the Thrill of Living on the Edge

"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." Also, skillful sailors get bored when the sea is so smooth because he doesn't get a chance to show all his skills.As much as I love to enjoy life, I believe in struggles in life. Without any struggles or obstacles to overcome, life would be really really boring. Success to me is not lack of failure or not screwing up. Success to me is surviving the state of failure and learning how to get out of being screwed up. Without knowing the pain, you don't feel so grateful about good health. Without knowing the bitterness, you don't value the sweetness so much.

My family has hard time understanding how I want to live alone in U.S. with all struggles while I can live quite luxuriously back home. My dad is a chief engineer of Myanma Timber Enterprise. Thousands of people's destiny is in his hand. ( but he doesn't abuse it.) Whenever I traveled around at home, there were staff officers of my dad following me with a separate car. They were constantly looking out for what I wanted and needed before I even said it. Every place I visited, I was welcome with a big dinner full of several dishes (my day dream) and family members of those officers waiting there to greet me. I did make every possible effort to pay for myself but they were locals so they already took care of everything- the best hotel room in the best hotel of the town, best places to have dinner and all was paid by them.
They thought I was way too humble when I wanted to eat at this little noodle shop by the street by myself. They wanted to bring it and serve me in my hotel dinning room.

It is nice to be treated like a princess but it's not my life and it's not real. It's my dad's life and his power. I don't really feel comfortable with people following me all the time although they did follow me from far to give me 'privacy'. We have a full-time driver for my dad and a part-time driver for my mom. My brother and I like driving ourselves. We have people come clean our house, do laundry and cook for us. With that kind of life, I think it's really boring and I feel so handicapped.

Now I live in the city and I don't have a car while my family with three people has 5 cars. But I love it because this is my life and I have a control over it. And I have to plan and research my options to drive on a little trip.My parents see it suffering and I see it living my life and to the fullest!

I'm almost pathetic that I crave for emergency and adventures, and love the excitements. I get bored so easily of the routines. I'm sure everyone has their own way of getting their adrenaline kick. The thing is that you don't need to get roller coaster rides or jumping out of the plane to get adrenaline kick. Well with the financial budget I have, I can't afford to do all those crazy things all the time anyways.

So my way of getting adrenaline kick has been procrastinating my school work till the last minute and doing everything in the last minute. It works sometimes and it does not. I know it sounds crazy, stupid and irresponsible sometimes. I do work so well under pressure. I get all the adrenaline kick and act everything so fast as an emergency. I think on my own feet. But when the luck is not on my side, I do miss deadlines.

When I don't get to sleep 36 hours straight being up, sleep is most enjoyable thing. When I am working so hard, I don't eat for 12 hours straight. Whatever I eat after that is the most delicious thing on earth. I'm foolish and probably pathetic. Maybe this is not the right way to live your life. But I do love the thrill of living on the edge.

Growing up from a grumpy child

Growing up is a learning process- how fast you grow depends on how fast you learn. I think the kids grow faster because they learn faster. Their brains are fresh and free of fear, guilt and past unpleasant memories.

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I had a big cut from playing with a knife. I came up to my mom holding my bleeding hand without crying. My mom said; "See I told you NOT to play with a knife." I nodded and told her " yes but now I know how to USE a knife without getting myself cut.'' I was a foolish kid; it was more important for me to know something than the risk of getting hurt.

Now I'm almost turning 29 and there are still so many things I still have yet to learn. I am still doing same mistakes over and over. Sometimes I know, sometimes I don't and sometimes, I refuse to recognize that I make same mistake again.

We all had been a grumpy kid- whenever a kid gets dissatisfied, she gets grumpy with whoever she interacts with. For me, that grumpy kid in me didn't grow up. It's a shame that it's still there. Whenever I gets stressed out, I get grumpy with friends that I interact with. They have nothing to blame for my stress.

No matter how good of a friend I am, something unconscious thing I say or act ruins everything I care for those people. It happened a couple of times already recently. I really need to grow up from that grumpy child. 29-year-old being grumpy is definitely not cute like that 6-9 months baby. :)

Search for Buddhist Burmese in me

My best college buddy from Brazil visited me in NY about a couple of months ago. It was so nice and felt so warm like seeing a family. At one point, when I was telling him how I wanted to visit somewhere exotic and he said 'You totally sound like an American!' I have been having these thoughts and questions about national or self identities - what is American? What is Buddhist Burmese? Why is it important to belong to one group socially, politically, nationally? Where do I belong?

Also my dad once commented me- 'I wonder if you are still a pure Buddhist Burmese.' As a free spirit as I am, I barely care about what other people think about me. I've never been afraid of being who I am though I try best to be the best human being I possibly can be. That was where I struggled living in Myanmar because you are what other people perceive you. I will write more on this later.

From my observations, there are three kinds of people who live abroad for a certain period of time.
1. people who hate the foreign country they live and try really hard to not get adjusted to the new social environment due to the fear of losing their self
2.people who hate their home country and try really hard to become one of those people in the foreign country they now live
3. people who are open to new cultures and not afraid of the change and still have stronger sense of self
My admiration of course is reserved for people in category 3. So lets see which one of those three I fall under.

I myself have disgusted people who lost themselves after they left their origins while trying so hard to be someone who they are not in the process of cultural adaptation. All these questions made me wonder if I lost who I was and my self identity. So I asked myself: "Did I lose my values? Did I lose the most important things in my life? Am I still a Burmese? Am I still a Buddhist?''

Top most important things in my life are:
1.to control my own destiny
2. to not be confined physically, intellectually and emotionally
3.to live life to the fullest
4.to learn and explore

My basic values are: intelligence, independence, integrity, altruism

Gladly, I did not lose any of those. I'm still very much Burmese but with free and open mind :) Whether I'm Buddhist or not, it's still in the process of evaluating its essence in my life. I'm still very happy to go to pagodas back home as long as I'm not forced to do so.

In fact, I gained so much more of most important things and values since I left home. Of course, I did change over eight years in U.S. The biggest change is that I have become very open minded. I have tried to understand things in various points of views instead of trying to draw a line between black and white. For example, in the society I grew up, if you drink or smoke, you are a bad person. If you don't, you are good. The way people try to define who you are is based on some external facts they observe about you instead of trying to understand you as a WHOLE complex being with various dynamics.

To be socially accepted in Myanmar, one has to follow those standards generally accepted by the society. I disliked all those rules and standards making me feel so restricted but I did follow all those standards and managed to be a so called good Buddhist Burmese girl :) But the sad thing is that it did not show who I was. It was more of this standard female creature generated from a Burmese social machine. I barely had a chance to express my opinions, thoughts and hopes.

So to be socially accepted in U.S., what do you do? Just be yourself! I realized that being American means being who you are. This country and culture focus on individuality. Of course, there is pop culture experience you share and other whole experience. But it's not limited to any race, ethnicity, religion or political ideology.

Not everything in U.S is good as much as not everything in Myanmar is bad. Good things and bad things are usually everywhere at the same time- they are sometimes closely tied in each other.

I did not lose myself a tiny bit. Instead, I was able to explore who I am. In U.S., I'm totally free to be myself, retain my values and expand myself intellectually. I learned that you do not lose yourself and identity when you have grown intellectually but you lose yourself and self identity when you try so hard to become someone else while adapting to a new culture

Eternal battle for freedom

All my life, I have been fighting a lot of internal and external intellectual battles and other obstacles. My parents think that I always choose the difficult path and have to suffer more than other people. The thing is that I always set higher goals that are a little out of my reach. That's because I love the challenge and enjoy the path to reaching those goals and whole experience. So to me, it's not suffering at all as they see it.

I am also pretty obstinate. Once I find something I consider is the best for me, it is almost impossible for my parents to change my mind. I always argue with my dad giving a zillion reasons why I want to do this, why it is best for me, how it is going to be a loss for me if I do not do this etc. In a good sight, I'm pretty persuasive :) But to my parents, it's always frustrating to have this difficult child who is not quite fit into the dominant culture.

Recently there are two ongoing battles with my dad:
1. going back home for good after grad school vs living wherever I want to
2. marrying a Burmese man at age 30 vs. marrying the BEST man for me whenever I find one

So I just recently won #1. My argument in short version was that I love freedom and I don't feel free when I'm home. I feel that I do not have many choices for the life I want to live. Once I come back and find lost opportunities, I will resent and feel unhappy when I feel trapped and can't get out of the country. As a compromise, I promised him that I will visit home more frequently once I am more settled with my life.

Battle #2 will be very tough. Personally, I don't even care whether I get married or not. It is a BIG thing and my lifetime happiness is at stake. The whole family is pressuring me to start dating someone potential seriously. I told my dad that 'yes if I meet someone who is very intelligent, highly educated, open-minded, adventurous, very social and independent, he also appreciates my qualities and fall in love with me. He said "Your requirements are very very high. It's very difficult to meet your requirements. The only things I want is honest, hardworking and medium educated, patient Myanmar guy."

It upsets me. It almost sounds like "I don't want the best for you. I just want some average guy as long as he's Burmese."I know he is not like that. I know he wants the best for me. But still he wants me to settle for less than the best person for the racial issue.

For the time being, I just want to focus on school and developing my career. I don't want to think about this marriage issue. It's just a lot of pressure and my parents' constant nagging is hard to bear. But the same time, I love challenges and enjoy overcoming them. They keep me on my toes and don't get me bored....