We’ve all had something happen to us beyond our control that has been emotionally and/or physically devastating.  When these events unfold, we cope with them in different ways.  Some of us tuck it neatly away and never try to think about it again.  Some of us let the tragedy become us and the reason why we cannot move on.  Some of us choose denial, which is different than compartmentalization.  The latter involves moving an issue to the far-reaches of our mind while still acknowledging it, while denial is the act of denying the issue altogether.  This is the most harmful decision of the two, for it forces you to deny a part of who you are and what happened to you.  Compartmentalization can be healthy if it allows a person to move on in the near present.  Although we could choose to go down many of these paths, many of us pick either one of two options: we either choose to let it become our excuse, or we choose to grow directly because of it.

No decision is innately wrong, but the most healthy choice is to decide to see what happened as a learning experience.  We must realize we always have a choice and we can choose to remain stagnant or grow.  When we are stagnant, we are more prone to unhappiness, but if we see life as chances to grow and change, we suddenly see opportunities to be happier.  It doesn’t guarantee you happiness, but remaining stagnant will ensure depression.  Sometimes, we don’t realize the options we have and think we are limited because of that.  However, there are always options whether you realize it or not.  Every day, you make the decision to be where you are.  Once you see that you do have control of your life, you’ll recognize that your options are endless.

We can never change the past, but we can change how we feel about it and what we can do about it.  We have to see that these events have shaped us into who we are today and we wouldn’t have the vision we do if we didn’t endure these things.  We know things other people who did not experience them do.  We can choose to see these defining moments in our lives as excuses that hold us back or the reasons why we succeed today.  Tragedy is not what happens to us, but what we continue to hold on to.  This is the real tragedy in life, for we have never really escaped it mentally.  I’m not saying it’s as simple as saying you are over a situation, but it starts at the very simple act of just acknowledging the trauma and letting it either change us or changing because of it.

You hear a lot about restoring American and family values, but what are they exactly?  Many of the people who espouse this rhetoric usually want values and mores to turn back the clock to the fifties, which they see as a simpler time.   It was a simpler time in the context that the definitions of a man, woman, an enemy, a foreigner, and a family were neatly written out.  However, people were still agitating for equal rights for minorities and women, so this period is not as quaint as it has been glamorized by Hollywood.  So what exactly do the people who say this want?  They do not want that particular period, but they long for the time when you could easily define someone.

When you can easily define someone, you can see right away who doesn’t belong, and if someone were to question the status quo, they would be seen as not conforming.  That is what that time period was  all about: conforming to social norms.  When a large majority of society conforms, it makes it easier to flow through it because everyone understands their role and place.  When the lines are blurred, people are afraid of their own status and the status of others.  If you define yourself as a man and such a category as a transgender man exists, does this devalue who you are?  If you and your neighbors have always been one color and now the color of those around you start to change, who becomes the foreigner if you can’t tell each other apart?

Some people would say that these modern times have created more strife because of these new freedoms and views, and to this I would agree.  When there are more options, there will be more reasons to disagree and create factions in the people.  However, the opposite of this would be to return to the catchall term of ‘family values,’ where our identities are strictly defined, and when they are, people will be silently unhappy.  At least with more options, people can voice their opposition.  I think people are threatened by the changing definitions because they have to question who they are and the power they are losing by conceding the definitions to those they do not agree with.  As such, they point to the strife in modern society and claim it is because of modern values that this has happened, not acknowledging the strife that existed in the past.

I would rather live in a world where women are given the same opportunities as men, minorities are afforded the same rights as the majority, and the LGBT community is able to marry as with those who are straight than a world with stagnant definitions of who I am and who we are as a people.  When we redefine the rules of society, we do so to offer equality, but some see this as a redistribution of power, which they resent.  We can go back and live by these old rules, but in doing so, we undo our progress for the sake of conformity.  Values and Mores are not what sex we want to be with, how much we get paid, or equal access to education, but they are how we judge ourselves.  These things are rights, but they are not values.  I hope we will  judge ourselves as open and compassionate and our children will judge us as such when the time comes.

We talk about confidence all the time, but it’s not as easy as you think.  You either have confidence or you don’t.  For those who don’t have it, it’s really hard to understand.  Confidence can be broken down into self-esteem and self-respect.  First off, what is self-esteem?  How is it different from self-respect?  Is there a difference?  Yes.  Some people respect themselves highly and know they would never let someone else disparage them, but if they have low self-esteem, they may still believe it.  The two can exist independent of each other, however, those who have high self-esteem usually respect themselves as well, but those who have low self-esteem can still respect their selves outside of who they are. Whereas self-respect plays to how a person is treated by others, self-esteem plays to how a person treats themselves based on how they feel about themselves.

Self-esteem is where true confidence lies.  People who have high self-respect may portray themselves as confident, but it is not complete unless they also have self-esteem.  So, how does one go about building their own self-esteem?  It’s not as easy as you think.  There is the old adage of believing in who you are but how do you get there if you don’t have the tools?  I find many people simply don’t believe in themselves.  They will not let someone walk all over them, but they walk all over themselves.  They believe they are not worthy and accept a defeatist attitude because they think they will fail anyways so they do not even attempt to try.  This is because they fear failure.  They fear looking like a fool.  They fear being laughed at because they are not good enough.

These are all internal fears.  They have no bearing on their actual strengths in the real world.  To believe in themselves, they must forgive themselves for embarrassing memories they still hold on to.  Out of all the memories you hold, why do you still vividly remember this moment?  Because you do, you can never let go of the guilt and shame attached to it.  It does you no good to hold on to it.  Instead, attach a good thought to it.  I used to remember certain events all the time such as why did I say that horrible thing to her that I shouldn’t have?  Then I attached the thought of ‘but that doesn’t make me a bad friend.  It was the truth, but I shouldn’t have said it and I have learned from it.’  When I thought back to this memory, I would think of the good note as well and soon enough, the memory faded from my mind because the shame and guilt disappeared with it   The memory itself does not change, but how you feel about it has.  We cannot control the past, but we can control how we feel about it.  When we can move past the shame and guilt, we are free to learn from the experience.

Once you have done this with past memories, you can build on the foundation of who you are.  You can do this by living faithfully to your own words.  How this works is that you simply try not to contradict yourself.  If you ever call someone selfish for not sharing, you will make sure that you share.  What this does is two-fold, for you will watch what you say about others and watch your own actions so you are not a hypocrite.  Some will say you can simply set really low standards and fulfill this, but even those people will contradict themselves eventually.  If you adhere strictly to your beliefs, you will gain self-confidence and pride in who you are.  You are conscience of others and accountable to your own words.  This system will set you up for success because if you feel sure of yourself because of your actions, others will perceive the same of you.

This is how confidence is built.  Oftentimes, you can tell a child ‘you’re so smart’ and think this instills confidence in them, but it does not.  They already know they are smart so you are not building their confidence.  They simply see this as a fact.  If you build on their negative experiences, you will get them to FEEL better about themselves.  If they ask a classmate out and are rejected, they may feel horrible about it and never ask anyone out again.  However, if you ask them to see the positive, they will feel good about the action.  If you tell them ‘you got an answer.  It’s not the answer you wanted to hear, but now you know.  Some people go their entire lives without ever knowing, but you had the courage to ask and you know.  Aren’t you proud of that?’  This gets them to see their mistakes in a positive light and they do not attach negative connotations to the memory then.  Confidence is not how we think about ourselves, but how we feel about ourselves.

I believe all myths and folklore has some root in reality.  They range from the completely made up Loch Ness Monster to the delusionally-fueled Mermaids.  One origin of mermaids dates to when sailors mistook manatees for half human sirens calling to them.  Is it so preposterous then to believe other myths whose origin may spring from more likely sources?  In Southeast Asian cultures, many ethnic groups have stories of a Bigfoot-like creature who roamed the forests.  In Hmong culture, I grew up with dreams of Mahlews, giant, lumbering creatures that loomed in our imagination.  There is proof such an animal lived alongside humans thousands of years ago, but became extinct.  Perhaps, this ancestral memory of them has been passed down from generation to generation until it has become folklore instead of truth.

There has been evidence a creature called Gigantopithecus existed in southern China, Vietnam, and India, but went extinct 300,000 years ago.  Researchers estimate it stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds. ‘Scientists first learned of Gigantopithecus in 1935, when Ralph von Koenigswald, a German paleoanthropologist, walked into a pharmacy in Hong Kong and found an unusually large primate molar for sale.’ (1)  Since then, scientists have unearthed other bone fragments and continue to study them, but I feel they are not researching the history of the people who may have seen these creatures.

Hmong people originated in southern China and emigrated to the mountainous regions of Laos, close to Vietnam.  Thus, they would be greatly advantaged to have seen these beings in the past and have an oral history of them.  They are also featured as supernatural beings in a Thai-directed movie Uncle Boonmee Who Could Recall His Past Lives, showing how they permeate our cultures in different ways.  I have heard stories of these creatures along with many other fanciful beings all my life that I saw them all as characters from imaginative storytelling.  It’s hard to separate fact from fiction, but can it be that fact is so removed from time that it has now morphed into a fictionalized fact that is indistinguishable from fiction?

If this is the case, we shouldn’t be so quick to discount other folklore and explore them more thoroughly.  There is proof they existed when humans also did, so does this mean that when I am hearing about Mahlews, it is preserved ancestral knowledge passed down over the generations?  Obviously, no one has seen one in thousands of years, but perhaps our ancestors did and the knowledge is still with us today.  It certainly forces you to think that you shouldn’t be so quick to discount the basis of such folklore.  Folklore itself is precarious ground, but when you find such evidence as this to back it up, it makes quite a case for itself.

1.       http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/did-bigfoot-really-exist-how-gigantopithecus-became-extinct-16649201/?no-ist

2.       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus

3.       http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/g/gigantopithecus.html

4. picture from Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives

Have you noticed comments on online forums where people question how the victim of a crime became victimized?  Over the past years I’ve seen quite a few instances where online comments ask why a woman wasn’t careful enough before she was raped.  It’s become common place now to ask why did she go with him?   Didn’t she know this was a bad decision?  Why was she drinking so much at night?  This is different than speculation on the actual events.  You can dispute the validity of events, but people should be wary of blaming the victim by asking why they didn’t place the onus on themselves to prevent their own victimization.  I call this survivor viewer guilt, because they are not directly involved in the crime, but feel as if they need to interject their own comments after the fact.

This happens often in online communities and I feel it is something new that must be addressed.  Why do people feel as if they need to victim-blame someone they never even met or were involved with?  I don’t believe it is out of malice but because they feel personally guilty.  I call this survivor viewer guilt.  We’ve all heard of survivor guilt, where a survivor of a crime feels guilty they are alive when someone else died.  Survivor viewer guilt exists because as humans, we instinctively want to protect the victim we hear about even if there was no possible way to do so.  Because we failed to protect them (even though we may have never known them), we feel survivor viewer guilt and project this guilt onto the victim to relieve ourselves of it.  We ask why the victim didn’t do more because of our guilt.

As humans, we will always have these protective feelings and they are what separate us from sociopaths, so it is okay to feel such way.  However, when you recognize what is happening, you must stop the transference unto the victim.  When we better understand the nature of our actions, we will understand who we are.  Crime will continue to happen, but we can stop the further victimization of those accosted by changing the way we speak to each other.  We must acknowledge we feel guilty, but also acknowledge there was absolutely nothing we could do and that we still want the best for the victim we are hearing about.