Two worlds

My now expanded family

People back home, has a romanticized idea about people like me and they probably still do. The stark reality is that people like me, is denied that enjoyment of awe that they feel, either as the object of awe, or as the person doing the admiration. I’ve felt this for some time, but I never really tried to put words into this strange reality as an immigrant. Then it sets in while I was listening to the author of “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” discussing the art of Tao and the complex philosophy in Tao Te Ching as one of the ultimate understanding in the field.

You can probably only imagine my bewilderment when I heard this while grappling to understand and expand my horizon as I follow the author’s own struggle to reach a philosophical nirvana. A book that I’ve read and dissected in ancient Chinese since I was 8 is considered by a great mind before my time to be one of the ultimate teachings in life. That’s when one of the pieces that was never quite right began to crystalize for me. Where I come from and what I’ve lived as normal, is what people here seek as adventures. I will never be able to seek the same excitement in these adventures because it will just be like going back home for me.

I feel that I have fallen behind the norm so much. I have a lot of new realization that’s only now starting to crystallize where others have probably walked earlier in their life and I can tell that this is one of the bigger more controversial one for my ego. Part of the reason that I am able to do this I think, is that I am now able to look at my life without any preconceived deceit and just accepted the reality for what it is with the disadvantage I have as an immigrant. I have given up on being better than others and the need to appear better once I realized the cultural brainwash. The other part is that I have finally mastered English enough (Still need to use the dictionary to look up words daily, so take “mastery” with a grain of salt) for me to do the critical thinking that is necessary. Before this, I never commanded any one language with the mastery that I needed to do critical thinking and I find that it is necessary for English to dominate my whole mind in order to reach a new level of clarity.

That’s probably a lot of words to describe something simple that I have not yet grasped. It’s a work in progress and this is the first time that I am trying to put this in words.