- In the article entitled “The Stories That Bind Us”, written by Bruce Feiler, humans are described, in my opinion, as pieces in a chess game. These pieces in this chess game they call life are in constant movement, but they are not strategizing their own moves. In fact, these pieces are being moved by an invisible hand, a hand that knows only of providence and bases its strategy on family history. In this sense, each human on or off Earth are components of a bigger picture, and the minute we understand this is the minute we understand that the trials and tribulations our former generations and family members underwent provide momentum in everything we do. Knowing from whence we came and knowing what stories led to us being in existence is valuable, for such knowledge boots confidence and lets us know that we have something to look back at and be inspired by. If our individual histories are riddled with funny interrelational stories, we are humored and chuckle in embarrass, if they had more low notes than high, we learn multiple lessons only experience can spawn, and if our history is present in our minds, we know that we are not fish out water trekking upon uncharted territory. The article cited similar trains of thought, mentioning how test subjects who knew more about their families were more resilient in behavior - not displaying a dangerous amount of emotion when 9/11 took place for example. When I was in eighth grade at elementary school, I was mostly alone in my thoughts, not connecting with my peers for extended amounts of time and thinking these people who I would spend a large amount of my time with to be to be attacking me with judgement upon judgement. Regardless of whether this hypothesis was true, I developed a defense system against my failed elementary social life. This line of defense made me an introvert and gave me a piece of mind in which I felt safe and comfortable. A primary ingredient of this Maginot border was knowing that my ancestors were independent like me, ‘lone wolves’ who were successful in life by keeping to themselves and working hard to develop their own talents rather that talking about them with others. Only at iPoly have I been able to show my true colors and feel comfortable in doing so, even using them to help others. Through my lens, I see resiliency as each human’s core values and experiences bundled into a sort of determination that refuses to let everyday struggles come in the way of perseverance. Another key premise that the article mentioned, and that I wholeheartedly agree with, is the proven fact that humans love to tell and be a part of stories, each having a beginning, middle, and end. In this sense, we are lovers of drama and of things that are poetic in the way we experience them. These poetic verses we string with memories and points of heavy emotional dosage are treated as things we look back on and learn from, and from them learn to lead a happy and rewarding life. One way these runes teach us is by indulging our high horses and making us feel like we are on top of the world with the pack of accomplishments stringed to our backs.
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| Finding our confidence in old traditions, my family develops new traditions constantly, like having tea-time on a ship as is shown here |
For my life-story interview, I had a pretty in-depth conversation with my biological mother. I interviewed this family member of mine given the fact that she is at interesting part of life right now: what some may view as the midpoint of a human lifespan where the human being referenced is settled down in life for the most part and is in the process of applying what he or she has learned in life so far to the falling action part of his or her life plot. In our interview, had after my mom took a quick nap, I asked the following questions to spark conversation and memories:
Do you remember anything about your first year of life?
What characteristics do you remember most about your grandparents?
How would you describe your parents?
How would you describe your mother's personality and emotional qualities? How would you describe your father's?
What was growing up in your house or neighborhood like?
What family or cultural celebrations, traditions, or rituals were important in your life?
Were you encouraged to try new things, or did you feel held back?
Did you get along with your family members?
What are your best memories of school?
What are your worst memories of school?
What do you remember most about college?
Do you remember your first date? Your first kiss?
→ After asking these questions, I has a very clear picture of not only who my mom truly was, but also what she represented to me and my own life. In a sense, my mom was my flagship to a New World, and it is her experiences that shall guide me and my own explorations of the rough terrain I call life. The answer that most affected me was to the question “what do you most remember about college”. To this my mother noted the excitement of taking a bunch of classes at a time and the freedom to make her own decisions. This attitude has indeed followed me in my own experience with college classes at CalPoly, classes I have had the pleasure to taking since being accepted by the Young Scholar’s Program at iPoly.
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| My mom truly has given me my genes for exemplary work ethics, and has now given me inspiration for using these genes and this potential with her stories of being one of the first in her family to attend college at Pasadena City College; every class I attend at CalPoly will surely be attempted with respect to how I got to such an opportunity: by way of the blood, sweat, and tears experienced by my parents |
In a similar way, my favorite part of going to college quarter after quarter has been being exposed, exposed to both new material that boosts my neurons and people that are a few years ahead of me in their academic careers. Both this new knowledge and these new people have showed me how many ways life can take a person and shows me that I am not alone in my ambitions, and that humans can be viewed as germs in a pile of garbage, each competing with the others to find the niche best suitable to its proliferation. My pathway to finding my own niche can only be cleared by me and my future journeys, and my resiliency takes after the drive my mom exhibited in her college days and her mighty shifts as a librarian. However, while my mother’s passion was working with accounting and numbers, my passion lies in science where numbers are but clues to a bigger picture that asks questions of the world we live in. Another question that helped me to realize my mother’s drive was “do you remember anything in your first year of life”, to which my mother comically answered in how she remembers being birthed by my grandmother and feeling warm one second and then feeling unprotected the next, with a light to accompancy that feeling of liberation into a foreign world. This memory surprised me for I had a similar elevation, in which I saw my mother’s amniotic egg wrapped around me and could sense her heartbeat in my then premature ears. In a sense, we were both, mother and son, born into Earth ready to perceive and learn, and apply whatever we learn for the good of the species we were born in allegiance to. After a light or two, I extended the question a bit, asking her was her next memory was. My mom shrugged a bit and then smiled to herself, remembering a sunny day wherein she was hopscotching in her home neighborhood of Palmetto in Pasadena.
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| Like birds pecking at crumbs left under lunch tables, interviewing my mother was like having flash back to a point in time where my very life was being decided upon with every decision she made |
This mental journey back in time was reflected with a statement: “I liked spending my childhood outdoors”. These words really did ring a chord within me, as I often liking spending my time outdoors, exploring and experimenting, following the motto ‘places to be, people to see’. What mind boggled me was how both my mother and I can say we liked spending our days outdoors when we were young, this mutual sentence that in a way connected us in our thoughts through a pretty vast expanse of time. Now that I think about it, when I was younger I would dig with my sister a whole lot in our backyard, hunting for pill bugs which we would then transport, captives to our curiosity, to a farm complete with ample food and mud-built huts. Unlike my mother though, I never liked hopscotching. One observation I have made in my life was reflected in the way my mom answering the question “how would you describe your parents”. This observation was that some humans were more regretful than others. My mom answered mentioning how her mom, my grandmother, was once a lively woman who hollered with happiness at the moon and coddled the hearth my mom grew around with her siblings and doting father. She then noted how grandma had, later in her life, sunk into a sort of depression wherein she denied the trust of her children and husband. In a sense, she has formed a defense line like the one I created for myself in elementary school and, unlike in my case, stayed in this clammed position, comfortable and with regret seeping from her outward-pointed cannons. I now wonder how regret in a family can be mended. In mom’s words, grandma is learning to open up and cast away the regret she has for having changed for the worse in her emotional state by sticking to traditions my mom passes from her roots to mine and my sister’s. For example, she partakes in the making of my mom’s menuda every Christmas-time, making up for the times long ago when she rejected the idea of Christmas after joining a strict Church that saw Christmas traditions as evil and opposed to the real theme of the holiday: Jesus being born. I do hope that one day my grandmother will find peace with herself and her actions, seeing her mistakes as but mistakes that human is inclined to make. Hopefully, my grandmother can find such peace by one day talking to her living family about the mental trials she has had to undergo, trials that caused her deteriorating state as a mother. I her case as belonging to a woman who just took a little longer finding herself than others. This delay was most likely due to being brought up in a conservative setting in Mexico where she was denied higher education against her will by her own parents. Indeed, my mothers story, as the aforementioned article points out, starts where my grandmother’s story begins, and my grandmother’s story has, from her daughter's telling of it, taught me to live life fully with regrets and to plan out each step to prevent missteps.
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| This Christmas-time picture depicts my grandmother and myself |
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