I am a product of special circumstances

My cultural upbringing makes me a humble person, which is why I do not dwell on many of the thoughts that are usually related to entitlement nor any that might make me think I am superior to anyone else. However, I have noticed time after time that I am special in the way I think about a matter at hand. It has been brought up by many people that my thoughts knows no bounds.

For example, while most people will be repulse by a necrophiliac and get the fuck away as fast as possible, I am probably the type who will be intrigued as it is very rare to meet such a person who is open about it. Once confirmation is made on the person’s special interests, I’d go about finding out their methodologies to achieve their goal. This trait, after much analysis, has been a special one that I cannot attribute to anyone or anything around me. It is not in my culture, nor does it exist in anyone in my immediate family.

The immediate memory that surfaced when I ponder about this mystery is always that of the plane ride from Taiwan to New Zealand the day of Christmas (Cheapest airfare) on our family’s maiden immigration voyage. The significance of which I did not know until recently after reading Ender’s game. In which, they mentioned a curious capital punishment whereby they’d send death row criminals on faster than light travel about 300 light year away. Effectively sending them into the future where everyone they know has already died, erasing their present self. In some ways, moving the whole family to another country back then, before the age of Internet and social media, has the same effect of sentencing a person to death to everyone in their social circle. This circumstances is no longer present in today’s age with the advent of social media and cheap cross continental phone calls.

Around that age, most of my peers have a stable surrounding and is in the process of figuring out how to follow rules and profit from the rules and to become more like an adult. An immigrant of my age, has to go through childhood again and relearn the language, the culture, relationships, what’s real, what’s dangerous. Then I did it again in university, changing from a French environment to an English one.

So, for the majority of my life and the most important age where my personality was shaped, I was stuck in this perpetual exploration phase where my mind has to be wide open, because what does not exist in one culture is sometimes the norm in another. The consequences of an open mind to all possibilities vs one that is fine tuned to one particular culture and sets of inputs is that it takes longer to reach a decision and it is harder to perceive the inputs because you are not as fine tuned to them. Rather, you can say that the norm for my life is change and adaptation.

Not that my parents doesn’t have anything to do with this. Most of the people my age who immigrated stuck to a small bubble of their own culture. Due to my Dad’s often bipolar extremist tendencies, he pushed us to fully integrate with the local culture and we attend schools that has nobody from back home and often switched schools because we saw a rise in amount of immigrants. At least, that’s what I believed. I think it is actually a good idea right now as I am more comfortable wielding my abilities, but I do not think he has any idea the damage this does to a child.

That said, looking back at everyone I know who immigrated at the same age, I am probably the only one I know from back then who managed to fully integrate into the society. Most went back home, some remained but within their own cultural bubble. Over time, I’ve met a few others like me who managed and it seems that the product of the same circumstances creates similar traits in most of us.

We are the boundless.