How Lucky We Are, Even When Things Suck Here
I'm a sap. I often tear up a little coming back through Customs, because I am so grateful to be American.
Sure, I'm pretty worried lately with the way we've sold our financial soul to the Chinese, and about all the other vastly fiscally idiotic stuff going on and that's gone on in recent years. I also recall reading books about Russia as a girl, and thinking how great it was nobody asked us for our "papers." There's a change for you.
Still, with everything we have to worry and complain about, if you talk to somebody who immigrated here from somewhere else, you get a sense of just how great we all still have it.
Susan R. Barry, a Mt. Holyoke professor, posts on Psych Today of a student who did well in her classes but quibbled about all her grades. This annoyed Barry -- until she read the student's dental school essay -- a story of how she came to be where she is:
W. was born the youngest of six children to a desperately poor family in Viet Nam. When she was 9 years old, her parents put her and her 16-year-old sister on a boat to travel to Hong Kong and a better life. There were some adults on the boat but no other family members. At one point the boat broke down in Chinese waters, but some kind fishermen helped fix the motor. They made it to Hong Kong ten days before Hong Kong closed its borders to Vietnamese refugees.W. spent two years in the refugee camp, sleeping on a tarp on the ground. She was embarrassed for her sister, now with the body of a mature woman, for the two of them were still wearing the same clothes that they wore when they left Viet Nam. To mend her sister's clothes, W broke off a piece of barbed wire from the fence surrounding the refugee camp and fashioned it into a needle. She then unwound some threads from her sleeping tarp and, with her makeshift needle, patched her sister's clothes. (At this point in the essay, I looked up and asked W. how she knew to do this, and she said, simply, that she was good with her hands.)
W. had always had bad gums and teeth and assumed that the accompanying chronic pain was something that everyone felt. At the refugee camp, she saw a dentist who pulled out the bad teeth and gave her the tools to take care of her mouth and gums. This was a revelation to W. - that she could go through life without mouth pain.
Meanwhile representatives from several countries interviewed W. and her sister and finally the United States allowed W. and her sister to immigrate. They arrived in a US city where a small community of other Vietnamese helped them set up their own apartment. W.'s sister got a job as a manicurist while W. went to high school and worked after school in a dentist's office. Ten years after they left Viet Nam, W. and her sister brought their parents to this country.
Now I understood why W had argued over every test point and grade. She had had to fight for everything she received in her life. Needless to say, I wrote W. the best letter of recommendation I could write. She was admitted to every dental school that she applied to. Since that time, I've lost track of W., but I have no doubt that she is somewhere in the world providing exceptional dental care to those who can least afford it.
SIlly teacher. Doens't she know Asians do too well and need to step aside and let others have a chance? How dare she write a recommendation for her instead of some black student!
momof4 at April 5, 2010 7:55 AM
>>you get a sense of just how great we all still have it.
This goes back to what I have written on in the past. All humans are on a Bell Curve on almost every parameter. Emotions; physical; life experience.
I am glad you are happy with where you live and your life. Good for you. You make a decision to be happy with what really is a good life for you. (And, I am confident it is; I am not being at all sarcastic.) Other women have the same good life, and they do nothing but find fault with their lives.
However, at this time the status of men is way down in the US. So, you may have to accept that not all men share your views.
So, a man who has had his kids taken away by an adulterous woman; who is hounded to pay more money than he earns, who has faced false sex abuse or DV charges, to get a better divorce deal, is not going to accept your viewpoint that this country is a great place.
There is a tendency in the US for those whose life is good, to assume anyone who does not share that good life is personally at fault, right? LOSER!!! Not so. It's all on the Curve of human existence.
Several years ago, I participated on a men's board. I wrote about my daily life here in rural Mexico. Admin after a few weeks couldn't wait any more, and jumped a plane to Guadalajara for the weekend. On Monday, he reported, "It's True! You can tell an American Woman twenty feet away by the pissed-off look on her face!"
He sent me a note not long ago that all the moderators of that board have now expatted. He is in China; one is in Italy. I don't know where they all went. They just need someone to help them visualize life outside the once great USA.
I realize the women here aren't going to like this kind of talk. That is fair enough. We men haven't like the incessant insults we have experienced the last 45 years, either.
When we are in the States, that is, heh, heh.
By the way, UK census officials last year reported that a million men are missing. They have the birth and death info, and a million men just can't be found. This is in addition to a million imputed men, which means they think they are there, so they counted them, though they did not actually find them.
My niece in DF does not know a million Brits, but she does know quite a few.
So, the US is just starting what has been happening a long time in the UK.
I know the solution. Toughen up on the DV and sex abuse laws, and the divorce and alimony laws. Too many years of nice gal have made men nasty. Treat them harshly, and they will just naturally be sweeter and more docile. No more trials; once a woman accuses, save time and money and send them to prison. Stuff all divorced men in camps as proposed in the late 90's, and just let them out to go to work every day.
Ah, men are such evil beasts!
irlandes at April 5, 2010 10:20 AM
How interesting! The idea of helping someone who is smart and resourceful become a dentist and assuming that she will be interesting in giving care to the poor.
Are you sure that she is able to pay for all of her education? It would be a shame if WE had to pay for it.
We should just keep things the way they are for the most part: with 90 + percent of the people going into medicine from only the wealthiest of families. That way the future generations of doctors will have no compassion for the "ignorant, unwashed masses" and they will simply refuse to take patients who did not vote THEIR way.
Jen at April 5, 2010 6:09 PM
Wow . . . . it's a lovely story. Are y'all really so cynical that you can't just appreciate for the fact someone worked really hard and pulled themselves into success? Do you really have to start pushing your agendas on it?
Elle at April 6, 2010 6:43 AM
However, at this time the status of men is way down in the US. So, you may have to accept that not all men share your views.
Amazingly, I can be deeply concerned and committed to men's rights (and all people's rights) and still appreciate how lucky I am to be American, and to have a sister who wore clothes bought at Sears, that I was never required to stitch together with a piece of barbed wire from refugee camp fencing.
I can get motivated to not waste time simply by looking at my neighbor, an architect who's turned herself into a YA novelist, and who uses every bit of break time she has to write and edit her novel, which she'll soon be sending out. (It's good, too.)
Amy Alkon at April 6, 2010 7:03 AM
Similar feeling here in Israel - everything around me is the result of a protracted struggle against forces of hatred and violence.
Yet it is still a country where people stop for hitch-hikers.
A visiting European coworker once complained that there were no public trash cans.
"We had them," explained an Israeli coworker laconically, "but they used to blow up. So we had to remove them."
"And there are no mailboxes" said the German. "I have to go to the post office to send a letter."
"Yes, we had them too - but they, too, were blown up."
Finally the penny dropped. Everything around you has been wrested out of chaos. Built and defended by people still alive.
Ben-David at April 6, 2010 12:07 PM
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