I grew up in a house full of independent women who escaped North Korea. My grandmother was the first to get out, along with her baby daughter. My grandmother’s sisters and her mother eventually joined her. Because of wars, deaths, and rotten marriages, men simply didn’t have a significant presence in my family.
From these women’s struggles, I learned about courage and compassion from the three generations before me. I learned what it meant to have hope in the face of despair. I learned that you can still laugh and love despite bad luck, hate, and trauma.
They were wonderful influences on my life in some ways, but, they were also religious fanatics with PTSD.
I couldn't listen to music or watch TV. I didn't have friends outside of the church.
As I got older, I started noticing that what I was taught at home just didn't line up with reality. Instead of letting me engage with the real world, my family only showed me the narrow worldview that they thought was good for me.
In hindsight, I can understand that a lifetime of traumatic events might lend itself to trying to shield the next generation from similar experiences. But no matter how much I relate to the motive, the worldview they presented me with was simply incorrect.
After years of being confused about how the world works, I began to see my preconstructed world as twisted and absurd. I desperately needed to exist in a reality where things made sense and I experienced honest feedback.
So in high school, I demanded that I be sent to public school instead of a church school. I lived half a block away from one yet my parents still wanted to pay for me to go to a religious school 30 minutes away. I told them to put their money in back the bank and that I’d save them the drive and walk to school instead. Practically, it was the obvious choice.
That began my search for truth. I was curious, but also awkward, and didn’t have great social skills. I was a decent student but didn’t find much of the school material interesting. In school, I got by and had some friends but never felt comfortable. In many ways, I was conditioned to be resistant to learning.
Then, I found martial arts. I trained like a maniac and eventually, I got brave enough to want to test my character in the real world.
During my second year of college, I left California. For Singapore.
I met a guy there that trained in the same martial art as I did — and we got engaged. After studying for a semester abroad, I dropped out of the University of California to live in Australia with my fiancé. We lived in Perth, where my portion of rent was $233 a month. I re-enrolled in a tech school there and tried to find a part-time job.
My first fiancé’s father was the CEO of a large pan-Asian bank, although I had no idea until after we got engaged. It turned out his mom had descended from old opium money.
Basically, they were rich. And I was not.
For many, this sounds like a dream, but I couldn’t stand the upper-class way of life. I was on this journey to find something like the truth — but this obviously wasn’t it. It was fascinating to hear them speak a completely different life language, and I got a good taste of what it’s like to feel inferior because of conditions that have nothing to do with you as an individual.
We understood the same martial arts principles, but something about his existence was shallow and self-serving even though he was truly a nice person. I saw that our differences couldn’t be helped. I left Australia, completely broke, and dropped out of college again.
That's when I reconnected with someone I had met briefly in high school - a local pot dealer. He had just finished backpacking Europe, and we hit it off as wandering souls. I was naive enough to think that love would conquer all.
But anyone with half a brain could have predicted this would fail.
As hard as we tried to make things work, we didn't know how to address our pasts. For him, growing up with your parents’ violent divorce and then starting your drug-selling career in middle school isn't a great sign that you're going to end up okay.
And for me, I was perpetually running from my overbearing and religiously fanatic family instead of putting my foot down and setting some damn boundaries. So we literally collided with each other and fell in love. It was uncontrollable.
It wasn't until I was afraid of ending up in jail or ending my own life that I realized I had to DO something about the way I was living. Letting things "run their course" was proving to be a devastating plan.
Most of us live our lives without making a direct effort to take matters into our own hands. We see ourselves as products of our families, and then our education, and then we just do what we "have to" to get by at the office. We do not feel as though our lives are truly ours.
At some point, our lack of agency catches up to us.
Our decades of avoidance can lead us into places that we can no longer escape from, or it can cause us to physically collapse. And it's only when our back is against the wall that we actually turn and face life.
But I believe that we are presented with these moments more often than we think. We are just not noticing them. With every intuition that something is not okay, we are being asked to turn and face our very existence.
Too often, those subtle requests go ignored. So if you have a hunch that something in your life is terribly wrong, I simply urge you to have a look.
That simple look may inspire you to make surprising changes for yourself that can positively affect others.
Lastly, if you can't look inward for change, then you have no business demanding change from anyone else. You have no basis for understanding how change works.
So many insights can be found right where you are if you open yourself up to seeing them.
"...and I got a good taste of what it’s like to feel inferior because of conditions that have nothing to do with you as an individual."
fuck
Old history to new history: your life. Amazing, Leslie and thank you so much. So articulate and emotionally invoking. Great to be part of this subscription and looking forward to your future writings, ebook-but I’m an old school Fahrenheit 451 (paper book) reader 😆 Keep up the shares. Beautiful and truly inspiring. 🙇🏻♂️