| | This is going to sound cheesy, and I'm pretty much going to ramble, but here is my attempt at self-therapy. Usually, you go to someone else for therapy, but I don't have that kind of money, so Xanga, you are my Sigmund Freud.
The other day, I watched a couple episodes of The Wonder Years (you know, the show about Kevin Arnold during his formative years living in American suburbia) on Justin.tv, my portal to Laker games. The obsessive self that I am, I immediately searched youtube for more episodes. Of course, this show brought back many memories of my childhood and teenagehood. See, I lived in the Valley (where the show was filmed). My childhood very much started like Kevin's. I was a middle-class American Joe...or so I thought at the time. I had friends from different cultural backgrounds in the neighborhood that I played with and didn't really have a care in the world aside from middle-class childhood angst.
This all changed, however, in February 18, 1989, when my parents moved our family to Calabasas, an upper-class city in the exurbs of LA. If you google Calabasas, you conjure up headlines of Jessica Simpson, Ricky Schroeder, and the Menendez brothers. I was suddenly the only brown face in a sea of white. Kids asked me why I had such a flat face and many didn't even know what a Filipino was. Needless to say, I discovered my own otherness there. The friends I did make, ended up being in all the honor classes, so I basically had to fend for myself in the "regular" classes. I really wasn't bullied, but I definitely wasn't in the in-crowd. Perhaps more importantly, I realized I couldn't get everything I wanted. I discovered that my parents fell into the trap of an imperial game of consumerism and status-seeking that we had no means of playing. So, going to school with a bunch of spoiled rich kids who had the latest Air Jordans, while you wore $20 Converses, really humbles you.
So why bring this up? As I watched more episodes of The Wonder Years, I became increasingly depressed. See, I tend to become depressed or melancholy when I watch television. It becomes a self-deprecating thing for me. I usually feel inadequate afterwards...not thin enough, not young enough, not white enough. And I think this particular show made me yearn for my innocent youth...or rather an innocent youth I really never had. I could have never moved to Calabasas and lived a full life of middle-class anonymity. However, I wouldn't have learned of actual inequities that sustain this middle-clas life. I wouldn't have discovered my imagined "Filipino" identity. Most of all, I wouldn't have discovered my passion for justice and education.
But I can't lie. There are many times, such as these, where I find myself yearning for a more simpler life. And during these times, I wish I could just take the "blue pill" and live a life of ignorant bliss. In the past, I simply shut off anything that conjures up nostalgia. But for my own sanity, I need to face this problem head on. It's just that I don't know how.
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| | Posted 3/3/2009 1:01 PM - 15 Views - 4 eProps - 2 comments
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