This first group of responses, submitted by a variety of individuals I personally know and respect, focus on thoughts and experiences in their life that have led them to think a certain way. These experiences have led to the growth and molding of perspectives about the environment around them, the individuals surrounding them, and their own selves. I hope you’ll enjoy reading these as much as I did. Maybe it will give you perspective in your own lives in some way…

Note: If you have not yet read the Introduction to this Perspectives Series, feel free to do so prior to continuing on.

Remembering “the Beautiful Game”

Sometimes when something is so much a part of your life, it becomes routine and you tend to take it for granted. well, i WAS once a soccer player and soccer WAS my LIFE, for real. ok, yes i do still play (and coach), but I am speaking of being a competitive player and playing on a team that feels the same way about the game as I once did – playing with passion and heart, playing with a greater purpose.

Let me just cut to the chase – I played soccer in college for arguably the greatest soccer program in the country, Messiah College. No, we did not win a national championship (in my four year tenure) and yes we lost on occasion, but there was just a special feeling that came over me when i wore MESSIAH across my chest. It was not that we, as players, were the greatest of players; but two things that stand out in my mind (although I could go on and on) that allowed us to rise to our highest potential: 1) our individual mental toughness, commitment, and confidence was unmovable and 2) our team chemistry and personal encouragement was unique. I will give you this one example: 20 x 200′s. Running at pace is never fun – now, 20 200′s? that seems impossible. Mental toughness – absolutely. Ironically enough, that is what we lived for. Let me tell you though, what a GREAT feeling it was to run them with 15 other girls who were encouraging you every step of the way, pushing each other beyond what you personally thought you could accomplish. Unbelievable in my mind.

OK, so maybe the inspiration for writing was just the fact that I miss playing soccer at Messiah, I miss the grueling training and the repetitive drills, I miss lacing up my boots and walking under the covered bridge, I miss the inspirational pre-game speeches, I miss it all. You know what makes my day though, is when I have the opportunity to get together with old teammates and talk about those great times, those “remember when…” times. Yeah, I know, my life is pretty lam-o. But what can I say, such an instance just recently made my day. I wish there were more of those.

Let me just close with this great illustration that we all loved. Eric Liddell, a track Olympian, quoted in the movie “Chariots of Fire,” I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” So the same was with playing for such a great team. There is no doubt about it, I felt His pleasure when i laced up my boots for Messiah. Those were great days and it was a great feeling to wake up knowing that it was just a great day to play. Did I take that opportunity for granted? Of course I did. Only now have I come to realize what a privilege it truly was to play the game I love, with girls I love, and for a God I love.

Leading the Blue

Whenever I think about them, I remember these hardships like it was just yesterday. My teenage years, I was brought up wrapped up in a culture where the harder you were, the cooler you were. Like everyone else around me, I wanted to be the coolest. It was not that I wanted to be the baddest or the most cold hearted, but it was that I wanted to be on the top of that food chain of a culture that completely swallowed me up. To be the biggest fish in the sea, you got to be capable of doing what all the other fish in the sea are not willing to do or don’t have it in them to do.

I have done some things on the street that were not good things, but because I wanted to be a good person at heart, I never did anything personally myself out of order to people that did not have it coming to them. I led a [street organization] that was meant to protect the community though I have to admit that at times those that were in it did terrorize some in the community. I kept certain drugs from coming into the community even if it meant going to war with other [street organization], but at the same time I over flooded it with another drug just because it was considered safer. At the end of it all, I was forced to live in solitude, away from my family and all those I considered my family.

At the end of that time of solitude, I realized that the things I did were wrong even though at the time I thought I was doing everyone a favor. I realized forming a [street organization] with one purpose centering on causing violence against “bad” [street organizations] was wrong because I knew that over time, some will do harm to society overall rather than helping it. I knew I went overboard in some of the things that I did, although I did them to prove a point.  Then I realized I was a victim of the way our society’s culture has formed that we all live through and are engulfed in as part of system. I was a engulfed in this thinking that the things I did in the past were right because a culture said it was right, but really these things were bad.

My name is [name withheld], and I started and led a [street organization] with others who I considered “family” that once controlled parts of different vast areas. We started this enterprise with right intentions, but these intentions stemmed from a desire to be at the top of a specific culture that taught us certain things. The more badass you are, the more respected you are. I wanted to be the most respected, and in the end this resulted in bad things coming out of the [street organization].

I hope and pray that others will use their minds to combat being engulfed by the things that certain cultures put into their minds, the way it did to me.

We all go through life struggles in one form or another; some are worse than others. Sometimes we deserve what we go through no matter how bad it was. At other times we did nothing to deserve it. In some special cases, we might have brought troubles upon ourselves but it was not all done on our own, but we were just victims of an ongoing crisis of a culture gone spoiled.

All Bases Covered

Death, Love, Life?  I’ll try to answer all three, intentionally in this order.

I know little about death, in fact I think I behave irrationally in response to the notion that someday my body will cease to function. The success rate of death has so far stood at 100%, yet I still spend my time right next to the shore building a sand castle that will disappear.  I buttress my resume with what I think are supposed to be impressive accomplishments, I yearn to own possessions that will eventually wither away and I hope to develop relationships that will eventually end. Perhaps my human response is one where I know if in the grand scheme of things, my life is meaningless at least I can find meaning by comparing myself to others within the finite sliver of time that I live in. For moments, I can find comfort in doing certain things well, but I know my life is stained with imperfection, ultimately that of death.

But, I don’t think that is the full story. Love finds me a solution to what would otherwise be a miserable existence. Love unwinds our own patterns and behavior that tell us because we die soon, we need to worry about ourselves. When somebody gives up something freely of their own for my sake I realize in fact this love is also life-giving.

My faith seems to confuse some people and even offend others. But I think I like it because it shows reality for what it is, a harsh world where brokenness is evident and ultimately death reigns. I think also though this boils down to love, about man laying down his life for another to build the life of another person. Faith tells me not to just do this because this is a stringent rule or regulation, but because God Himself became the example for us. I wish I could say I was incredibly loving, that my life was an example for others to follow and I certainly try to strive to be more loving.  I know through small acts of love, I can change things little by little. Alas, I realize there is only so much to do. But in the same way I see lives changed by small acts of love, I hope in the greatest act of love by a God that tells me death really is not the final end.

Divided in Baltimore: A Lesson on Culture and Privilege

“You live where?” A fellow student asked me incredulously, eyes wide open and mouth ajar.   Such reactions were common among my peers at the private Quaker school I attended on scholarship.  To my wealthy classmates, the African-American working-class neighborhood of Pen Lucy in Baltimore City was a place where their maids lived, where we did community service at a local soup kitchen, or where scenes of Homicide: Life on the Street were filmed.  Every day on my way to school I crossed two worlds: from my black, blue-collar neighborhood of Pen Lucy plagued by drugs and gangs, to the white upper-crust enclave of Guilford and Friends School. As a white minority in my neighborhood and a socio-economic anomaly at school, I was accustomed to inhabiting the middle spaces. Belonging fully to neither the culture of my neighborhood nor my school has made me sensitive towards issues of race and identity; particularly the fluidity of race in a multi-cultural context.

I am the daughter of a pastor of a multi-ethnic urban church whose congregation encompasses people of diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Our church is deeply committed to the promotion of racial reconciliation and social justice in the city, a mission which in some ways harkens back to the radical liberation theology of Latin America in the sixties. Beyond the doors of our culturally mixed church services in Pen Lucy lies the segregated city of Baltimore where the working-class and wealthy, blacks and whites may be neighbors but their neighborhoods are separated by one-way streets, blue police lights, and private security patrols. Straddling two disparate worlds I became well-versed in the delicate bartering of my own social identity.

Though I now recognize the privilege of being the child of two highly-educated, loving parents as a child it seemed to me I was forbidden all sorts of delicious things. I was fed whole-grain bread and green vegetables while my neighborhood friends got to eat Wonderbread and chicken boxes; I stayed at home to be taught by my mom while others got to go to public school; my friends sported brand-new $100 Jordans and I got teased for my thrift-store kicks.

Little by little more differences surfaced between my family and the community. Our family got to go to the beach on vacation; the neighborhood kids often lived with their grandparents were relegated to using the local pool whose bottom was littered with shards of glass; we lived in a large single-family home and had a piano; the neighborhood kids lived in row-houses and often knocked on our door asking to play the piano; my hard-working dad, despite a busy church schedule always supported his children by attending school and sports functions; my neighborhood peers often didn’t even know their fathers.

I am now a twenty-five year old entering a PhD in History, a young woman whose life path  is testimony to the privilege of  a healthy home environment which fostered a  love of learning. I don’t think I am deserving of these things—to get paid to study for five years— but rather was born into them and now feel indebted to give back. I feel a visceral responsibility to be a productive, contributing member of society in some way or another and hope to do that through higher education. I want to be able to address these issues of cultural and racial identity that have been thrown at me throughout my life. Through historical investigation I hope to humbly explore the legacy of race, slavery, and cultural conquest. For me, this is not as much about an exploration of the past as it is an understanding of the future and my own place in the messiness of history.

Kitchen (Un)Confidential

My Korean parents immigrated to America 2 years before I was born so I could have a non-zero percent chance of becoming the future President. But more than that, they were chasing your typical American dream. Just to provide context about my upbringing, my father is a Christian minister and my mom is a registered nurse in oncology. They came to America with $500, 4 suitcases, my 2 older siblings and no English.

My parents approach to child rearing was perfect grades to get into the perfect college, both which I readily accomplished not only because I was capable, but because I did not know any better at the time. I grew up in an extremely Christian-focused, strict environment, even relative to other Asian kids. When pretty girls would call my house to talk about the great time she had last night for help on their chemistry lab reports, my dad would tell them I wasn’t home and to never call again.

Life is so interesting in that it is stupidly easy to “live” life when everything is laid out in front of you: when you do the things you are expected to do. When I got to college, I discovered that I had no clue what to do. The pressure of choosing a future combined with my general immaturity and personal freedom led me to make several regretful decisions over the next 5 years. I can’t explain a lot of the pain I caused myself and others. If I recounted all the things I did during that time of my life, most people would just call me an idiot. I think one major problem we all encounter is that we try to have an explanation for everything – that there is some important lesson or concept we need uphold. I’ve learned it is important to let things be and understand the situation. I could cry about my past, but the reality was I was just unhappy. When people aren’t happy, they do stupid shit. It is human nature.

At one point, I had already been kicked out of college twice, and was well on to my third strike. I did not want to disappoint my family and friends so I worked hard and managed to stay afloat. I was still miserable though, and the pressure of final exams pushed me over the edge. I dropped out of college. I didn’t send an official letter or anything. I just didn’t show up for any of my final exams. I thought my stellar zero point GPA would be enough to let my college know I wasn’t coming back The funny thing is, I didn’t quit because I couldn’t handle the pressure. I quit because I discovered what I was really meant to do. Cook.

Instead of studying, I slacked off and discovered Chef Thomas Keller. I read about his life, and I was captivated. Instead of going to my first final exam, I went to a local Barnes & Noble to buy his cookbook. I read it cover to cover in one day, and one particular quote changed my life. “If you’re a really great cook, you can travel back in time.” I always wanted to be a time traveler,  but more importantly, I believed I could do it.

Some would say that it was opportune timing, but more importantly, nothing ever felt so right. I felt like I was alive for the first time in my life. I just want to say how important it is not to only have an open mind, but an open heart. Dream big. Pursue the things that make you happy. Anything you pursue with your whole heart is important. Don’t let anyone make you think otherwise.

It isn’t easy. In fact, it’s extremely dangerous to give up “security” to pursue what may seem like an unachievable dream. One extremely frustrating aspect of my life change is that people ask me questions like “When are you going to be on the Food Network?” or “When can I eat at your restaurant?” Seemingly innocuous inquiries, but it is frustrating because that is not my motivation. I don’t cook so I can have my own TV show or restaurant. I cook because I LOVE TO DO IT. Discover your goals, dreams, and motivation. Forget everything and everyone else. When you let your life become molded by the expectations of others, it no longer belongs to you.

Next Post: Perspectives: A Series (Vol. 2- Death)