Thoughts from "They call it Myanmar"

I went to see this documentary screening for "They call it Myanmar" this past weekend in Brooklyn, Williamsburg. The film itself is not that amazing. It was more about cliche messages I keep hearing all this time such as "Burma is under this cruel military junta for half century; people are suffering etc...." But it is probably functional enough to give the idea of what Burma is for those who don't know.

It is really sad that this 50 millions population have been totally invisible in the world although they have got so much potentials. I don't want to talk about human rights, freedom and injustice everyone talks about here. I just want to share a few thoughts from my own personal point of view.

Buddhism

It is a big part of our culture, and probably 90% of population is Buddhists. It is our identity as Burmese- influence our daily life in so many ways.  But it is more of a culture and tradition than of really understanding and practicing the real philosophy of Buddhism.

The most unbearable thing for me as a teenager was to see people 'accepting' their life with their own Buddhist way of thinking. They said whatever they are suffering now is because they did bad things in their past lives. Let set aside whether I believe in reincarnation or the whole Buddhism. It is just not right to justify your present sufferings with something that you can't prove it or have seen it.

I was born and raised as Buddhist as most other Burmese are. My parents are devout Buddhists. I questioned so much about Buddhism as a teenager. It's actually more of philosophy than a religion to me. And this philosophy from 2500 years ago have passed along so many people all these years. So not sure how much of it is still true.


The essence of Buddhism to me is about liberating from all the sufferings of being humans. So we, Burmese, should be focusing on that liberation instead of accepting the sufferings.

As a rebellious teenager, I thought the only way to liberate from this armed illegal regime was to 'fight' them with arm force so that we are on equal grounds. But now that I grow older, I learned that fighting them is simply having the courage to say "NO" to things that we don't want, in all levels in our society.

Our problem is that we are all scared and afraid to lose very few things that we have left to lose. A lot of us saw horrifying things in 1988; even I remember those incidents as 5 years old kid.
And the other problem is that we do not talk to strangers in our culture :) There is barely public discourse about people talking about their ideas and thoughts. It is hard to spread that idea of peaceful resistance. Well, Aung San Suu Kyi was the first to try but I'm not sure how most people really understand it.

Ignorant Bliss

Does that peaceful Buddhist mindset makes Burmese people content as most foreigners think? When I was traveling to see the remote parts of the country past January, there are so many people in those North West mountainous areas, who live their life in very basic ways. ( Well even the urban Burmese population lives like 100 or more years ago.)

Someone said "look at these people, they don't have much in their life but they live simple, lack of greed and very peaceful and happy."
I think it is more important to ask whether they are really happy knowing all their options as human beings or they are happy because they just don't know if they can live better than this with opportunities given.

That's why the major agenda of the military regime was to isolate us from the rest of the world. That way we do not know what we are missing and how we could get better; most importantly, we do not ask for better things from the government.

Poverty

Luckily, I came from the middle class family but both my parents came from poor families. My father, whose parents were simple poor farmers, made his way through the schools and he's now Chief Engineer of a govt. enterprise. In his village, people quit school after elementary school because that's how far you can go within the village. I don't know if I would ever go to school if it was that difficult to go to school.

He said he was afraid of being poor and did not want to work in the farms so he studied instead. My father is such a great hard worker. So his example seems like quite inspiring and promising like in the movies; "If you work hard and are educated, you can make your way through the top." However it is not that simple. My father has his friends from the university who are working under him. They went to the same engineering school, they all struggled to make that far.

The problem in Burma is that every single one has their own struggles and have to fight for very few limited opportunities- whether it is a job to feed the family or a career that you have always dream about. What we are mainly deprived is opportunities. I'm 100% sure that those of my father's friends wouldn't want to work under their own friend. But they have no choice or option.

If you think about 50 million population and at least 40 millions are poor. And I do not believe that they don't try hard enough. But, you can't try hard to get something that's not even there! 

NGOs and INGOs

We all at one point want to make a difference for our society. We want to be heroes and heroines who save lives of disadvantaged and poor. But the problem is that most of us don't know how. When you see someone lacking something, you think giving that is a solution.

All these NGOs and INGOs are mostly working on curing the symptoms instead of disease. My brother was working for a nutrition project in a French NGO at the border of Burma and Bangladesh. So they provide them medical treatments and nutrition packets for the malnutrition children.

Some of the mothers make their own children starved in order to get food packets. Apparently, they sell those packets in the market to get money to feed their multiple children at home.  Some people come to clinic holding other people mucus infected with TB in their mouth so they can get money, food, medicines.

It is heartbreaking to know these stories but the problem is the poverty and lack of opportunities for all these people. But I know it is harder to tackle these problems.

Returning home or Not?

So we have got all these problems and issues. Can we fix it?

I had family dinner with a former Burmese ambassador, great grandson of former Burmese minister during the reigns of the last Kings. He is very energetic, and very open-minded, not old fashion like other old people. He was asking me a lot of questions about how to fix Burma :) In the end, he said "we need people like you. You have to come back one day."

I have asked myself this question so many times. I argue both sides- pros and cons. It is NOT anywhere close to an easy decision.

I went home every summer during college hoping that I could do something. I always came back frustrated. True that we have a lot of problems but somehow there is almost no opportunity to fix those.

The question is not about whether we, who are western educated, want to do things and make a difference for our country. The question is whether we are allowed and free to do anything to fix those problems.


And the other part of me is that life is short and I want to live my life to the fullest, happily and freely. As a selfish human being as I am, I have all these needs and wants:
I want to control my own destiny.

I want to be free intellectually, physically and emotionally.

I want to learn and grow.

I really am not sure all these needs can be satisfied back in my own land......