Danny ChaiI’ve said this a million times but I don’t think my family is like other Asian families at all. For one thing, on both sides of the family, I have relatives in the generation above my parents who married Caucasians. Maybe that’s why my family is a little (just a little) less Korean than others, I dunno.
We went to one of these relatives for Thanksgiving dinner. My family always used to go there growing up, and again, I think that’s kind of different from other Asians because we always had a traditional American Thanksgiving, because the mom is fully American. The first time I brought Jieun I think she was kind of shocked, like, where’s the rice?
Anyway, this year we had a kind of interesting conversation. I just started realizing how much pain there is in the older generations. At least in my family. They just went through a lot and suffered all these things that remains with them. Like my parents, I dunno, I think they’re fairly well adjusted and at peace with their lives and whatever. But there are still huge parts of their lives, like fundamental things about their childhood that they just never ever talk about. It’s kind of bizarre. I dunno, there must just be a huge amount of pain there.
There was also an elderly woman there, Caucasian, who was telling stories about the suffering in her life as well. Like, she was talking about what her family had to do during the World War. The first one (she was old). During her lifetime, there was a lot of suffering in America also.
I dunno, just made me realize again how fortunate our generation has been. Most of us haven’t really experienced suffering like past generations have. And I dunno, I think that’s kind of screwed us up. Just, some of the things we struggle with are so relatively inconsequential and ridiculous. That’s overstating it, but yeah, maybe it’s just myself, I feel like I’m somewhat lacking because my life has been so comfortable.
Pretty boring couple of posts, wow.