I love you … good bye.

Like everyone else in America, I am glued to the screen watching the Winter Olympics. Like a lot of people (more who would not care to admit) I am glued to the TV for the human interest stories. The biggest one that comes to mind right now is Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo. For those of you who might not know who they are because (1) you’ve been held captive in a cave for the last 5 days, (2) you have too much of a life, and have only arisen from your drunken stupor to read my awesome blog, or (3) you are deaf, dumb and blind – Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo are/is the Chinese couple who came out of retirement to win the gold after winning the bronze twice in previous winter games So – I’m totally rooting for them.



Not cause they’re Chinese. Well – there might be a little bit of that in there too.

Whilst watching the drawn out 9 hour coverage of just the figure skating, peppered with speed skating, snowboarding (which was awesome) and other such things, they did this little story about the Chinese coach who helped them get to where they are right now. His name is Yao Bin. He was recounting his story of how he became a coach. He was in the Olympics, and he threw his partner for one of those throw your partner in the air and hope she lands gracefully on foot and doesn’t fall thingies… and well.. she fell. He said that was a great embarrassment for him – and as a result – he went into coaching to teach others how to not be embarrassed that way.

The he said something that floored me. He was away from his family for two decades. He didn’t see the birth of his son. He cried a bit after that revelation – and the first thing I screamed out at the indifferent TV was – “I hope it was worth it!”

Why am I so angry about that? Because Chinese people seem to live a double standard. On the one hand, they stress family and togetherness, and filial piety and all that stuff.. The unit, not the individual. And then, when it comes to making a livelihood – Chinese people will kill their own young (at least in spirit, by leaving them for so long…) to get ahead in their own aspirations.



I don’t get that. It’s a generalization – it’s true. But it seems to be one that still holds true today. My husband feels that it is alright, and so does a couple of my Chinese friends. It is important to make money- and if that means leaving your family for a couple of years – so be it.



Remembering where I’m coming from, I suppose you can argue that I don’t understand because I’ve never been at a place where I needed to leave my family to make money. Don’t get me wrong – I completely understand when you need to leave your family and make money to SURVIVE. But that’s not what this guy did. He didn’t leave his family because they weren’t making ends meet. He left because he wanted to actualize a greater good- and make sure that other skaters didn’t go through what he was going through… the embarrassment.



Well – what the heck about his family? His kid? His wife? What about them? Did they have to live his dream for him? What if she never signed up for it? What if he had to realize this dream AFTER he met her? What if – for her – she was in the middle of what she expected to be her life, only to be railroaded with this?



In America, there is no understanding that the familial unit is greater than the one. In fact, in America, all is done to teach the individual to survive on their own. You go to college, and if you come back, there’s some humiliation there. It’s meant to be there. Go sew your own oats now boy. Make a man outta yourself. Since the feminist movement, that has translated to women as well. We’ve come full circle because now – kids come flying back. But it’s not because of some necessity to keep the family together. It’s because they can’t DO better in standard of living in their paltry entry-level salaries.



In China, you’re supposed to be a part of your family. You’re supposed to come home after college. You’re supposed to be a part of the family!!! It is what is understood. Sure – you’re actions should be done to honor your family – so I get how Yao Bin did what he did to honor his family – but heck – who cares about honor when you’re not there!?!?!



So – I call bullshit on that practice. You pick a job that keeps you home – unless your entire survival – and the survival of your family depends on it. Otherwise, I call bullshit.



Okay – now I’m off to watch the team I was here to watch.



Dude.. My palms are sweating…

EPILOGUE

They WON!!

Totally awesome!!

And read their story!!

(via)

Listen to understand

Listening to understand seems like a relatively simple concept. Listen to a person to understand what they are trying to tell you, and then responding in kind.

The only issue is – it is really really hard to do this.

We live in an ego-centric society. Generally, it is a “me” mentality both consciously and subconsciously. Our entire way of going through life is to satisfy the hunger within, whether through giving, taking, neither or both. It is also reflected in the way we talk to each other.

Have you ever told a story to a friend and have them come back with a story of their own that is similar but not the same? This is commonly referred to as relating. But when did you ever say to the person, “hey – when I tell you this story – I’d really like you to relate to it.” The only request, through implication, is for the listener to, well, listen. We take it upon ourselves to try to relate to what the story teller is saying so that it means more to us—what the person is going through. If we do not have a similar story, it appears that we detach from the story and aren’t as understanding or empathetic. But when we relate, we relate and understand the person’s story as it made us feel in a similar situation. We don’t often ask ourselves to stand in the other person’s shoes and understand how it made them feel.

Understandably so. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to judge it. I understand it. I do it. I relate to it. I get it. To truly listen to understand what the person is saying, and appreciate what the situation did to them, made them feel, we have to be compromised with their views, beliefs, experiences and attitudes. We’d have to know this person well enough to really understand the affect the situation had on them. The irony is, the closer the person is to us – the harder it is to listen to understand – especially when the story has any tenuous connection or similarity to a specific issue/problem you might have with this person.

I had a conversation with McSquared earlier. It was a criticism on the messiness of our house. He was trying to tell me how he felt when he walked into the house when it was so messy. Immediately, I became defensive, and argued that if he would only help around the house then maybe it wouldn’t be so dirty and messy, and maybe then he could come home and enjoy it better. I didn’t need to do that. He wasn’t blaming me for the mess. He was simply telling me that it sucked to come home to mess, even though he had a healthy part of creating it. If I just listened to understand, and didn’t own it, it would have been really easy to say, “Yes, I can understand that. It really does suck to come home to a house that is messy.” But rather, I took it upon myself to hear his words, and not understand it, but defend myself to it.

Earlier last week, Luscious and Fujimoto-san (a new addition to my entourage of colleagues) were discussing my inability to say no to another colleague. I knew I needed to learn how to say no – but it was difficult for me to. I tried telling this to Luscious and Fujimoto-san. They were chock full of wonderful girl advice about how to fix it, and what I needed to do in the situation – all good intentioned, all meant to help.

But I was bothered by it the entire day. I only realized later that – all I needed/wanted from Luscious and Fujimoto-san were understanding and sympathetic ears. I didn’t necessarily need advice, because I knew what it was that I needed to do. Getting there was the issue for me. But at the moment I talked to them about my dilemma, I just needed to be heard.

It’s not an inherent flaw with my friends. I adore them, and know they meant well. But – there are two social engineered reactions to a story about a problem. We either offer words of advice on how to fix it, or we relay our own story about a similar situation, how it made us feel, and how we overcame it. Did we ever, however, ask ourselves what exactly the person who was talking wanted from us? Did they want any offer of advice on how to make the situation better? Did they utter those wonderful little words, “what should I do?” which then opens the floodgates for you to offer any kind of advice you can think of that relates, however loosely, to the topic at hand? After all, it is solicited isn’t it? Or did we just take it upon ourselves to do it for whatever reasons – our need to help a friend in what we’ve decided is need, a need to relate, a need to move the story along so that you could then tell a story of your own, a need to pretend you’re listening? Whatever the reason, we tend to do this.

I do it all the time. But after my reaction to McSquared (and a subsequently successful therapy session) I began to really think – maybe I should listen to understand and “detach from outcome.” (A happy little therapy term which means – don’t take the story so personally, and see how it affects the person and reaffirm what you think is their feeling, not your own.)
I don’t know how successful I’ll be at it, but I’m going to try…(As long as someone doesn’t tell a story that is similar to any story I have in my arsenal of awesome stories that I use to relate and/or a story that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being judged or accused of doing wrong…)

As you can see – I got a little bit to go in this….

Grease is NOT the word...

I was thinking about words the other day – as I was trying to explain to my 2 year old the subtle difference between want and need. She is excellent with her words, but she cannot differentiate between what she needs and what she wants. Given, at her age, I think she really thinks she needs that $30 doll that she will probably play with for all of 2 seconds after we get home, but I’m trying to teach her that she doesn’t actually need the doll. She simply wants it, and she cannot, unfortunately, get whatever she wants. A mantra I have heard others use as well – although mostly played out across different relationships in different situations.

I started thinking about the subtle meanings in languages. For example, in English – there is a difference between “listen” and “hear.” In Chinese, there is just one word for listen/hear. It is just assumed that if you are “hearing” the person – you are “listening” to them as well. When you hear parent yell at kids, it’s always, “Can you hear what I’m saying?!” I like the subtle difference in the English language, because – it’s clear that I can hear you when you’re yelling at me at 11 decimals above normal. But I may not be listening. McSquared employs this ability often and frequently.

In Japanese, there is an entirely different “respect” language that is completely different from what men speak with each other that women must employ when they speak to men and elderly people. Completely different – that begins with “o” and end a lot of times with “masu.” It’s amazing.

Our languages, and the way we speak them, has a lot to do with the culture, and therein a lot to do with the way people interact. Using the word above, it shows that for Chinese people, in general, there are no subtle differences. There is no understanding of the grey areas. You are or you aren’t, and if you are – that word is loaded with a boat load of assumptions. It is assumed that if you ware “hearing” someone you are “listening.”

The manner in which people speak to each other is also amazing. Most Asian cultures, the women are much more soft-spoken than their male counterparts in public. That says nothing about what goes on behind closed doors (those same soft-spoken women can be loud, obnoxious and rude..) In my neighborhood growing up, Italian women were warm, welcoming and loud. Boy were they loud. Jewish women in the neighborhood were ever regretful about something horrible that has happened, and never really said the word of something bad happening to a neighbor circulating the rumor mill. “Cancer” she would mouth, sometimes with a hand covering one side of her face.

One conversation may make or break a relationship depending on the tone and the words used. A man could lose the women he loves forever, because he doesn’t know how to express to her that he loves her in the words she needs him to say. Words are amazingly powerful.

I almost got into a full on fist fight with Luscious over one simple word, and our interpretation of it. The word was “choice.” Of course, she was wrong, and I was right – but it didn’t negate the importance of the interaction, and how heated the discourse was. I almost knocked her sideways. It would have been a good fight – and I think I would have been able to take her.

Despite the overwhelming importance of words, it seems to be the thing we take the least amount of consideration in using. Most people don’t think before they speak. We choose the shoes we put on our feet with more care than the choice of words we use with the people around us. Only when we are in front of strangers and people we don’t know – do we carefully consider the words coming out of our mouth. But isn’t it more important to consider the words we use when we speak to loved ones - people that matter to us the most?

We often poo poo it away as unimportant because we feel that our closest loved ones “understand us” despite the words we use to describe what we feel. We think that even if we choose words badly, they’ll “get it.” Yet, I’ve lent my should out, and have asked for many a shoulder – to cry - on as a result of what for all intents and purposes boils down to a poor choice of words. I didn’t mean to tell my mother that she needed to get over it New Year’s Eve. I didn’t mean to say those things to McSquared, or point out so bluntly to my sister where I thought she had chosen wrong in her life’s decisions. I didn’t mean it.

The words we use on a day to day basis are so important, because it is the only presentation of how smart or dumb we really are. You are only as intelligent as you can articulate, either in the written word, or the spoken one. You can be the smartest person in the whole word, but if you cannot use words to express it – it takes you that much longer to prove yourself to a doubting crowd.

The other interesting thing is – people are inherently suspicious of words. It doesn’t matter that McSquared tells me he loves me, if all his actions directly refute the words he used. Fickle things those words are. When used for good, words are amazing, and can do amazing things. We all know it was words that got our President Obama into office. But, when used for evil, words can be scarring. When people use words to create and spread lies, people come out of those types of events hurt, scarred, and as a result, baggage ensues. Deceptive words can make all future words seems laced with deception as well – even if that isn’t the case. We walk through life, once being hurt by words, inconsolable to their good uses. Often jaded, we doubt the power of words, even when we’ve fallen victim to their exact power.

I’m rambling a bit, sorry about that – but it’s amazing what little regard we have for words, when they are probably the most powerful weapon, resource, instrument, asset we have. Understanding the word, either in your native tongue, or that of someone else in another country, is probably one of the most important things we can do. Words build as swiftly as they destroy. We need to be as careful using words as we are using nuclear powers.

I implore you – think before you speak or write… And if you don’t know the words, don't use words arbitrarily.  The results may be scary.

On a side note, my daughter speaks Chinese, English and Spanish. None really fluently, but we’re getting there..