Recently I was featured on the cover of Autumn Years magazine to represent the diversity of our wonderful Bergen County in our beloved state of New Jersey! As I got congratulations from hundreds of people, I was quite honored and thrilled. At the same time, I reminded everyone that I was privileged to represent our community, and to represent the power of diversity. And I was reminded of the power of story- we all love to read or listen to stories; it’s human nature; it’s what makes us who we are. And each of us has an interesting life story, and I think it is time we got our stories out there!
Whether we immigrated at age 15, as I did, or later on, we transcended cultures, continents, languages, traditions, customs, and forged new paths that bridged and integrated all of these. We all did it in our own way, we innovated and created new ways and we continued to tweak our paths. We did it with sincerity and with a commitment to honor all our identities. We also made sure to honor our root culture and our elders. We brought much of our culture here to share and celebrate.
Change is not easy and just the fact that we undertook a lot of change makes us more flexible and compassionate human beings. We can see multiple points of view, we can appreciate complexity and we can be patient as the economic and political forces manipulate and exploit race, religion, ethnicity, etc. to further their own power. Every time I meet family and friends, I am wowed by how we bridge cultures and walk the tightrope of integration and assimilation with grace and excellence, taking the best of many worlds and taking them to a third, higher level.
We also must remind ourselves that we were privileged to be able to build our dream lives here, after many generations of slaves and immigrants who built this society with great suffering. I am reading a book by Helen Zia called “Asian American Dreams” which documents Asian immigration and its stories from the 1800’s on, and was moved by the stories of suffering and triumph. We are a society that was built by diverse people, and thrives on diversity, current reactionary forces notwithstanding. Clearly, our innovation and leadership in so many fields has continued to accelerate with diversity.
So, I urge you all to start documenting your life story, even if you are just in your 30’s or 40’s, but especially if you are in your autumn years. Some of you are already doing it I am sure. Let’s continue to build the story of our community that shows our positive contributions. You know there is enough money and power to show us in a very, very negative light which makes it even more of a duty to share every single story. Our future generations will thank us one day. And personally, I am grateful to Autumn Years magazine that they offered to share a “diversity” story and will continue to do so.
For those of you interested in diversity of thought, listen to this powerful TED Talk by Turkish author Elif Shafak- one of my favourites!
https://www.ted.com/talks/elif_shafak_the_revolutionary_power_of_diverse_thought
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