Stepping out of the bubble

        “You’re tutoring who!?” My friend slapped his forehead in surprise. I hadn’t seen him for years, and unfortunately much hadn’t changed. Always a patriot, a hardcore American, a Toby Keith put-a-boot-up-their-ass type, he didn’t like what I has told him. I, in his mind, was consorting with the enemy. In my mind I was simply helping some individuals whom badly needed educational help with their English. It’s unfortunate that people can be so narrow-minded.

          It’s funny that my friends should be so racist. He is, after all, just as dark as the Middle Eastern students I was helping. It wasn’t long ago that members of his family were facing the hatred that these poor students do. They too, like my friend’s family, are in America in search of a better life. They don’t want to be confided to a life of manual labor and backbreaking work. They want education, which is not crime.

         This narrow thinking is unfortunately the norm in America. Difference of any kind automatically makes a person hate another. I haven’t fallen into this fray, and I don’t plan on it. I do admit, however, that it is going to take diligence. Only a fool would think that people could coexist peacefully without working at it. Right?

         After a great deal of reflection, I am not so sure. It seems that the great error humans commit on a daily basis is not reaching out to those that are different than them. Reading, it seems, is a logical start. I, for one, will admit that I knew very little of the healing process Japan had to go through after WW2. It was almost automatic that because they were the enemy, in my binary mind, they didn’t have to heal. They were cold beings that had ice running through their veins that couldn’t be warmed. I was wrong. I was ignorant. I didn’t hate them, or even dislike them, but rather just didn’t humanize them.

          An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro, helped me come to a greater understanding of Japanese culture. Ono, in the novel, is an artist who is dealing with the ramifications of his heavy hand in the propaganda movement of the war. These “work(s) of real importance” that Ono helps diligently create and select (he was on a committee as well) are all pieces of his legacy he must learn to live with. Dealing with the guilt of making art that ramped up citizens into dying, Ono comes to a very human and difficult conclusion-he must forgive himself. This is not an easy thing to do for a human being.

          This process that Ono undergoes, one of healing, can be very helpful to helping solving the many problems of the world. Obviously there will always be conflict and hatred. However, isn’t it odd that a great deal of world’s population is fighting over something that happened before the birth of Jesus. Isn’t it about time that we found a way to move forward somehow?

           However, indifference isn’t limited to those who are far away over the ocean, like those in Japan. Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, shows that in America there is a great deal of foreignness amongst us. By foreignness I do not mean merely the presence of a foreigner, but rather a great deal of mystery between us all. The people who pay for this the most, however, are those who have come to this country and are not as “American” as we might like. Many of these innocent people with innocent intentions pay for this in many ways. In the novel, Jasmine faces terrible things such as being raped.

         Unfortunately, the bad part of her American experience is not limited to a savage act of violation. In coming to America, a great problem is the fact that no matter how hard you try, people aren’t ready to accept you as American. You are merely an Indian or whatever race, happens to have cite ship. This is very hard to reconcile because “this country has so many ways of humiliating, of disappointing.” For Jasmine this came in many forms, whether it was someone wanting her to say something in “Indian” or make something “Indian” for dinner. It is almost as others don’t want to learn about you, but rather that they want to have you around as a novelty act.

          If hatred is ever to recede in this world, we have to truly embrace each other. I am not saying we all need to hold hands and frolic, but rather that we need to actually take the time to learn from each other legitimately. There is no great shame in immersing yourself in one’s culture and still keeping your own identity. I think that may be a big part of the problem-people are intimidated about what might happen. My friend, for one, is intimidated by it. His childish fear of difference is no different than a fear of the dark. He can’t see something and he’s scared. Forgiving each other and ourselves for past transgressions and legitimately learning about each other can help. Just meeting someone like the students I am tutoring(stepping out of his bubble) might actually turn on the light.