The below was first posted on my personal FB page on January 2, 2022.
Happy New Year, ya’ll!
I thought I’d ring in the New Year on a positive note (pun not intended). I’ve become a gym rat in the past few months, and this was taken on an evening when I and an unknown gym member had what I call “a musical conversation.”
At the gym, you can use your phone to request songs. The music on this particular night was atrocious, so I requested my usual limit of three songs without much expectation. But then, to my surprise, good songs - songs that I would have requested - were played after my requests. And because I’ve done the music requesting thing so often, I knew that there was no way the algorithm would have picked such good songs, even if I had requested something similar.
It didn’t take long to realize that someone else in the gym was requesting songs based off of my choices. And, well, I got super excited. It was like discovering that the kid I had to sit next to for the rest of the semester in high school was actually a fellow otaku. So I started requesting songs based on the stranger’s songs. Then they requested more songs based on my songs. Then I requested more. Then they started pressing the like button on my songs (which shows up publicly on the screens). And then I freaked out because I didn’t know how to press the like button back. But eventually, the night ran out, we both finished our workouts (the songs got crappy again), and I went home. But it’s moments like these - sweet moments of strong connection with utter strangers - that spark a bit of joy in my life, and such sparks have, at times, been one of only a few things that have kept me going during dark, dark times.
I remember when I was living in a rat and mold infested studio in Emeryville and working in an office where professional bullying was making my life miserable. One night, my crappy, salvage title Civic broke down at work, and it took several hours for the tow truck to come. When it did, the tow truck driver turned out to be a young black man around my age. He started the engine of my car to tow it and was blasted with Tupac’s “Hit Em Up” (which he probably didn’t expect from a young Asian girl driving a white Civic and who was wearing pink, business casual clothes). When I asked if I had to sit in my car or with him in the tow truck, he kindly told me that it was my choice and I could do whatever made me comfortable. So I sat with him. And as he drove me home, he side-eyed me then offered to play music, “but … uh … you know, I don’t have any Tupac!” And we both burst out laughing and talked about rap music and east coast vs west coast. And we talked about how hard life was. And how he had graduated from San Jose State but couldn’t find work and ended up towing. And when we got to my home, I asked him how long he had to work for that night, and he said midnight. I cheered him on, and the last thing he did was to turn to me while walking back to his tow truck, raise a fist, and say, “Thank you! I appreciate you!” And then I never saw him again.
Another time, I was walking down the street in Berkeley. I was so depressed and tired and I was at my wit’s end with life. It happened to be garbage day and there was a garbage man who had just jumped out of the truck to take the bins (an elderly, bald black man this time). We made eye contact and I glared at him because I knew he would judge me like all the others before him. He’d see me as rude, having RBF, and ask me why I didn’t smile more without asking why it was so difficult for me to smile in the first place. Or he’d raise an eyebrow and think, “what a rude person.” Or he’d glare back. But then the man smiled and gave me a “good morning” instead. I was so taken aback because his smile and greeting were so genuine. He wasn’t trying to get a reaction out of me. He wasn’t passive aggressively trying to imply that I should smile and say “good morning” back. He was just being nice. I stuttered “good morning” to him too and walked on with a bit more strength than I'd had just a moment before.
There was an older white man, who looked like an executive, who rushed over to try and help me up when I tripped and fell on my own high heeled shoes while walking down the road, sleep-deprived. There was an Asian girl my age on the plane next to me when I was coming back from Korea. I was sobbing silently because I was leaving my then boyfriend, and I wouldn’t be able to see him again for at least another year. She dug out a pack of tissues from her bag and gave me one. Then two. Then the whole pack. There was a young white girl who flipped out when she saw one of my exes (different guy) manhandling me in public, and it’s partially because of her that I can say without a doubt that I was treated wrongly by that man and that I had done nothing to deserve that kind of treatment. When I was in elementary school, there was an old white grandma at the supermarket who took a great deal of time helping my mom pick out the perfect brussel sprouts for Thanksgiving because my mom had never bought brussel sprouts before. There was a Hispanic gardner who saw me struggling with a huge cardboard box and threw it into the dumpster for me. And the list goes on.
I will be the first to admit, much to my shame, that I suck at helping strangers. I’ve been hurt by as many strangers and by even more loved ones than I care to count. In some ways, I’ve become afraid of helping others. I’ve grown suspicious of the world around me because I come from a world where kindness is used against you, where naivety comes with life-and-death prices, where innocence started disintegrating long, long ago. Strangers frighten me. And so I raise my hackles and bare my fangs in warning. I will cut you if you cross me, and that’s not an empty threat. Because if it’s me or you, it has to be you. I have no net to catch me.
But after meeting Albert and transitioning into a life of peace and stability, I am starting to change. I think I can afford to be kind to strangers. At least sometimes. And what’s more, I’ve learned much from my past experiences. Age and suffering have given me things that are priceless: Wisdom. Discernment. A reasonably good sense of judgment. I can take chances and be kind to others because I’ve played the game enough to see which players are the ones I should avoid and which might need some help like I once did. And that is my wish for all of you this coming year. Do not forget to be kind. Strive to be kind if you suck at it like me. Small gestures matter. Decency and morals matter. You never know how you’ll help someone live one more day or lay one more domino for them to change for the better. That stranger just might need some of that kindness in that moment. That stranger might be grateful years later even if they couldn’t voice it at the time. I know I am.
