Yea. Essay fun. By fun I mean 'setting yourself on fire' kinda fun. Which isn't too fun when you think about it.
I will be playing 'essay conquerors' tonight. For a reference to the joke (pun, whatever), click here.
Paul Henry - if you google him, you can see the furore he's created. I refer to the statement he made about our governor general.
A lot of people are saying online that "NZ has gone PC mad!" or "Dudeee lighten up like don't be so PC", "Here comes the PC police".
But really do they know what it means to be part of a nation? Do they know what it means have an identity associated with a nation? I suppose not, since most of the commenters are likely to be white, middle class (ok, I do actually think a lot of the commenters are idiots) Kiwis. They would have no idea how a person 'feels' their labelled race, merely because they don't look like a majority of their counterparts in the country they were born and bred in.
I come from a certain country where I don't feel my identity as part of the country. I do acknowledge and I am proud to be part of the peoples of the country. I do not however feel as though I am part of the country. I feel it when people of my race are looked over for scholarships. When a certain other race is given preferential treatment. The fact I can never be the prime minister (if I wanted to anyway) though I may have lived there all my life. Though it is fact that that country is the place where "tanah tumpah darahku". That is one reason why I will not consider working in my 'home' country long term.
I even feel incensed when a certain misguided, under educated and close minded person told a person of my race to "go home".
This compounded with the fact that I have lived half my life overseas. I am two halfs and never a whole, despite my genetic heritage. I know I may never be looked upon as belonging to either culture. But that's fine. I know who I am and where I belong, my heart is with both nations.
As humans I believe we want to know where we belong. Who we fit with, where we fit. That's why people have OEs (in NZ anyway), or do at least a bit of soul searching during their life to see who they are. People need a sense of belonging - we are all community driven. No man is an island.
Calling attention to race and nationality this to it is unhelpful and possibly detrimental.
Nationality is determined by where your heart is. Not by how you look.
I've heard the saying which goes "You are your greatest enemy".
True in most respects, especially with regard to my willpower. In movies they potray it as fighting against your demons, and to the background of epic music, and possibly a smidgen of a love story and a pinch of tragedy for good measure. This unfolds on the big screen, and then after they kick their demons back to their closet, they emerge triumphant. A changed man/woman. One that is impossibly wiser, kinder and even more unbreakable than before.
The story is tasty, yes?
But when we come down to the nitty-gritty it really is just us. Us trying to face that skeleton in the closet. Us trying to write an essay/socialise/whatever la. Without the epic music, and epically awesome "oh I am crying in the rain cause this is so hard" scenes. Living isn't glamorous.
It's just us. Us against ourselves.
No one will see those struggles, no one will understand that pain, no one will face the same demon.
But it is up to us to push through.
Difficult, yes.
Impossible - I know it isn't, but it is so hard.
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