How a preconceived notion can become a total, stereotype, and how it's BAD, to hold that preconceived notion of how we were socialized, and place that same expectation onto our own young, and those whom we come into contact with on a day-to-day basis, parents, and adults, listen UP! Translated…
My former classmate called to catch up. He'd retired from the post office, and for forty plus years, he'd been the recruit for our class reunion, making the contact information ledgers, finding the classmates who'd lost touch, and, he'd been more than generous toward those former classmates who had monetary issues at home, he's the most compassionate student of the whole, class.
As he'd begun talking about a coworker, who was also a classmate, Chang, Cheng started sighing, talked about what happened awhile ago. Turns out, he'd asked Chang and his wife to come to his house for a supper around Christmas, and Chang told him it was inconvenient, that he couldn't make the time. Later, he'd tried asking Chang several times again but Chang turned him down still.
Cheng felt defeated for a while, and finally, called Chang up and interrogated him, "What did I ever do to offend you? We'd been classmates for forty plus years, and we worked together too, am I really, that awful a person?", that was when Cheng finally told him, his wife had been diagnosed with cancer, and was in the hospital, fighting with, death, he didn't want anyone else to know about this, and couldn't find a good enough reason to turn Cheng's invitations down, and can only, make the excuses of why he couldn't meet up again, and again.
As Cheng learned the truth he'd hated himself, for pushing Chang too hard.
This reminded me of my neighbor, who owed a steel mill, the Wangs, Mr. Wang is kind and gentle, courteous toward everybody, but his son, Wang junior always felt, distant, aloof. And, as I'd gone out and met him, I'd nodded to acknowledge him, waved to him hello, but he'd, not, responded back to me, just kept working on his, own.
As their neighbors for over a decade, we'd never exchanged a single word with Wang. And my husband complained that Wang acted so high up, and I'd gotten upset, thought, hadn't Wang instructed his son to interact courteously enough with the, neighbors at all?
We'd never asked our neighbor about this, until this year, as Wang retired, and the factory's operation passed to junior, and that was when we'd heard from the neighbor, Mrs. Chen, that in his high school years, Wang Junior got into a car wreck, caused his eye sight to, deteriorate to nearly blind, the families sought out all the well-known ophthalmologists, and nothing worked, and so, Wang started, training his own son to work the steel mills, so he could at least, have a, viable, skill. And finally, it'd hit my husband and I, it's a wonder, that we always saw Mrs. Wang driving, that Wang Junior never saw us greet him, or nod, how our narrowed minds had, been so, malicious.
"What is, the truth, let's just, watch how the story, develops…" as the narrator of the T.V. show, Sheng would say, these were the words off of a script, but now, looking back, we'd known, that the prejudices we hold, busted, wide open, in the face of, truths.
So, this is on how our own subjective interpretations of things, are almost ALWAYS incorrect, just because someone doesn't greet you, when s/he sees you, that does NOT mean that they're uncourteous, and where the FUCK is it written, that we must all greet our neighbors, those people whom we're not even acquainted with, like we're their, besties, I mean, you DO realize, that some younger generations are SHY in their natures, right, and, forcing them to give that aunt or uncle (our friends) a hug hello or goodbye, that would be, TRAUMATIZING to that young child, right? So parents, do NOT teach your own young based off of how YOU'd been raised up, because, the methods you were "trained" with may work back then, but it does NOT work for us, the younger generations…
No comments:
Post a Comment