Walking in Two Worlds

This one's been germinating for a while. The seed's been there all my life, but I suppose it got exposed to the elements by reading an article in an alumni magazine about how a student ending up doing two different internships during a recent summer break. It was personally poignant as the student's parents turned out to be Chinese immigrants from the same region of China that my parents  originally emigrated from. The first internship was in Washington D.C. where all his fellow interns' parents were all people with influence within the Beltway able to pull strings while his immigrant parents run a Chinese restaurant in a small city in Michigan. While his peers' parents were actively involved in furthering their careers, conversations with his parents are limited to topics such as how to make rice porridge. Unable to explain how he wishes to be an international policy maker in terms of immigrant migration, he's told his parents that he helped his teacher while in Washington, and that he wants to be a teacher someday. At the same time, he wants his goals to bring honor to his family.

There's a lot of memories dredged up by this article, but the ones that resonate most deeply at the moment are tied to the struggle of living in two different worlds trying to reconcile the differences between in the values of my parents' ethnic culture and what I will loosely describe as American culture. Let me try to explain. I've lived in southern California for almost 30 years now. I feel a lot more at home here than I ever did living in the midwest. I'm still different from most people - but no one is like anyone else here. Instead of one dominant culture out here, LA consists of a number of different subcultures, even within different ethnic groups; a therapist who treats only asian-americans was at first fascinated by me where we first met: an american asian from the midwest, who didn't act or speak like any other asian male he'd ever met. A Nisei (Japanese-american) himself, raised in the (San Fernando) Valley, he told me that when speaking to any other LA-raised Nisei, within a few minutes he could discern where that person had been born and raised: the Valley, Little Tokyo, the south bay (Gardena), etc. There is no one-size-fits-all story to express the Asian-american experience. But that's not going to stop me from trying to identify the commonalities. (And there's an even more profound difference that I didn't recognize until recently; the culture is different here because western/central european heritage and traditions really don't exist here. The immigrants by a huge majority come from elsewhere. So the dynamics are different here.)

So as I continue to explore what it's meant to walk in two worlds, I'm going to need to keep reminding the reader that while a lot of my experience will be applicable to many fellow asian-americans with immigrant parents, a lot of it might not.

Mad As A Hatter

I recently discovered a song on youtube with this title written by a two sister band called Larkin Poe (they recently did a great album of blues covers called "Peach". Find a copy).  The lyrics (written for their grandparents who apparently suffer from some sort of dementia) follow:

I know what time is, Time is a thief. It'll steal into bed and rob you while you sleep. You'll never feel it. It pulls off the covers, and rifles through your head. Then you'll wait to find you can't remember what you just said... It happens to everyone... Just like the father of my father, time stole his mind and I can't forget that one fourth of his blood is mine I try not to worry... ~~~ PLEASE don't come for me I promise I'll be great Just let me keep what's mine. Please don't come for me, If you must then just please wait and let me have some time. Please don't come for me. Mind over matter when you're as mad as a hatter... ~~~ It's hard to draw a clear distinction When you are who you are. Through the looking glass, the past and future begin to blur though I keep playing Well they say the world is what you make it you think, speak and breathe. and those rules solidify, stuck in a world of make believe. You make the best of what you are given.... ~~~ Off with the head, off with the head... paint the roses, paint the roses.... Please...
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While we don't know all that much about Alzheimer's, it's believed that genetics play a large part:
I can't forget that one fourth of his blood is mine I try not to worry...
My mother is now exhibiting symptoms of Alzeimer's. And as I've aged, I've become aware that my mind is no longer as agile as it was 20 years ago. So I suppose it's a mix of fear and anxiety that prompts me to imagine my exhibiting these symptoms someday.

I find it ironic as I contemplate losing more than most; when I was five, my teachers asked me to read some college textbooks for them. And I did. I didn't understand the fuss. I got accustomed to being able to see/perceive things in a certain way, and getting skeptical/incredulous looks when I tried to explain how I reached that conclusion (which typically turned out to be correct). The best way I've come up with explaining it after a number of decades is that I just connect the dots. Patterns exist. I see them. This also allows me to see changes in the pattern as well. (That's how I perceive music as well - patterns and contrast. More on that in another blog post.)

While I wouldn't trade what I can do with my mind for anything, having this ability has also come with a cost in how I can relate to others. For want of a better way to put it, I've let myself be anxious about other people feeling dumb and I've deliberately filtered and stifled my contributions to many conversations. I'm doing it even now, when I desperately want to be able to just sit around in my mental underwear and just let it all come out. It's a bit like driving a car that's got unlimited HP, but also has a governor that prevents you from going more than 55 MPH on the highway. Instead of just letting my brain work, I focus a lot of conscious effort on minimizing the risk of making others feel dumb.

Who's the madder one?

It's complicated even further because I often express things with snark that conveys the element of humor in the thought. The snark is almost never genuine - but it's also never completely irrelevant. Fortunately, I do have a small group of friends who let me do the equivalent of sitting around in my mental underwear and speak freely,

I guess I've let this train of thought meander. My mom's mind is going. I fear I'm only a few miles back on the same path. And it's further complicated by the ambivalence I've struggled with concerning my intellect. And there's something else I have yet to mention - the prospect is even more daunting as I remain single with no offspring. But that's an anxiety I can deal with.

Fear vs. Anxiety - or is it Pride?

This topic is an extension of my (most recent) previous post concerning the type(s) of fear that prevents us from accepting certain truths which in turn allow us to reach different (and more intellectually honest) conclusions.

Now, if someone is wielding a box cutter and is poised to stab me in the neck because they want to kill me - I *should* be afraid. In my case, I never saw it coming. So I never had the time to be afraid. However, a few weeks later, while I was back at the park engaging one of the homeless in conversation, I was asked if I wasn't concerned about being attacked again. Right at that moment, another homeless person came up and hugged me from behind. My response: "If I really was worried, *that* (being hugged unexpectedly from behind) should have freaked me out." The point is that it's not really fear but anxiety when you are worried about something that *might* happen.

For want of a better word, fear is legitimate and should be the normal response to actual danger. I'm not sure it applies to people who need to be right all the time - the only real danger is to their own self images - which could probably use a little deflating anyway. Perhaps it's pride more than fear which is the prevailing emotion that needs to be checked. It seem to require humility to consider the possibility that one might be wrong. So perhaps it's more about conquering anxiety and pride that allows us to make truly informed choices?

Good decisions

I find it odd how we pride ourselves on making "informed" choices - yet emotion is still pretty much the determining factor when it comes to the choices we make. The reality is that we are not rational beings as much as we are rationalizing beings.

But there's another factor and I was compelled to clarify it as I recuperated from a near fatal attack back in 2013. For those who don't know the story, I was feeding the homeless when someone attacked me with a box cutter, severing the anterior branch of my carotid. Although my attacker went to trial and was found guilty of premeditated attempted murder, she was also declared insane, rather than being evil and as a consequence she was sent not to jail. but to a state psychiatric hospital where she's expected to remain for the rest of her life. This prompted me to ask the question: what does it really mean to be insane?

I found the following quote by G.K. Chesterton compelling:

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

He went on to explain that such people are working with a limited universe of facts, so they have no way of avoiding coming to the same conclusion over and over.

Again, it seems that emotion plays a part in this also. Even when things can be shown to be factually true, people will often refuse to accept these things. Acceptance of fact ends up being an act of will vs. intellect. And it all boils down to fear, though the category/object of fear can vary from person to person. For some, fear of their self-image being diminished results in the coping mechanism of needing to be right all the time. And the more fragile they are in relation to their egos, the more deeply entrenched they'll be in this behavior. For others, it's the kind of fear that accompanies an event in one's personal history.  The fear accompanies the desire to avoid re-experiencing that personal pain. And there are other types of scenarios I imagine that we've all seen in others, or ourselves.

It occurs to me that people could be helped if they could be made to feel 'safe' so as to be able to accept whatever truth it is that they currently can't embrace, prompting them to make flawed decisions over and over. The problem, truth is almost never "safe". It often requires a lot of courage and strength to embrace certain truths.

The bottom line: I've come to believe that the ability to make good decisions is commensurate with our ability to identify and conquer our own fears.

Can't Go Home Part 3

Mom is now in Milwaukee. I'm not sure if she got a chance to see the house again. But she can't go home either. My dad, who was hoping that he'd be able to stay in the house alone, gets to stay by himself for maybe another month before the house is sold - at which point, it'll be final. It's one thing to choose not to go home. It's another thing to have the choice denied you.