Any Way the Wind Blows...

Hero’s Journey

We’ve had this assignment two years in a row now. The topic is very simple: talk about a challenge or obstacle that you must overcome or have already overcome and explain the lesson learned behind it.

Every time someone’s mentioned this wondrous “Hero’s Journey” assignment, I’ve rolled my eyes and mumbled about how it’s absolutely implausible for a high school student to be able to generate enough pain and bitterness in order to have a true hero’s journey. A hero’s journey should be one where the participant is forced to pull courage and demonstrate an iron self will. And in my mind, overcoming the obstacles most high schoolers face - having a B in your sixteenth AP course or rejection from a club you wanted to participate in - simply isn’t quite the equivalent of becoming a hero.

But in the past week, it’s become glaringly clear that while I consider rejection from academic ventures and grades as an obstacle in my very sheltered life, there are others who are challenged and pushed every day to their limits. Kids who have stories to share that shouldn’t belong to anyone. Almost grown teenagers who, at the bottom of it all, are simply children who never received the love and support that they truly deserve.

And it breaks my heart. I’ve grown up with supportive parents, who, while we disagree like any healthy rebellious teenager and parent will, have always stood by me. Parents who have made my breakfast every morning throughout the school year, packed my lunches, driven me to Key Club events, SDYS rehearsals in Balboa Park, Science Olympiad study sessions, office hours at Elite, deadlines on random days of the week… Parents who love me, and constantly remind me that while I have plenty to improve on, I should be proud of who I am.

I can’t even fathom growing up in a different setting. I can’t imagine begin to think about being scared to go home - a place that’s supposed to be a sanctuary for the hells of the outside world. The family dynamic that my parents have worked so hard to establishing is something that I’ve simply taken for granted. 

And it makes me realize..

These people I go to school with - so they might not be the next Atticus Finch or Superman. They’re not grown adults who have established millions of orphanages and donated millions of dollars to charity. They’re not Mother Theresa or Frederick Douglas. 

But they’re still heroes in every right.

I ditched sixth period to go watch Schindler’s List with the sophomores today in their APEC class.  The combination of John Williams and just the plot itself makes for an extremely heart wrenching movie.

I’ve written more than ten times about Oskar Schindler. (I used Schindler as a historical example for 5 consecutive SAT prep essays… And only stopped using him because he didn’t quite fit the prompt about “technology” that week.) And around the fifth time blabbering about what a truly heroic figure he was, I sort of forgot a lot of the other elements in the movie. 

And today, watching it again, maybe I missed it the first time around, but it’s really haunting to watch someone have to bargain for human lives with money, diamonds, and wine.

And it kills me every time I watch the children getting stolen away from their parents, and something inside of me dies when I see their mothers screaming for their kids… 

It’s just a rude awakening to the little bubble I live in.

“Common, Beautiful, Simple Ways”

“Don’t you agree, when they all say, ‘Home is where the heart is.’
But do you see, with every step that you take,
You get further away from where the heart is.
It’s so easy to be blinded
And caught up in the clouds where everything’s in a haze
Causing you to forget about the days,
Of the common, simple, beautiful ways.” ~ Jennifer Chung

I remember one time, in the middle of the school year, I was ranting to no one in particular in physics class about how I couldn’t wait till the school year ended. My teacher looked at me, and laughed. But then she said, “I used to say that all the time… But then I had kids.”

I was confused, and it probably showed because she added, “You guys all grow up so quickly.” 

I had heard that particular sentiment so often, if not from old teachers, then from my parents, that it flew right through my sleep-deprived, dead brain.

I’ve spent almost every day of this past year groaning for the weekend, and when it became the weekend, I sat at home, slogging my way through notes for school, studying for various tests, and complaining about the sheer amount of work I have. I’ve spent every period staring at the clock, praying for the end of the day to come sooner, and watching the minute hand inch it’s way to the end of the period.

And now, we’re nearing the end of this school year. I have two AP tests left and a midterm, and with the exception of a pile of procrastinated administrative work from my extracurricular activities and a few end of the school year projects, I’m finally “done.”  The light at the end of the tunnel is slowly becoming more and more visible. 

But where has this past school year gone? Every day has blended together. I look back at second semester, and I remember various moments, but most of it has blurred together into one, sloppy memory I’ve slapped the title of “junior year” on.

A lot of people say, the end of high school could not come sooner, and maybe they’re right. There are numerous people I would rather never see in my life. There are certain classes that I cannot wait to never take again. But despite my endless complaints, I’m proud to say, I’ve enjoyed the past three years. The small things - getting to know people you’d never dream of ever even meeting, laughing till your stomach hurts during study sessions, being obnoxious high schoolers and getting eye rolls from teachers - the almost trivial moments are the things that have constituted an astounding amount of my “high school experience.”

To a certain degree, I feel a little sad when I remember how often I, along with numerous friends of mine, said this past year, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” Because maybe we do grow up a little too quickly. We’re all so enamored by the sheer mystery of the future - something we work at every day for years and years, something that’s so abstract and vague and fluid - that we forget that the cliche truth that future is never going to make us happy if we forget to appreciate the “common, beautiful, simple ways” of today.

Music and…nostalgia?

When I was little, I was never the girl who scored the highest on a math test. I would never come close to winning spelling bees or geography trivia bowls, so when Asian parents compared their children’s brains and academic potential, I was sure to lose out to the brilliant future Nobel prize winning children and physics prodigies I went to school with. But for years, I spent days and hours pounding out song after song behind the confinement of a piano. I was no musical prodigy, but I could play well enough that piano was something I could be proud of.

And then, in the eighth grade, I quit. 

Whether it was because I hated practicing under the hawkish eyes of my parents, or because I was tired of the car rides filled with tense conversations about how much I “really loved” playing the piano, I can’t recall what prompted my decision to just give up on piano.

The time that followed was marked by long lectures about the money I had wasted from years of lessons, yelling sessions unto which my parents would accuse me of wasting my musical potential, and my bitter announcement that I had absolutely no passion or interest in the musical field. It ended the tirades from my parents, and they rarely mentioned it again. I refused to look at the piano that stood collecting dust in my living room. I never opened it to touch the neglected keys, and I left the pile of music books to disintegrate. 

It was the first of many disappointments to come. I would later accumulate a lengthy list of my achievements in “defying the Asian stereotype” and piano would eventually constitute only a minor item on it.

But looking back, I can’t help but remember the small excitement that grew every time I started a new piece - the feeling of achievement when you played a song through for the first time, or the amount of focus that I seem to lack when doing anything else that went into perfecting every note…

In a fit of being over-stressed and needing a break from convoluted physics questions, I finally sat down to pound out a few notes a few months ago, and I realized, the passion I claimed was missing is still hidden inside there. But the talent…not so much.

I miss it.

Two After Noon

“How would you spend an unexpected pocket of time with a stranger? Two After Noon revolves around the idea that two people can be thrown together, be attracted to one another, and connect on a meaningful level— but still not end up together. That may sound like a tragic notion at first, but that’s only if you interpret it as an ending. There are no real beginnings and endings; instead, everything is continuous and ongoing. There are so many things in our lives that are indefinite.”

I think we normally associate friendships and relationships with a beginning and an end - the initial meeting and the breakup or fall out. Maybe it’s because we’re young and we’re supposed to experience the polar lows of heartbreaks and highs of a stereotypical teenage romance, or maybe it’s because that’s normally the plot order of a chick flick or romance film. (Ahem, Nicholas Sparks.)

For me, “love” is a far too abstract concept for my tired brain to wrap itself around right now.  But I rather like Wes’ interpretation that maybe there’s no real “end.” Perhaps the real substance in a relationship is simply how much a brief encounter with a stranger changed you.

That awkward moment when you read this sentence on Yahoo news

Two F-22 Raptor pilots have said publicly that not only are they afraid to fly the most expensive fighter jets in American history, but the military has attempted to silence them and other F-22 pilots by threatening their careers.

and feel the overwhelming urge to circle it because the brilliant people who wrote it forgot the “but also” in the “not only…but also…” idiom.