These days, I can't help but yawning. All the time.
I take a look at my cat, and ridicule her affectionately how lazy she is. Then my eyes start drooping down, I put the NEWSWEEK I am browsing to sleep across my chest, and reposition myself, a bit lower in touch with the couch, a little less effort in the neck and back bones to sustain. I let fall my eyelids just to rest the awhile.
This is how the wealthiest country in the world gets fat, I can feel it (though I am skinny as bones)--a bit of a sidenote, but a relatively relevant one-sentence tirade.
You see, my parents went through glorious and heroic struggles--let's not even start on my Gramps, to say the least--and sacrificed so much comfort, youth, career exploration, the surroundings of their own country & roots, etc., so that I could face as little and few "excess" challenges in my quest and fortunate (no tinge of sarcasm here, really, though it may seem so) position to face the solitary challenge of education, and career choice, with nearly all else taken care for me: They made my working-space perfect.
I have full intention to fulfill my end of their sacrifices, and more often than not, have the confident determination to do so. But when it comes down to it, sitting in comfort--the air conditioning, the prepared meals, the conveniences at the fingertips or a car drive away, the upper-middle class suburban ability to smile to the front yard and fall asleep smiling--my biological body is programmed to indulge in the advantage, and to stay in the comfort as long as I can--best instinctual strategy to that: to fall asleep in it. If it weren't for my human brain, though, I
would actually take up that offer perpetually and leave this world an amicable Java the Hut. But my brain tells me not to emulate the ways of my domesticated cat.
If there was one trait that was passed down through my lineage of family--who has had to suffer, to walk, literally, thousands of miles for livelihood, to share, to support unconditionally--it is the keenness for compassion. And after four more influencial years of liberal education and university idealism (of the intense Brown kind, even more), this rocket and fuse of familyNature-Nuture has produced in me the career choice of: To Save the World. In less grand and at least one step more practical of a term: To Help People.
To do that, my gut tells me I can through writing. Somehow through writing, and somewhere beneath my left chest some deep place behind the sternum (I hope it's not actually a congested vein), a strain pushes me to go beyond & beyond the limits and frameworks of what is set out for me and what is expected of me. I will somehow do it. I look at Faulkner & Dreiser & Crane & Ellison & Rand, and I discover those even more immediately like me in a different way, D.H. Hwang & F. Chin & Eric Liu. And here I am writing about SUBJECT: How lazy I become and comfortable I get in this well-kempt home. I will change the world.
