I have written a lot this school year, though I admit not much of it is for this blog. As gross as it may seem, I spent a good amount of my time this year writing for college applications, scholarships, and TOK. Many were very personal.
Prompt 1 for my UC application, for example. I wrote about my persectives on my dad, and while I was doing this I realized... if my parents don't even know I feel this way, why am I sharing so much about myself with total strangers-- those people in some admissions office far off? How strange that I am willing to show my true feelings to total strangers and not to my own parents. Enough said, it is time to share some of my thoughts with you and to challenge myself to share this to my own parents, though to them, it would not be through these words but through my actions.
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It was a typical Sunday night and my family was eating out at another Chinese restaurant. I was dragged out of the house, because my mom didn’t cook on weekends. The meal passed by in silence and I ate sullenly. I would have much rather been at home, chatting to my friends and finishing the weekend homework. I don’t have what you would call a perfect family. Everyone is so consumed with his or her own affairs that we barely talk to each other. It’s like we live four separate lives all under the same roof. The meal went on in silence, and I tried to think of something to say to Dad but could find nothing. This troubled me deeply. Why couldn’t I even talk to my own dad? I glanced at my Dad’s face and began to study the wrinkles around his eyes, and suddenly the whole situation changed. For the first time I saw the world through my dad’s eyes. He had grown up in communist China and was sent to work in a factory during the Cultural Revolution. But he still studied hard on his own to make up for the high school education that he had missed, passed the college entrance exam, and entered the University of Shanghai. He then moved to the United States for a better life, even though he knew no English. There he helped form a small computer company and soon became a successful man who was able to raise his children in a two-story house in the suburbs. His life was one of hard work and perseverance, but to me my dad seemed old-fashioned and absurd in his habits. That night, however, I saw a my dad as a man who went through much hardships and came all the way to America just to raise an ungrateful daughter who couldn’t understand him, who even scorned him because she grew up in comfort he had never dreamed of and was immersed in a foreign culture he knew nothing about.
On the car ride home, I cried silently in the dark. I finally realized how narrow my mind had been. I thought of all the times I grew frustrated when my Dad tried to speak English. I even resented him because he held so strongly to his Chinese beliefs and could never seem to assimilate to American culture. My dad loved me so much yet I was trapped in my ungratefulness and didn’t take the time to really understand his point of view. When I got home that night I felt a burning desire to write. So I put pen on paper and scribbled down all my thoughts in my journal, a habit I’ve kept for the past ten years. Writing has always been a therapeutic device for me to make sense of my own thoughts and the world around me.
Through my writing I began to understand that the truth of things had many sides. That ordinary night changed how I view my world, especially how I view my family. Whereas before I resented my family, now my whole mindset has changed. Though my family is still not perfect, I can at least change my attitude and appreciate them fully. And this, a subtle recognition on an ordinary night, has made all the difference.
