I’ve lived with the same four people and within the same 10 mile radius for 18 years of life and though this would seemingly warrant constancy, the environment that surrounded me rendered everything but. I grew up in a melting pot of sorts and I loved it. My town was colorful and melodious filled of people with many and very different ethnicities, cultures and dialects. After spending my basic education in such a town, coming to Rutgers for undergraduate studies was not that drastic of a change. In fact, I’ve met more people of different backgrounds and brands if you will that continue to change my perspective and for that I am grateful.
As a first generation American kid diversity and empathy for unfamiliar circumstances are ideas I consider very often and thoroughly. Having to develop principles and find direction within the midst of various and sometimes contradictory dogmas can be confusing and a lot of energy is outputted to cover a lot of self evaluation and interpretation. Corroborating an identity against different imprints and stencils but finding that none fit. After this assumption is accepted as fact the task is to use the mismatch resources available to pave the way and create one! I don't think at all that this a story exclusive to the kid of immigrant parents and I don't think these feelings are contingent to the displacement between two grid points on a map.
With time, change is guaranteed and everyone experiences these things. Aligning yourself to what you were taught, what you see, what you read and what you learn from experience is a task that is relatable by all and allows for growth. I’ve always thought if the circumstances allow it, its the duty of people to be introspective and discover the truth about themselves because a consequence to personal growth is societal growth and not many things are more valuable than so.
It’s my philosophy that this particular problem, the identity crisis, is a signal of advantage. I would imagine being fortunate and free enough to weigh the struggles of understanding yourself as a struggle at all is a luxury for people who live day to day trying to survive each one or support others throughout. I took a survey one time and the consensus at the end stated that if you live in middle class America you fall within the parameters of the richest percentile of the whole globe. I don't remember the exact percentage number but it was a single digit and that alone is flabbergasting.
That statistic forced a broadened perspective of our lands and fundamentally skewed the concepts of black and white.
A valuable lesson that I think is perpetually reinforced throughout life and, well, growing is that nothing is black and white. The boundaries of law and action and between a moral compass and the chemicals within our bodies are staggered and many times broken; it’s all grey.
Welcome to my first blog and the more to come.
