Monday Musings 204 - The boats we get into....

Two things happened within a week of each other for me. Last week I listened to a TED video where the speaker Dan Gilbert said that human beings were fundamentally creatures who are in perpetual state of work in progress. The second thing that happened to me was that I met J.

There are stories scattered all around us. Human stories are many and magical. The more we encounter reasons to be cynical, doubtful and disbelievers, the more nature throws at us stories that raise our own sense of being to a new found level of belief, faith. J is one such story and since I promised him that I will not mention his name in my ode to his story, I must remain content in calling him J.

Many decades ago, during the peak of the Vietnam misadventure of the USA, many Vietnamese families attempted to move out- some wanting to escape the brutalities of their own brethren and some who wanted to get out of the mindless massacre by a foreign country. Many families attempted to leave the country on small fishing boats, needless to say not a a very safe and reliable way to leave a war ravaged country.

Young J, all of 6 years was made to board one such boat, the only one amongst his familymembers which   included his elder brother. I am a father of a 7 year old and I keep imagining the plight of that young child. I keep imagining what his tender mind would have made out of being on that boat and then landing in a refugee camp in Malaysia and living the next 3 years there. I keep keep imagining his fear, his wait for his parents and the the brute dawn of reality that they won't come.

Having spent those 3 years in that camp with children of that war, by propitious twist of fate, J was adopted by foster parents in Canada and so the journey of life took the young child from the refugee camps to a new house many miles away and Ina different continent. He grew up in Canada with his new parents and spent the next 6 odd years with then, by which time his elder brother traced him to Canada and joined him. J was reunited with his elder brother who also moved to canada. 

As the young child transited into an young adult, J experienced familiar rebelliousness that youth usually typify. He started to hang around with friends who were not bad but were of limited aspirations or talent. Even though J scored in high nineties during his high school and could have got through any university of his choice, going to the university was infra dig in the gang he moved around. So for two years after he completed his high schools he was almost a wage earner and used to fix frames as a construction worker. 

While life was taking its own shape as it does, a question kept coming back to J' s mind-  why was he chosen to be on that boat? Was he abandoned. Human mind is a meaning making machine and a young boy is not best placed to understand the grand sweep of destiny.

His brother, acutely aware if his talents, relentlessly tried to persuade him to chase bigger dreams, that would do justice to his talents and capability. However young J continued to hang out with those friends and do odd jobs, mostly menial and much below his calibre. And then things changed.

One night he received a warm and emotional letter from his mom, who incidentally had been united with him when he turned 20, a full fourteen years after he had stepped onto that boat. In that letter an emotional mom shared with him that there was not enough money for more than one person to be on that boat on that day and the family, too much in love with J, had chosen him. I am sure that there was much more in that letter, but J only shared that it tripped something in his mind, heart and soul. so after two years in fixing frames he applied to the number one university of canada to study advanced maths. Now a decade and half later - I am guessing he would not be less than 40, though he looked not a shade more than 30, J is a practicing actuary and a deputy CEO in a life insurance company.

coming back to where I began, human beings most certainly are work in progress. If you don't like the shape it is taking, go on and make the change you want. You just never know which boat will take to you to the shore of happiness.

God bless J


Guru