When you go travelling outside your country and explore a different place, a different culture, you are forced to find your own bearings again. Not in the geographic sense of finding out whether you're on the right train headed in the right direction, but having to re-evaluate everything that you believe to be right, to be normal and having to find a way to incorporate yourself in this world -- not just yours, but everyone's -- and where you stand in the grand scheme of things.
At 21 I have immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong and travelled to a few places here and there. Over the years I have come to realize a few things.
In North America, it's easy to feel that we have come to a point of breakthrough and change. Fresh ideas always sprung from conversations over a couple of beers and late night snacks and I'd feel that if we just worked on this one thought for a little longer, if we stayed for just one more beer and work it out, write it down, then something big might come of it. But that's what North America is about -- innovation, discovery, freedom and change.
Yet outside of the North America I know, a different world exists; a world that is never too far away from me, a world that is always going to be a part of me. A world of rules, traditions and history; of expectations and unspoken duties and obligations. Whenever I visit Hong Kong again or when I spend time with my parents, all these creep up on me and somehow I find myself falling into a different role. At times it's easy, but some other times it makes me feel slightly schizophrenic. All of a sudden, all the things I have come to love and dream of in my new life seem irresponsible and ridiculous. Sitting at a table with my grandmothers, uncles, aunts and cousins on a Sunday morning having dim sum makes me feel inadequate as a Chinese daughter. Breaking from the family, tradition, culture and the norm becomes unimaginable.
I'm slowly realizing that it's virtually impossible to truly be a "global citizen." At least not the same way you can be Chinese or English or Indian (being Canadian is somewhat more controversial and ambiguous, but that's a whole other can of worms). You cannot embody all cultures and live all histories. So then it seems for the privileged it's almost like a choice: Where would you be happier? How would you rather live your life? What limits can you bear and what makes you more comfortable? For the ones who do not have the opportunity to look outside, it's a matter of chance -- where you are born, what gender, what time, what family.
For myself, I think at first glance the obvious choice would be more freedom, and the automatic reaction to "family duties" would be to see them as cultural shackles that I should be brave enough to loose myself from. But on second thought, this attitude seems incredibly elistest and simplistic. Under the influence of the prized individualism in the West, collectivism seems to be something rather under-appreciated and misunderstood. And for me.. I don't know. I guess the fact that these two systems can't really exist simultaneously makes me feel that no matter how I try to reconcile the conflict, it won't really work.
On a broader level, I'm not saying we should just give up on trying to understand, respect and appreciate different cultures and beliefs, nor am I suggesting that we might as well shoot multiculturalism down. I'm just learning that I tend to under-comprehend (if that's even a word) the meaning of "world" and under-estimate the work one will have to do to influence social change. "Saving the world" is a ludicrous idea if not selfish and self-serving -- which is the right way? what, exactly, are you saving? But recognizing that isn't a licence to shut your eyes and ears to the rest of the world. It's about acknowledging but not judging differences, trying to understand actions and not be quick to condemn, and to never forget that we are equally small and equally significant.
Change always comes from within.