Limited Perspectives

I am pretty good at hindsight analysis.

Even months or years later, when I look back at why things happened the way they happened, or what people meant when they said what they said, or why people did or didn't do certain things, I can still piece things together and with enough thought, I can figure it out. Of course, how cool would it be if I could piece things together in real time, but I'm not that smart and often times I need the hiddeninformation that I can only deduce from events or comments that happen later.

It's like putting together a puzzle. Someone says something a tiny bit curious, but not enough so that you wonder about it, and days or weeks later, I'll figure out the "grand" design behind the statement and see how it fits together with everything else. Corner or edge pieces are easy, but I don't often get people giving him those kinds of statements or doing something so obvious.

But, there is a huge caveat that goes with this: even with a large dose of empathetic transposition, I still only have a limited viewpoint on the world around me, and so whatever stories or puzzles I put together, it could be that I am completely wrong because I simply assumed incorrectly, or my biases brought forth an incorrect conclusion. More on this in a bit.

Anyway, here's my point.

I've often wondered at the stoicism and the lack of emotional support that many of the guys at my church exhibit. Recently, I've thought it through and I think that much of it has to do with the role models that second-generation Korean-American guys have - their dads.

Not to blame my dad, but he has been by far the biggest influence in my life, for good and for bad, and much of what makes me the person that I am, for good and for bad, has been the relationship that I've had with my father. And, for a myriad of reasons that I won't go into but most of which are fairly obvious (at least to other Korean-Americans), my father is incapable of offering emotional support on any level.

And I see that in most of the second-generation Korean-American guys that I've known. We are wary of showing weakness, of showing emotional weakness or vulnerability, and we lack the wherewithal and the knowledge of how to give emotional support.

So, I think to myself, hey, I figured it out. My dad is to blame for the way that I am, and all first generation dads are to blame for the way that second-generation Korean-American guys cannot bond together readily because they all lack the ability to emotional support another guy. We cannot do it.

And now here comes the caveat part again.

I have only a limited perspective. And I can only think upon things that I've seen. Maybe it isn't true that all Korean-American guys are unable to GIVE emotional support to another guy.

Maybe, it is just me. Maybe I am the one who is unable to RECEIVE emotional support from others, and since I don't interact people that much, I don't see the guys that I think are incapable, actually very capably giving one another sufficient and worthwhile emotional support. Maybe the reason I lack emotional support from anyone isn't because the guys aren't offering, it may be that I am not accepting it.

Maybe the moral of this story is that I shouldn't blame my dad for me, before I blame me for me.

-David