Page 2 - MidWeek - Sep 21, 2022

2 MIDWEEK SEPTEMBER 21, 2022
Serendipitous Connections
“When it came to listening, my mother taught me, open heart and silence.” — Rupi Kaur
YPatience Rewarded
Last year, the Taliban took Afghanistan. With a desire to pay things forward, my now-suc- cessful Vietnamese mother and her friends, who escaped the war in the ’70s, sponsored a refugee Afghan family.
ou often don’t know what you don’t know. I mean, until you find out things in life some- times, you didn’t even know such things ex-
My love for our time with the family is about how the practically wordless relation- ship was incredibly commu- nicative — I know now that real respect and understand- ing comes from actions and comforts of silences. They unexpectedly had helped me, too. This new lesson of universal language complet- ed me.
Harlan Van Cao is a pub- lished writer with Penguin Random House and a soph- omore at UCLA studying psychology, with interests in law and film. Her passions include animal rescue, art, travel and fashion.
Chasing The Light is pro- duced by Lynne Johnson and Robin Stephens Rohr.
isted. For example, have you ever heard of the Halifax Explosion? It happened 105 years ago in the deep-water harbor between Halifax and Dartmouth in Nova Scotia. Look it up. An estimated 1,700 people were killed and more than 9,000 were injured. It was the biggest hu- man-made blast in the history of the world, until atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in WWII.
As a first-year UCLA student with nothing to of- fer but my time, I drove the 25-year-old father around until he passed his driver’s test. He could barely under- stand what I said to him but he nevertheless asked me about my life, maybe at first just to be polite. Even though he could only register some of it, I told him things I have never told anybody, things he probably had never expected to hear coming from a coun- try of extreme tradition. And in return, he used what words he knew to tell me some of his
Through sponsoring an Afghan refugee family and accompanying the father to take his driver’s license test, the author learned that true understanding comes from action, not merely from words.
out of racism but out of bu- reaucratic rigidity, and I gave them a hard time back. Mean- while, he stood smiling say- ing “welcome” to new strang- ers coming in, as I put on this display of things he’ d never seen in his culture — my un- covered head, my skin show- ing, my raised female voice. I had acted more powerfully than I would have typically because it meant something
KELLEY
I found this amazing story while visiting Halifax to see, in part, the biggest tidal changes in the world at the Bay of Fundy, where you can walk on the ocean floor and not get wet at low tide, and come back later to see that the water level’s risen over 50 feet along the cliffs.
to me to show him a strength he had never gotten to see, something that perhaps now he would nurture in his own daughters.
The point here is we simply don’t know about lots of stuff that might truly electrify or energize us when we do find out. That Maritime Museum also hous- es amazing Titanic paraphernalia because the ship’s remnants, including deceased passengers’ belongings, were brought ashore from 700 nautical miles away. I’ve been hoping the Halifax Explosion story could be this decade’s Titanic movie blockbuster, but no takers yet.
own secrets.
I won’t ever forget when
Through all of our times like the incident with the DMV, despite cultural dif- ferences that one may expect would stunt my comfort, I felt completely safe, because he never judged me, even if he didn’t fully relate.
Remember the childlike innocence and excitement we all had as kids when we witnessed things for the first time — a fireworks display, a huge sporting event, a zoo tiger, Santa Claus at the mall!?
the DMV gave him a hard time about his documents, not
Even as adults, the ideas of progress; development and self-defined success can still make one feel invigorated, hopeful and perhaps even starry-eyed. Heck, I still get ex- cited when Journey and Jersey Boys come to the Blaisdell and when 21st century paving and speed bumps (inevita- bly) come to the Pali Highway.
New Century Schoolbook bold (scaled H 73.6)
with Harlan Van Cao
I’m surprised at how often we maintain unyielding patience when so much is said and yet so little is done on many vital, local matters, at least in a timely fashion. We need more housing, social service funding, teachers, innovators, food self-sufficiency, doctors, economic op- tions and an alternate leeward access; we need less traffic, plastic, redundant committees and bureaucratic deterrents. Post-COVID, same old same old isn’t gonna hack it here. We know that. Let’s seek solutions that work elsewhere — adopt and adapt adeptly. We may be isolated, but our issues are not necessarily unique. We know what we don’t know, or don’t do, so how about we do something?
Think about it.
john@thinkaboutithawaii.com