Unedited
They say “curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” The worst part of adulthood is knowing how everything works. No longer do I wonder about the magic behind the trick because it was explained to me or I looked it up.
When I walk by restaurants that are soft launching, my mind surfaces low survival rates of restaurants within their first year and already-thin margins. I then think about the family that’s running it and what their life must be like. Was building this restaurant their big dream? Was it thrust upon them? Is this their only shot at happiness? Are they actually happy? Or this all a bigger burden than they expected? Will they survive? As a child, I’d think “wow, it’s so cool they get to cook food. They achieved their dream of being a chef.” Yeah, little Janvi, wait ‘til you learn about careers viable in this economy.
Questioning is a built into our minds. But I wonder if, when we’re playing Bananagrams and someone asks if “crocs” counts as a word, why don’t we take a group vote and leave the real answer behind? Let’s decide for ourselves and not ask our search engine friends. Answers to open-thought discussions can be found a few taps away, but where’s the fun in that?
On a trip to Vietnam in January, my friend and I booked a biking tour in Hanoi, a cute little city in the north known for its lanterns. Our tour guide introduced us to all the people in the community that contributed to the different businesses: a woman who woke up at 2am to make the noodles used by many restaurants, another couple who harvested the sprouts, another who made desserts. Manual labor tasks that resulted in a tangible good used by the people of the town that usually involving waking up in the wee hours of the morning and performing physical labor for many hours, day in and day out. We heard from one of the grandparents that their kids didn’t want to take on the family business; they wanted to travel and see the world because of what they saw on social media.
The idea of loss of family-passed traditions saddens me. I understand processes modernize and technology allows us to build with speed and consistency, but nothing beats knowing something was handmade (ideally with love <3) and seeing it in action with the story and context and all.
Are they happy? Do they care about traveling and seeing the world? Or are people who work with their hands and creating tangible goods happier than I am working in excel sheets, “creating value” that I can’t even see. I cry. Do they cry? We probably cry about different things. What they’ve experienced in Vietnam in their lifetime versus what I’ve experienced are different. Corny as it is, some things will be the same - the feeling of family, friends, love lost, love gained, tough times, happy days, hot and cold, laughter, sun and rain, riding on a bike, walking through grass, pride, joy.
Anyways, what this means is when I watch an old Chinese woman making 400 dumplings by hand for the day, it hurts my heart. Though - I shouldn’t be assuming the worst. What is the balance between optimism, pessimism, pragmatism, realism? Are pragmatism and realism the same? In the spirit of what I said earlier, I’m not going to Google it so we’ll pretend they’re the same for now (lol). I’ll believe everyone is just doing their best and hope they have a good day. I can hope they wish the same for me. That’s all.
Now I’m questioning why most of the knowledge I have negatively affects the situations i’m wondering about. Knowledge removes hope because it surfaces information that clarifies the situation. Why can’t it change to be more positive? Is it because we innately want to see the good in the world and in people, and then we’re armed and jaded with facts about wars, deaths, tough times? News networks are certainly sensationalized, but these are all real events happening around the world or in my own city so they cannot be ignored.
As a kid, you don’t know these things or you’re sheltered. You have yet to experience the full spectrum of human emotion, of all that could be. If I could not know the pain and suffering, would that be better? Ignorance is bliss, they say… but as Buddha realized, if you do not know the worst, how could you know the best? I took an Intro to Visual Arts class senior year of college, and a draft of my final project on dandelions was very gray because I was afraid of using black and white. My professor said: if I don’t use the values on the ends of the spectrum, how was I going to be able to achieve the full potential of what I wanted to portray? To show light, I must have dark. To highlight with white, I need to fill in with black for contrast. Yin and yang.
All this to say, I want to be mindful as I continue learning as an adult, to remain hopeful within reason. I don’t need to get depressed every time I walk by a restaurant with no one in it.