May you live in interesting times.
- Some Chinese, China (?)
I remembered reading once somewhere that it was said, heroes are made during turbulent times.
Being third generation Chinese in modern Malaya (I still love to call it by that name), I look back at the cross-roads that my earlier ancestors took. From taking a chance to leave Mainland, which in those days could still mean a lot of things - good and bad. Good because we are mostly closer to the South, hence the weather and food could not have been too different, now that was if there was food available. The bad was much to do with leaving a comfortable social unit that most olden days Chinese grew accustomed to. You put your team first, yourself last. You depend on your team for identity, boundaries, rules. People were dying everywhere those days, China was brought down to her knees and struggled to carve her own identity in the new Century, post-Cultural Revolution, the Japanese War, the breaking and scattering of the different Chinese clans (again).
My own paternal grandfather made a decision to take off with my grandmother to East Malaysia. Many reasons were silenced when I asked as a child, only now to discover the dramatic background of his serving within the Bintang Tiga Regime. He was good with the typewriter and also the sewing machines. I still remembered the latter in my aunt's old house.
My father took me and the family back to West Malaysia during his active days in the oil palm industry. He has always told me that I'm like a wild Mustang. Run free, and run strong.
I slept over my own opportunities, my own cross-roads last night. I listened to my own voice this morning. Day 3 and I think I know clearly than what I know not last night. If I am going to get this one going, I have not the pleasure of worrying about how others might feel or perceive about my decisions. I owe nothing, and I am owed nothing.
It is without the gift of supernatural ability that a "hero" finds her strongest strength.
