- strengthening oneself in inevitable competition vs fighting for equity in a world without equality
I was walking my puppy like any other day today. At one point, my puppy dragged the leash - I stopped walking, turned back, and saw a small bird in my puppy's mouth. I gave the command "leave it" twice, she opened her mouth and let go of the bird. The bird stood on the ground as I examined it - the wings and legs are fine, no wounds were found. I carried on walking forward with my puppy. A moment later, two people came over and looked after the bird. That act suddenly made me feel I wronged. Or did I?
It made me realize, my instinct to that event was it is nature.
I was raised in China; spent the first 16 years of my life there. There, I sang the national anthem with everyone else - it goes "rise up, the people who don't want to be slaves!" Our minds are ingrained with the motto that if you're weak, strengthen yourself so you can see others and others can see you at eye level. With that mentality, I worked my 150% and pushed through, which got me exam-exempt with scholarship from elementary school to middle school, from the No. 1 middle school of my city to the No. 1 high school, then to winning a badge at a novice debate tournament against native English speakers only a few months after coming to the US for 10th grade, to being on the only high school team in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 National Finals, to get in UC Berkeley, to now working at Microsoft. I was raised and told to become strong, to gain strength so I can stand my ground.
The mentality of "you can achieve anything if you work hard" served me well, in a way, but also hurt me. It's only true when your effort yields a return. I didn't know there could be times when it doesn't. Initially, the lack of return drove me to work even harder, until it hurt my mental and physical health. It wasn't till then did I realize there is a bound in the diligence our physical body and mind can bear, and a bound in what we can achieve in a given time, platform, and resources. It didn't occur to me until then, that my working-150% was striving.
In the Western world and culture nowadays, there is the concept of equality versus equity. A viral diagram that illustrates the difference shows that equality is when people of different heights stand at the same level of ground, the tall person can reach the top whereas the short person can't; on the other hand, equity is when the tall person stands on the ground and the short person stands on a stool so that they can both reach the top. We see the polarity of feeding into the divisive social hierarchy and elitism in an ever-competitive culture versus fighting for empowerment of the unprivileged and making the privileged aware of their privilege. To be honest, it is rather confounding. I'm not sure which side is winning, or actually winning is not the point. Maybe we should be thankful, that there are at least voices and efforts to advocate for the unprivileged. We are proud that this is the defining piece that distinguishes us as humans from animals of survival of the fittest. However, sometimes this voice can get so loud that it overcasts the fact that the competition carries on in this capitalist world. Are we truly helping the unprivileged in the ways they need?
So should I punish my puppy for having a bird in her mouth and letting go when asked? Did my quick examination of the bird make right the "mistake" my dog and I made? Are the two people who checked on the bird the most "righteous" ones in this story? Different lenses would make this event look completely different. Is there a "right" lens? Is there only one "right" lens?
You may say yes, and a few seconds later, go, actually no. Perhaps recognizing these two rivers flowing side by side... is the beginning step.
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