 Roxborough, CO It's happening. January will be our last month in the Bay Area. If this comes as a surprise to you, it also comes as a surprise to me. But sometimes life just happens like that...
Some of you know that I purchased a new construction condo in Denver that closed in November. You may also know that I've been deliberating a move to Colorado on and off for the past 2.5 years where the other half of my family resides, and each time have determined that my attachment to California -- to my friends, my community, my family, the climate, the air, the landscape, the comfort, the familiarity, the ties -- were too strong to break.  Mural, Banksy Last week I heard about this thing called Approval Addiction (aka, fear of rejection), which is exactly what it sounds like. And as soon as it was spoken to me, I knew I had it. I have been avidly seeking approval from everyone in the outside world since the day I was born, and I have been using their approval to confirm my self worth. Now as children, I think we do this naturally -- we look to our caretakers for positive (and negative) reinforcement -- but at some point, we develop a sense of self, an identity, and we begin to know who we are and what we stand for apart from the expectations of others. But I never got there. I never stopped needing everyone around me to tell me I was okay in order to feel worthy, in order to feel safe. And being teased as a minority growing up certainly fed into my intense desire to belong, to look to others for approval, even at the expense of my own worthiness and individuality. But I don’t think this is a “minority” thing. I think it’s a human thing, based largely upon the relationships we had as children.  Two weeks ago, I sent out a newsletter pointing to a topic that has come up for me a lot lately -- Racism -- and I know I’m not the only one banging my head against this rock. It’s a topic that fundamentally determines how we treat each other in this lifetime and whether we choose to walk forward in love or hate, and the fight is too big to ignore. In the 10 days following the election of Trump, the Southern Poverty Law Center tallied 867 hate incidents across the country, and all but 23 of them were carried out in support of the new president-elect. It appears that the dark side of white privilege has been given license to rage, bleeding out of the shadows and into the blinding light.
If you’re a minority like me (I’m of 100% Chinese descent), we really have two choices. We either give our power to the white people, or we claim the power that is our human birthright (and only then can we stand tall for ALL of our non-white brothers and sisters). The choice seems simple -- I’ll take my power, thank you very much; but if you’re a minority who grew up in America where the white population was clearly dominant, and you didn’t have the tools to adequately cope with and respond to the racism that you inevitably experienced, then it’s a trickier choice than it seems. Of course we want to stand in our power. But we gave it away a long time ago. |
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