Letters To A Friend #2
The following is a response to Sam's letter to me on her newsletter: Footnotes from the Void. Through this exercise in slow, methodical correspondence, we hope to make new discoveries of each other and of the friendship. Click here to read Sam's previous letter, then subscribe to receive future updates.
Dear Sam,
It has been such a treat "bumping" into you these days at my workplace. Just last month, I wrote to you about feeling starved of social interaction, and then suddenly I saw you twice last week, albeit for a brief time. These little organic encounters have made me reminisce walking around college campus, chance meetings with people I knew and then excitedly huddling into a corner to catch up on each other's lives.
I suppose this takes on new meaning during a time when people are mainly confined to their own homes, coupled with the fact that most of our adult lives are spent at work or closed off in high-rise apartments. In any case, our face time and coffee date is long overdue.
I have to admit, upon the arrival of your letter, I was defeated by your question of what I was grateful for. The truth is, like you, I have exhausted myself from the onslaught of troubles rattling at our gates, demanding to be attended to, and I've been feeling incredibly hopeless at my own abilities to affect change.
It was only a couple of days after your letter that 1,086 Myanmar nationals were deported from our shores. It breaks my heart and spirit to witness such cruelty occurring over and over again ad nauseam. How many more embraces do we have to rip apart before we see the error in our ways? I am weary of waxing poetic about a situation as heinous as this - trying to convince people that human lives are sacred, regardless of their creed or economic value - and frankly I shouldn't have to.
The fact that we have to point out a truth so obvious as #MigranJugaManusia - 'migrants are human beings too' - is a reflection of how seriously misguided we are as a society. To have the audacity to think, to believe that some people aren't people - that it is possible to strip them of any honour and dignity - is itself one of the most profoundly violent aspects of the human economy. Where we fail to consider the implications of exclusionary policies against refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers, we are effectively lending a hand to impede global progress on ending poverty, hunger, gender inequality and the general betterment of humanity. It is utterly disgraceful how we cling to our religious texts, spouting love for god with our lips while condemning people to overcrowded cells, separating children from parents, and pushing boats into treacherous waters.
How did we get here?
Since time immemorial, the human story is one of migration and movement. Our cultural achievements can be traced back to various influences from outside traditions, language, knowledge and beliefs. Homogeneity will only be a death sentence to the multicultural fabric of our society.
I took a walk in a PJ neighbourhood with some of our friends one morning recently and was struck by the affability of the people who lived there. Every so often, someone would wish us good morning, wave hello or let us play with their cats and dogs outside their gates.
There is a jarring degree of dissonance from what I know to be happening in our greater national sphere and the welcoming communities that I see and experience on the ground. I, myself, have lived in places where people are deeply suspicious of one another.
Once, a couple from my building openly discussed me in Cantonese while we took an elevator up to our units together. They assumed that I couldn't understand what they were saying so they didn't bother lowering their voices. It was a hostile situation even if all they were mocking me for were my tattoos. There was no reason to be this unkind just because I presented differently. Over the course of my life, I've been mocked many times more for reasons related to how I looked, how I dressed, the colour of my skin and my inability to speak Mandarin because god forbid I carry a Chinese surname.
It is an unpleasant occurrence and I do not wish it upon my worst enemies. To feel like and to be treated like an outsider in the communities we are supposed to feel safe in is perhaps one of the most isolating experiences a person could ever have to endure. What would it take for us to gaze upon another individual and consider that they are a world as complex as ours with the same longing, ambition, and need for human connection?
Alas, not all hope is lost. If I am grateful for one thing this month, it would be for the pockets of kindness so fervently displayed for marginalised communities within our spaces. The outpouring of support and solidarity has been nothing short of amazing. I am humbled to witness the generosity and eagerness to get involved, with rolled-up sleeves, coming together to organise fundraisers, to deliver food and medical supplies for families to get through another day, another year.
There were times when I, too, was doubtful if there would be enough benevolence from the well of humanity to go around, but the water miraculously keeps filling and refilling - I've never been so happy to be proven wrong.
Eula Biss is right when she says "we are each other's environments". I might add that we are a web of people keeping one another afloat. Our human interactions might not look like much from the outside but for the people caught inside that web, it is everything, the very tethers that keep one bound to this planet. To borrow the words of Lulu Miller, "we might be a speck on a speck on a speck, soon gone, but that is just one perspective." And while we are still here, we ought to recognise the many tangible ways in which people might be enriching the society around them - reflecting light back into it, strengthening it.
Tell me Sam, whose light has shone the brightest in your life?
With love and all the luminance it offers,
Al