. You should also not enjoy life too much here yet utilizing all resource and opportunity to give back and to make impact.
Love, America.
