Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday Weekend

My nephew Sprit is a lovely man. He's eight years old. My sister must have read him my obituary poem. He wrote me a poem. It went like this:

"Perro was a Chihuahua dog.

He liked to walk but not to jog.

He liked to squint a lot.

We had to say "Eat, do not!"

Because Perro liked to eat human food.

When Perro was close to Aunty, he was in a good mood."

I wanted to write him a thank you e-mail, but I wanted to make it interesting, so in the draft, I started to explain that I was enjoying a three-day weekend in honor of Dr. King's birthday on January 15th. But after I wrote the e-mail in which I had quoted a segment of Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, I had to pause and think about whether it was appropriate for me to talk about racism or segregation with an eight year old. Granted, he may have been exposed to it already. I just don't know. I did a quick search on the Internet with search words "teach child racism" and found out that some people think it best that I not poison a child's mind with such ideas. Sprit lives in Tokyo, and racism is not talked about much but very present in Japan. I do want to talk to him about Dr. King at some point. But I'll do it after I speak with my Sister about the when and how. Also, knowing what a sensitive and smart boy Sprit is, I didn't want to weigh him down with the weight of the World. And then I knew that I am the one who is feeling weighed down by the World right now, and that it's taken a lot of joy out of me. So I decided not to send that part of the e-mail to him, partly because I wanted him to enjoy being a child for a little bit longer, and just sent him the conclusion of my longer e-mail:

Dear Sprit,

 

I want to thank you for writing a poem for Perro. I printed it out and put it by his obutsudan (word for "little shrine in the house" in Japanese). I am sure that Perro is delighted. Thank you for honoring Perro’s life and spirit. You have so much love in you. And with your love, know that you can conquer anything.

With love,

Your Favorite Aunty

Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech was all about believing, despite the adversity. His speech stood for hope, and a fundamental belief in the American Dream. Today, the existence of the American Dream is under constant attack by the powers that be in Washington D.C. For example, recently the Dream Act failed passage in Congress. It would have allowed young children of illegal immigrants a hope for legal status if they worked hard and either served in the military or finished college. No matter how you cut it, the Dream Act was about the American Dream - that if you worked hard, you could succeed in this World. At the same time Arizona is under intense focus in the news for being outspoken about the fact that they believe racial profiling is an appropriate way to control the illegal immigration issue in their state. To further confuse the issues, a democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head last week by a crazy man (the reason is not yet known), while six of the people near her were shot dead, and eighteen others were wounded. Indeed, my heart is weighed down by the weight of the way in which Americans have come to express our opinions, and also the decisions we have made against hope.

Personally, I believe that America is the greatest social experiment ever devised by humans. This is the land in which the World can debate about what our future will look like - and how we raise our children. [Please see the next segment on the Tiger Family.]

True to stereotype, my own Japanese parents were very much disciplinarians when I was growing up in Los Angeles. I think they were stricter than even the average Japanese parent. As the story goes - when I was ten years old, I told my father that I wanted to stop studying Japanese (we went to Saturday school, much like Jewish kids go to Jewish school, and we tended to cram all of our homework on Friday evenings).  Before I knew it, I had a bowl of miso soup thrown at me and I was wearing it. I never ever suggested that I give up Japanese ever again. And thanks to my father, I am the most bilingual Japanese-English speaker that I know (though I am definitely stronger on the English side - my particular combination of strengths is rare). I read, write and speak both languages fluently.  Thanks to Dad, I have never had any trouble getting a job. And being a lawyer was also his grand idea. It's something that I did because I didn't know what else I was going to do with my life. It was the default trajectory that he had programmed in my head from when I was very young. "You're going to be a lawyer," he would say. But now, more than ten years into the profession and after a long love/hate struggle with it, I have shaped my career into something that I can live with, in which I walk to the office, control my own hours, volunteer a lot, and work with only the people I want to work with - people who can separate how they relate to their peers from the poison and the negativity of the World or the Profession.

However, it took my American adult life for me to come to who I am today. It is not from my Japanese upbringing that I was able to learn about finding balance in my life. For me, the people who mentored me into my adulthood were entirely of America - it's educational system, peers, literature, and mentors. I believe that because Asian parents raise their children in favor of nurturing the left side of their brains (which is all about memorizing, learning, and competing with others), my emotional right brain was not nurtured as much as it could have been as a child. I was a young woman raised in a strict Japanese household, who went to college at U.C. Berkeley. I came into my young adult life angry, conflicted, confused - and I had to throw away much of the World map and value systems that my parents had lovingly handed to me because it was incongruous with My world - and I had to test out each of my assumptions for myself, because I did not have a role model to which I could look that had my upbringing and outside reality. I questioned my sexuality, my nationality, my morality, my role as a woman, my religion, my community, and all of my beliefs in-between. Maybe that is a common difference between a parent and a child. And my family was quite modern in that they always expected me to go to College and have a career - so I'm not complaining. But I've always wondered who I would have been if I hadn't chosen America as my home as an adult. Would I be seeking the same things?

Today, as a fully-initiated American, I seek a balanced-life, one that is an in-between of a lot of the things I have learned. My parents did a brilliant job nurturing my left brain (ten years of piano - I never enjoyed it as a kid, a bilingual education, as well as encouraging me through my three degrees in law - a B.S., J.D., and LL.M. in Tax). They also taught me the fundamental tools with which to nurture my right brain when I finished my left brain training - the simplicity of love, the heroism to care about others, and the ability to appreciate love even if it is never verbalized. But it took years of therapy and many many self-help books for me to understand what balance meant in my life. I think an American parent might have been able to teach me more about balance, and I think that would have been a valuable upbringing as well.

My point is that I think Americans are just debating the process in which a child is ideally reared in America, because we all love our children. Asian parents might sometimes do a better job nurturing the left brain - the competitive, mathematical brain - but Caucasian parents might tend to do a better job nurturing the right brain - thereby rearing a more balanced child. Neither are wrong, as long as the child eventually is able to find balance in their life. The problem is, many people never become balanced human beings later in life. I know many people who live in a negative world and act out their fear-based reactions to the World. [Please see the segment on the Malfunctioning Brain.] That's the problem with focusing a child's development so much on the left, competitive brain - no matter what race or ethnicity we come from. Yes, the child may score well on tests - but are they mature, well-balanced human beings who can temper the negative tendencies of our brain with a more positive, hopeful, and loving response towards not just ourselves but for other beings as well?

I can attest to the fact that, I lived unconsciously for a long time. And now that I want to live a conscious, simple life (because it is important for humanity's survival not to over-consume our resources) I want to talk about racism with Sprit. Sometimes, to arrive at simplicity, one must still learn about and weigh the complexity of our options, because we live in complex times. Of course, I'll need my sister's permission to talk about these things with Sprit. As Sprit's American Aunty, I want to talk about racism with Sprit in a controlled, safe environment, where I can have an honest discussion with him about racism, why it exists, etc. - and I want to make sure that he walks away from that conversation with the hope that Dr. King instilled in all of us when he told us about his Dream. The words to the speech can be found at: http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

In the speech, Dr. King talks about the obstacles of their day. And that his dream is that America would live up to its promise, a promise that all people are created equal. He read the speech in Washington D.C. in 1963. His ideas seem a distant memory from where American politics stand today. Same World, same issues. America is still the best experiment in the World. We're like the United Nations, in reality format. We are the best, and we are at the same time the worst. And we are the best representation of the World as it exists, full of the World's diversity of opinions, religions, customs, beliefs, beauty and contradictions. It's all here. If we are to survive, we must learn how to take care of our planet together, we MUST learn how to live together - to communicate effectively towards a common solution - with those who are different than ourselves, with those who we disagree with, with those who we wish not to speak to anymore. It has to happen here, in America. The best and the brightest representatives of the World live here, because we believe in the American Dream: the hopeful promise that if we worked hard, we would be allowed to be happy.

When we as Americans who live next to each other finally figure out how to communicate with each other effectively to find and create community with those who are different than ourselves - many of us, who are by our very nature hybrid emissaries, will be able to carry the lessons back to the rest of the World, in all the different languages that exist. I believe that has been America's real promise to the World. We hold the key. We are the ones that can turn back the tide. We must be, more than any other country, the change we wish to see in the World, because the whole World has gathered here in search of a promise, and the World is still holding its breath and waiting for Americans to realize our Oneness. So let's figure out how to talk to each other.

I think about these things every day. But even I, at a personal level, struggle on a daily basis to communicate with people who are only slightly different than I. So all of us, including myself - we need to look at ourselves and become better, for the sake of our children, and the other beings that inhabit this planet with us. This is about our survival. We MUST evolve as a species, because climate change is a reality. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization which promotes environmental causes through independent research (a group I trust), has the following information about global warming: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/ Listen to the scientists - and let's learn to weed out the noise.

We can do it. We can start by fighting for our survival, one individual at a time. Every single one of us, in the end, has been entrusted with this World, and we must take responsibility for our individual contributions. There is so much we can do as individuals. Let’s be kind to each other. Let’s be an example. Volunteer. Learn how to create positive, forward-looking dialogue. Be the change we wish to see in the World. Help someone that's different than us. Love. Talk to our neighbors. Get to know them. Let's each work towards creating diverse communities that are unique to America. And let us remember what Dr. King said: "With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

Namaste (We are One).