what meets the eye

Life is viewed frame by frame. Second by second, and moment by moment. Every passing second captures something beautiful and exquisite. As of now, in front of me is a warm, steaming cup of coffee, a few scattered newspapers, and my dimly lit computer. A pair of earbuds playing a soft song to help me concentrate. This frame is one of quietness, of solitude and of thought.

Last week, I found my mom sitting in the library room, intensely focused on something in her hands. I walked over and she showed me something spectacular. It was a photo, of her childhood. The only one she found through all her searching. She was solemn today and seemed deeply drawn into the photo. Clearly, the photo was one of importance to her. It was a remnant of her past, possibly the only physical reminder of her precious childhood. As she stared intently at it, it began to "fill in blanks in [her] mental pictures..of..the past"(Sontag). And I sat with her as she told me all about every aspect of the photo. Her story came out easily, every person there had a story with the depth of the immense measures.

Only two people in the photo had pursued education beyond elementary. A handful knew how to write. Most of them were gone, deceased and the picture was the only physical reminder of their existence. My mother looked stifled, and confused, unsure of what exactly a "camera" was. She stood oblivious to the fact that that moment was to be eternalized in time. Strangely, she looked a lot like my sister and I could almost feel the urge to converse with her as I do with my sister. Suddenly I realized a new view on my mother, and I knew what it meant that she was someone's daughter, another person's sibling and another's mothers.

I could see my mother's family, their worn out faces strained from long days farming. My mother continued to narrate. One of the little boys, she had fought with in school, pushing each other for a spot at a small narrow desk. They ended up sharing, and that boy became my father.

What struck me most was that the one tall man in the middle of the bottom row wasn't supposed to be a part of the picture. My mom told me that since the family was so excited by this rare opportunity that they invited this random friend in. He just happened to be walking by the road when they were about to click the shutter. Because of that split second decision, he was memorialized. If he hadn't stopped by, his story would've been lost, faded away with time.

So now I look back at the setting before my eyes. I wonder if anyone will ever witness this scene again, or if I will be the only person to ever experience this unique setting. I wonder if after a long time, I will remember writing this blog post on this sunny Sunday morning. I wonder what stories I could recall at this exact moment...maybe about how we sang our hearts out at Church last night, or the touching conversation my friend and I had late into the night. Struck with wonder, I take a photo.

guided by words

Although advocates for politically correct language have become a center for ridicule, their ideology does have legitimate roots. Language and thought processes strongly affect each other in a process known as linguistic determinism. Or in simpler terms, that the language we speak affects the way we think.

Psychologists have long studied the effects of language on behavior and they have realized surprising results. Alongside culture, language indeed does have a significant impact on our thought processes. Some cultures, which don't have the word for specific colors, have a much harder time distinguishing those colors from others. Among people who live in the same culture, differing only by language, they still display differences in thought. Certain languages tend to produce happier people, while other languages may tend to produce more hardworking people. 

Now of course, it's near impossible and unethical to completely isolate all other factors in a scientific study except language so the exactness to which language impacts thinking cannot truly be determined. However, the studies conducted does give a hint on the impact of language. 

So perhaps with the advent of politically correct language, we are headed towards a right direction. We may be headed towards a society where our words display our acceptance of each other and the power of linguistic determinism also guides our inner beliefs towards those ideals. For those who claim that usage of politically correct language only masks our problems, hold steady, because with time, our beliefs will likely follow the words we speak. 

Certainly, the effects of small linguistic changes do not appear to be immediately noticeable. Changing "superman" to encompass all "superperson[s]" doesn't seem to be empowering any women, but the additive effects of all language have an impact that is undeniable. When my sister and I used to watch cartoons, I remember her complaining that the characters she identified with, women, were never the group leaders. The female characters were always sidekicks, friends or even in superhero movies, just a member of the group. So she became accustomed to seeing women guided by men, to see in textbooks all the Einstein's, William's, James's in search of a rare female who did something great and she told me one day while crying that "girls can't do anything as well as a boy". 

People are biologically wired to learn, whether through media, other people, or the words we use. Generally, we tend to live up the ideals our culture and society expresses. So with a search for language that is all encompassing and empowering to people of all kind, hopefully one day every young kid can see that he or she too can aspire to be great. 

beyond ourselves

At the end of our wants is nothing. Our desire to go faster means to blacken our skies with muck and smog. To get rich is to pollute our minds with greed for money. With the advent of technology and consumerism, we are driven to move faster and receive instantaneous gratification. Everything is just one click away, within a few minutes car ride, or lavished with extravagant packaging only meant eventually become waste. To beat our competition is to provide faster service or to sparkle our products with prettier looks.

As our minds become more habituated to faster and better services, we fail to regard the rest of the world. The world becomes our trash dump as we pour out or waste product for the sake of selfish satisfaction. Slowly, mother nature starts to bear the marks of our demeanor. Her face wrinkles as we tear down her forests and replace them with landfills. Her eyes are clotted with the plastics of our toys and the careless pollutants we endlessly pour out into the sea. Her tears become dried in water contamination and she carries a fever of global warming.

And everyday, we still deny it. We still cast away our trashes hoping that these problems will be taken care of by another. We shove away our responsibilities to indulge ourselves like gluttons. We always want to consume, faster and better. And as we become filthy rich, we toss away the filth to clutter the world. Slowly, we "endure death without thinking about it", killing nature by turning away from our problems. At the end of that day, we are still hungry, and our insatious appetite has only grown larger. Sitting in our luxurious, marble tiled homes that starkly contrast the landfills where death covers the grounds, we realize that we might've "gained the whole world, but [we lost our] souls" (Matthew 16:26).

Yes, despite what I proclaim, it's all rhetoric. Sure it is possible to scare each other into action by stating that global warming will make the earth uninhabitable for us. Or perhaps suggest that donating to charity by telling a story about some pitiful animals losing their homes. These things might work, but it will only be temporary because at its roots rhetoric is still selfish-it appeals to our own sense, and our own logic and our own selfish desires. We will care about the environment so long our one wellbeing is threatened, or endlessly donate in front of our peers to look good or to feel good about ourselves. Everything is still about ourselves, to consume, to fulfill our own desires, and to be convinced by logic that is sound to us.

No, to save our world, we inherently must be selfless. We must look outwards beyond our own desire to give ourselves up in service of the world. We cannot be convinced into saving the environment by things rhetoric, pity videos, or anything that isn't our own created will. By finding ourselves first, we can then give ourselves up. Only when we realize the conversation isn't about us, everything else that exists in the world becomes a lot more significant and we can make the choice to live selflessly. And maybe then the day will come when nature will recover her youth and the rivers and trees will rejoice in harmony of all that is living. 

making a mark

Everyone was staring at me. Marble tiles lined up the floors of the hallway and large window panes showcased the school's baseball field. I stood underneath the doorway to our homeroom and I looked up to see a wooden sign holding foreign characters. Inside the room, students wore white shirts and black pants as their school uniforms. The males all wore dark red ties that clung tightly to their neck collars. A perfectly evenly spread of uniformed students neatly added to the clean wood desks and blackboards. In my Abercrombie shirt and jeans, I was a smudge in the sea of perfectly dressed students. 

My exchange trip to Japan unveiled a contrasting set of beliefs. Each individual in Japan conforms to the values held by society, and generally follow a predetermined path towards a respectable job. In Japan, stability is valued, and a diversion from cultural values is uncommon. Clothing in Japan generally falls under the categories of traditional clothing, uniforms, or business attire. Even the uniforms are quite similar to the suits worn by businessmen. Japanese titles have no regard to marital status, but are added to show respect. Japan doesn't reveal much in its appearances. 

The term for I in Japanese can be either watashi or boku. Boku is only used for males while watashi refers to a male or a female. Contrary to English, the language in japan reveals more about males than females. In fact, it is customary for women to remain courteous and modest in both appearance and language. 

Perhaps to be marked an unmarked is all a matter of relativity. In specific cultures, women may be more marked while the opposite is true in others. Japan is a culture of homogeneity where secrecy and conformity are valued, while America believes strongly in diversity and the constant challenging of societal standards. Extending further beyond humans, genders are marked differently from one species of animals to another. Male peacock feather bold colorful tails in order to impress females, and male lions also carry manes for the same purpose. On the other hand, female black widows strike up bold red patterns while males are less colorful and much smaller.

Even in terms of the Japanese student, who to each other are completely unmarked,  are marked to the eyes of a foreigner. Markings are merely a matter of relativity, to distinguish an individual from another. Where women are marked in one culture, they remain unmarked in other. The "freedom to be unmarked"(Tannen) comes with the changing of culture. To be marked is to step out of the norm and reveal some quality about the individual; anyone who is not in the norm, becomes marked. Yet the norm is a ground of constant change and motion. When I went to Japan, everyone recognized me as a transfer student in my strange and messy clothing. Those same students in that classroom came to be exchange students a few months later. This time, I was no longer the one who was marked. 

makeup for our differences

This past weekend, I went shopping with friends. As we piled on bags of clothing, my heart sank as we inevitably walked towards the most dreaded store of all-Sephora. At this point it's essentially a ritual, that everytime we go shopping with a few females, we end up in this horrid, life-sucking, head-ache-inducing store. As my male friends and I made our customary complaints and cries, that to deter the females to no avail, we are dragged unwillingly into the hellish compilation of colors and scents. 

Of course inside, we witness a scene that is no stranger to us: boyfriends with faces glum after a dreary hour-long trip watching his girlfriend sort through the various condiments of eye-liner and mascara. Girls excitedly squealing as they find a foundation that matches their skin color just slightly more. Five different brands of a product coming in a palette of fifty colors and fifty more separate products for each crevice of the face leads to a back-breaking wait for the females to finish their fun. 

My friend and I jokingly looked up at the models on the wall and shouted, "why aren't there any male models here". Looking back now, we hit a little close to the truth. If make-up is all about expression and helping an individual look his or her best, then is there a reason why males are not included at all in the topic? Sephora embodies the qualities of gender segregation, by their huge plasters of female models and the clear preference of services geared towards females. 

For males, makeup is a joke- something to laugh and scoff at when women take up four hours to look slightly different and go to a party that lasts for two hours. On the rare occasion we do put on makeup, those peculiar moments when a female friend decides it would be hilarious to slobber our faces with various colors and tools from their choosing, it becomes a comedic show. Now if we were to do a gender reversal of the situation, where a male forcibly holds down a female and applies various creams and tints to her face, suddenly the situation appears considerably darker and possibly even borderline illegal. 

 

I guess it's this reversal of roles that can oftentimes shed light on the segregation between people of any quality. Now of course, for the equality advocate, these differences ought to be immediately eliminated. We can only hope for the day that we can be truly "androgynous at the core" and when my guy friends and I walk into Sephora, we will be equally delighted to see the vast array of colors and powders we can put onto our faces. But then again, perhaps this isn't the answer, and perhaps some differences are best left alone. I can't say I have an answer for sure.

Certainly, sometimes there's those special moments when I'm lying next to someone different from me in many ways and listening to each other's little perceptions of the world that I learn and crave to have this taste of something different. I might not enjoy the wide spectrum of colors at a make-up shop, but I certainly do love the palette of all the different colorful personalities and flavors of character I see in the people that surround me. 

A lesson on teaching

It is undeniable the reality that students walk about schools with grim annoyance and distaste towards the education they receive. They stroll about with backpacks heavy with textbooks burdening their shoulders and moans of dissatisfaction when asked to pull out certain papers. Of course, the issue becomes even more prevalent when the uninterested student outnumbers the interested one by a long shot. Actually, the numbers aren't even close. It is quite a rarity to find a student who genuinely loves their education and is fond of the teaching they receive.

I think it is agreed upon that education is one of the most critical endowments a person will acquire, it is given during a person's most vulnerable and malleable times- their childhood. It is often these first few years that determine the remainder of that person's life. 

Now of course, with education being in the state it is, it will be hard to make any changes at all and to request change is obviously implausible and absurd. It will be both a burden to the teachers and cost the students a great deal of pain to work towards a better educational format. Some may even argue that the pain and boredom students experience in school will better their character- they will learn the important lessons of resilience and patience. 

So perhaps the effort required for teachers to teach is far beyond reach. The truth is a teacher can only do so much, especially with pays as low as they are today, a teacher can't be expected to do much more than read from a textbook. 

As a result, "this prodigious number of children"(Swift) who despise school truly just lack the discipline that was prevalent in previous generations. It certainly cannot be the educational department's fault that these students can't even stand a few hours in a classroom when previous generations had laborious hours doing much harder work in the fields. 

I suggest that we right now are in a not so happy medium. We are in a state where teacher's are not giving enough attention to completely nurture every child, since teachers only have such limited time, and also giving enough so that student's do not learn their independence. I might even propose that the solution is obvious- teacher's should back off and allow students to learn for themselves. Why should a teacher read off a textbook while a student can read it himself, and learn the ability to read while he's at it. A teacher does his best job when he does not teach at all. After all, humans are very capable of learning entirely without the guidance of others. This might heal the damage that such years of care has caused upon our youthful self-reliance and interest in education. 

Hanging on

The flickering flame of life passes quick and incomprehensibly and before we catch a true glimpse of it, it burns out, leaving a char of blackness where it once stood. It's during the times, sitting before a tabletop, piled with papers and writing utensils when one begins to ponder the reason for his own existence. Is it to rise up every day, to face the grueling day ahead, and mechanically force his own body into action, while his own mind becomes a thoughtless slave to the demands of life. 

Day by day, his heart beats alongside the constant tick of the clock- his life only pushed forward with the progression of time. And he hangs on to the digits of time, gasping and struggling just to remain alive and his hope rests upon the belief that time will save him. The day will come when his unbearable pain ends, and he can find comfort within himself again. 

Before the midnight candle and the silence of the night, he feels a consuming emptiness, of meaning and feeling. He pushes ahead in life without knowing why he pushes ahead- and the constant realization that everything ends with death pervades his mind. He tries desperately to push aside such thoughts and to continue the scratching of his paper with pencil, and the pushing of buttons before a screen. He neglects death and denies it's existence, and doubly forces himself to believe that this endless movement of a pencil does indeed provide meaning in his life. 

He's alive much like a blinking flame before the soft blow of wind puts it out. He rejects the thought that his temporary emotions of emptiness aren't temporary at all. As his skin wrinkles and his eyes droop, he still continues each night with a pencil in hand to jot away at paper- word after word, pencil up and pencil down. At least now, he has grown accustomed to this rhythm of life, the beat and the song of the living dead. He knows he is hardly more alive than the faucet of his sink or the light of his room- turned on and turned off, working as a tool should work, sucked of its usage before it expires.

He is lonely in his struggle and emptiness he feels. But he seeks comfort in the company of others who are as lonely as him. Together they hang on...slowly "plagued out of life"(Hazlitt)...until they flicker out. A thin veil of smoke flow out and finally, time has saved them and now they are comfortable within the arms of death. Together they have passed by their days and together they are forgotten. I hope I'm not forgotten. 

How we've grown

Change flows through all things and is the key in the universe's progression. All of reality obeys change, and bend to its schedule; nothing in the world has ever stood against the wear and tear of change. As a result, it becomes apparently futile to resist change in both life and with our relationships.

My father has always been a smart man-well more so than smart, he's been hardest worker I've ever met. His childhood in a poverty-stricken China has strengthened his will and discipline in everything he does, and the belief of "no pain no gain" persevered throughout his life. And through his growth, he has traversed across a spectrum of cultures and lifestyles. Through it all, he learned to accept the endless surprises that dot the progression of life. Similar to his lifestyle, our relationship was guided by the fluctuating changes between my father and I . 

As an infant, our relationship was guided by intimacy and care. He watched over everything with his careful precision and made sure I stayed safe. I was powerless and dependent on his care.

Growing up, I slowly adopted new capabilities; I walked my first wobbly steps across the carpet, made my first infantile friends while playing with stuffed animals, and began to fill my initially empty cries with words of real meaning. My father allowed these changes to take place, and alongside my growth, he gave me new rights.

As a teenager, with acquiring more and more freedoms and rights, I made countless mistakes. My father used this time of experimentation for me to find my own way in life. Our relationship evolved from physical care, to a careful, tedious nurturing of my own abilities. My father was harsh and brutal with his demands, and I was constantly bombarded with his lectures and workload. Through those hardships and many tears of anger and hatred, I grew and began to "feel less challenged than loved"(Manning 148).

Nearing adulthood, I now have a complete picture of how our relationship has grown. Recently, I've gained complete freedom in what I do. Our relationship is now built on mutual trust and respect. We've become friends, sharing ideas and stories from our own respective lives. Only through the nights of endless pages of work has my character grown enough for my father to trust me. I no longer depend on his strict guidelines but have developed my own will and discipline to carry through my life. 

Change is inevitable, and likewise, my relationship with my father has been dictated by an embrace of the changes that come with age. Every person and aspect to life is a constant flurry of turns and jumps. With the passing of time, life takes on new shapes and qualities. Throughout it all, we must choose to accept this change. For me, at least, I can say that my father and I's relationship has been a fluctuating swell of emotions and actions. I'm sure our relationship still has quite a few twists and turns to take, and our love for each other may certainly change, but it will never die. 

Don't mind me

In my dreams, I soar. I carry groceries and I take walks through the ubiquitous lights shining throughout the nights of the city. Their green and blue beams slice the sky into crystalline shapes. The lights fly across the sky, starkly contrasting the black veil of night. The tall city buildings climb endlessly into the sky, before vanishing beyond my vision. And I walk besides the river, on a sidewalk illuminated by the street lights dotting the road. I breathe in the fresh smell of water that still has a lingering taste of ocean salt. It's all real. So recent and fresh and present. This is my world, the world I can explore and traverse myself. I'm a free man filled with desire in a world that welcomes me with open arms and a teasing smile. 

And I wake up. For years now, this has been it. Every day, exhaustion fills me and I yearn to crawl back to the dreamland. It sucks being awake. 

Ever since that day. That day when reality felt so unreal. That day when life took away half my body. And here I am now, half of my physical being is gone and I become an alien unfamiliar even to myself. When I'm awake, all I realize again that I'm already half-dead. I've become an utterly useless throwaway of society. Even as I wake up, I cannot get out of bed without my helper, I require people's babysitting and poor mumblings of sympathy. I need their attention to use the bathroom, to eat food, to get anywhere. I hear sighs of annoyance from those assigned to take care of me. 

Every once in a while I feel it again. I feel that urge flooding my guts and filling my stomach and suddenly, I jolt upright wanting to extend my legs and just return to life a normal...just a normal person. I just want to be normal. But the bars of physical encapsulation trap me again and I realize my legs are gone. I've become a prisoner of a tiny wheelchair, a prisoner of pity and sympathy, a pathetic creature meant for nothing except a slow torturous death. 

I'm the dark side of society, the men so hideous that remain unspoken of. People treat me well, they give their places in line, they give better parking spots, all out of fear. People look at me and see the lifelessness inside me. Every corner I turn, I'm met with eyes of astonishment, and a rapid buildup of natural terror. I see their eyes inadvertently flutter away, unable to look at my hideous self. Every damn person I meet gives the same reaction. They hate me. The entire world "den[ies] me and my kind absolutely"(Mairs). 

So I look ahead to when I can close my eyes again once more. And my flesh grows back as I blossom into someone, a person with a name beyond "the disabled". I can overcome the limitations of reality and revive my crippled body and spirit. I can paint over the failures, the hatred, and all the stupid people polluting the world. And here I can once again feel accepted and loved and normal. Reality still feels like a dream.