My lady works hard. Really hard. 11 hours a day, and up to six-and-a-half days a week. Like the typical Chinese of ancient times, and even of modern times, she knows no Sabbath, except on those lucky days when she can get a weekend replacement.
I have often (and unfairly so, since I have always belonged to the cushy class of five-day-workweek wage-earners) chastised her about the way she works, and how I find it unacceptable for a balanced life. Today's conversation was no exception. Except that I pointed out that in the West, such an unbalanced working life is generally considered unacceptable. Her terse response: "We are not in the West."
As much as I treasure and jealously safeguard my Asian heritage, this one statement brought home something that I have always disliked about the Oriental mind (and no malice intended to my lady, whom I love dearly): Pessimism and fatalism. Where tag lines like "that's the way things are", "it's already done, we cannot change it", "there's nothing we can do about it" paralyse and cow the psyche into accepting the unacceptable, into believing that such is the dismal and natural order of things, that there is not a sparkle of hope beyond what is set before us in the path of Life.
That is why I like the Western mind. Why? The Westerners know the value of dreaming and hoping. Of holding on to that vision of better things to come. Asians think that dreaming is a waste of time. Westerners believe that a dream can be a start of something wonderful. My answer? Let all those wonderful modern creations from the West - borne out of nothing more than a dream - speak for themselves.
I am not suggesting that we pull the wool over our eyes and live in denial of certain stark realities in life. But making fatalism an emphasis in our mindset cripples our faculties, makes us jaded, and takes away the hope of a better tomorrow.
As an Asian myself, I humbly submit that this is one of the failings of the Asian mind. It makes for a mournful and miserable existence.
