Tag: immigrants

Living the Dream

I’m annoyed with myself, and with all of last night’s events. I went to bed early to read myself to sleep and thus, I missed watching one of the most feel-good stories of the Olympics with my husband: The outcome of the Men’s 1500m Race. I was woken up several times in the night, once with my husband coming to bed, giddy about what he had just witnessed in Olympics history, then around 12:30 a.m. when I heard a door opening and shutting in my house (my middle son had been at our youngest son’s apartment helping him put together a 1000 piece bedroom dresser, and then decided to come back here – thankfully he texted me that the mystery door noise was him, and not an intruder. My husband slept through that disturbance.) And then, around 4 a.m. our collie, Josie, started panting and pacing, and so I put on my grumpy pants, and I took her out into the humid darkness to do her thing. (My husband and my son slept through that wake-up call, as well.) Why do we mothers hear all of the noises and distress calls of the night? Is it primal from the days when we were waking up with our babies on the hour? I’ve retired from raising children. Shouldn’t my internal alarm system be set to “off”, now? Sigh. Enough rant, back to the feel-good story:

For the first time in 112 years, two American men were on the podium for the 1500m race. This was entirely unexpected. The favorite runners to win were a Norwegian and a Brit who had apparently been trash talking each other all week. Cole Hocker, an American runner from Indiana won the gold medal and broke an Olympic record, and his teammate, Yared Nuguse from Kentucky won the bronze. (Britain’s Josh Kerr came in second.) I watched a few interviews with the young American men/medalists, and both talked about how it was actually good to be “under the radar”. They believed that they were every bit as good as the other lauded runners, and they stated that this belief in themselves is vital because long distance running is largely a mental game. According to these athletes, if you are at your physical peak, the hardest part of it all, is the mental game. Yared stated that towards the end of the race, he just repeats to himself, “Stick with it. Stick with it.”

Yared Nuguse is a first generation American. His parents were political refugees from Ethiopia and became American citizens in the 1980s. As I was lapping up all of the background stories on these runners, I ended up on a runners’ site on Reddit. This exchanged really moved me:

Did any other immigrants to the USA get emotional when the camera flashed to Nuguse parents crying? Maybe it was just me, but I felt immigrant tears of joy…it probably took A LOT to get to the USA, and now to win a medal for this country…only other immigrants would understand the depth of their tears… (tcumber)

I’ve been following Nuguse since his NCAA years. Extremely happy for him (and Cole). It would have been one thing to win an Olympic bronze in a slow race because of some fluke, but to PB in a race that sets the Olympic record shows he left it all on the track. He’s already one of the top 5 milers of all time, but he’s now also the 9th fastest 1500m runner all time, and looks like he could go faster. (DomDeLaweeze)

He made our entire ethiopian household proud. My mom choked up when they panned to his mom. (Besk123)

Yes!..because your mom is probably intimately aware of the struggle and sacrifice to get here, and to see what can happen in this country with just ONE GENERATION.

THIS is the American Dream we all came for, and are willing to work so hard to attain…a better life not only for ourselves, but for our families.

I shed happy tears with them because I understood…many of us understand. It is more than winning a bronze medal. It is understanding where they started, how hard they all worked, and where they are all now….in Paris…at the Olympics…watching their son do so well. He could have finished last…there is still pride that he got there and did his best…but he won a bronze.. Oh my….

Sigh…someone just cut some onions beside me….(tcumber)

When I read that, I must have been cutting onions. I write this with a lump in my throat. With all of the negative, divisive political hoopla swirling around us these days, we must remember what really makes us great. We are a nation of Native Americans, who are only just recently getting the recognition which they wholly deserve for their reverence and caretaking of our beautiful land for generations and generations, and then of waves and waves of immigrants (some brought here against their will during the horrible scourge of slavery). Regardless of our beginnings, all of us here have been chasing the American Dream in one form or another, and attaining it, again and again and again. . . . . . My belief is that the best of us Americans, in this vast country, understand this incredible, vast, realizable potential for ourselves, and for our fellow citizens. The best of us fly under the radar, but continue to make sure that the American Dream continues to flourish. The majority of Americans know that it is a mental game to live a Dream. The majority of Americans, all persevere in our lives and in our beliefs, knowing that the key to realizing the Dream is to “Stick with it. Stick with it. Stick with it . . . .”

Stick with it.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

407. Has anyone ever approached you thinking you were someone else?

The Nail Lady

Yesterday, I got a pedicure. And the technician was someone I have seen in the shop, but she had never done my nails before. As she was working on my feet, my nail technician got to telling me her life story. It turns out that she was one of the Vietnamese boat people who came over to the United States in the 1970s. She was nine-years-old. Her parents put her on the boat with a young woman she barely knew, who was to marry the nail technician’s brother. Her parents had eleven children and they wanted something better for them, than the communists had to offer in Vietnam at the time. My nail technician said it took three months to cross the ocean. She started out in Beaumont, Texas. She said that at the time, there were very few Asians in Texas, so they formed a tight community there, with other Vietnamese immigrants. Her brother and his wife took care of her until she married a man who had also come over from her village and they moved to Florida. My nail technician and her husband had five children during their marriage, but unfortunately, her husband died of a sudden heart attack tens years ago. She told me that he was the love of her life, and for the first year after his death, she wouldn’t even let herself accept that he was gone. But she said, she always keeps busy. She has five children to raise as a single mother! And she told me her children are all doing well. Two are in college, one is in medical school, and two are still at home. I told her that she might be one of the bravest people I have ever met. She just giggled softly. She told me that she is feisty, but she just feels lucky. She feels so lucky to live in the United States.

I am one of those people in life who other people have the tendency to tell me their life stories. I think this is because I am a curious person. I’m interested. I have learned that everyone has a story. And honestly everyone’s story is fascinating and intriguing in its own way. I have also learned that it is often the people who do the everyday behind the scenes/service jobs who have the most incredible stories of all that I have ever heard. I have learned in life that it is often the royalty of the world who are serving meals, cleaning houses, and tending gardens for the rest of us paupers. These people are typically more courageous, more hopeful, more determined and yet, more grateful than almost anybody would or could imagine, or even hope to be themselves. I feel so lucky to understand this about people. Listening to people’s stories is humbling and awestriking, all at the same time.

Maya Norton on Twitter: ""Do you know a foreign accent is? It's a sign of # bravery." Exactly! Via @TuttleSinger #Refugees #Immigrants #Quotes https://t.co/BnyO4CZWNo" / Twitter
LIRS | Quotes About Immigrants and Refugees | From Presidents to Poets

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Changing It Up

Last night, my husband and I watched the latest episode of “1883”. There was a poignant scene (spoiler alert) in which Elsa tells her mother that the pioneers (many of these pioneers were immigrants from other countries) who are bringing all of their old customs, and the ways of the lands which they are trying to escape, are going to end up with the same, sad situations that made them willing to leave all that they had known, for a wild, and full of danger new country. I have looked all over the internet for the exact quote (because Taylor Sheridan’s writing is more eloquent and divine than mine), but I wasn’t able to find it. In short, the conversation was making clear, the old adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

I jotted this quote down the other day:

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.” @DukeHomer, Twitter

Change is a deliberate process. And change is never easy. Real changes start from deep inside of oneself, and it is these internal changes that start reflecting real change in the externals of our lives. To make real change, you must change the way you think about things. To make real change, you must be capable of honest self reflection. To make changes in your life, you must stop reflecting on what you do not want, what you do not like, what is bad, and you must pivot all of these thoughts to what you do want, what you do like, and what is the good for which you are aiming to achieve. Once you have decided what you are aiming towards, you can then create the steps that you must take, in order to create this real change in your life. To make real lasting change, you must put all of your focus back onto yourself, the only person whom you are ever capable of changing.

We all have done this process of change in our lives. Most of us have moved out of our homes and away from our families of origin, and we have created our own families and homes and daily lives. We have taken the habits, and the customs, and the traditions that we liked about our families of origin, and we deliberately included them in our own lives and homes and families, and yet, on the other hand, we have done some things differently from where and whom we came from, because these things no longer served nor resonated with our adult selves and the families and the lives we desire to have and to experience.

Change is very much a conscious act. Change is sometimes thrust upon us when we experience a major lifestyle change or suffer a loss in our lives, such as a death of a loved one, or a major illness, or a severed relationship, or the empty nest, or a job loss. However, it is how we react to any of these situations that will make the difference between a true, healthy, growing, metamorphic change happening for us in our lives, versus if we struggle and fight against a change, with the fruitless idea of being able to keep things always the same, and under our own individual control.

Real change is purposeful and it is not easy. But deliberate reflection, and then taking the steps for meaningful change, is what gives our lives more purpose and more meaning and more vitality and more satisfaction than just about any other experience that we have in our lives. To create meaningful change in our own lives, reminds us of our own individual power and our freedom to be exactly who we are individually meant to be. To make change, is to be the deliberate creators of this world which we share. We were all given the ability to make changes in our lives, but the desire for change has to be strong enough for us to take the first difficult steps, and then to take the the many more steady, willful, confident, vision-filled steps to achieve the difference we want in our lives, and thus, the difference that we ultimately want our lives to be, in the greater world around us.

36 Best Quotes About Change - Wise Words About Transitions
101 Quotes About Change in Life - Inspirational Change Quotes

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.