Guest Written by Scott van Tussenbröok

NEOM KSA

On January 7, 2017 - the day after that black day when America showed our darkest self to the world - my friend and colleague posted this piece; then posted it again, yesterday; as we enter what stands to be a massive metamorphosis in our relationship to our government, as well as in the US’s relationship to and with the rest of the world.

Admittedly, my Optimism is depleted; I believe that things may be dark, very dark and brutal, for a long time. I wish I could hope that I’m wrong…but I’m not there…

What we can do is each of us hold ourselves to, live by and exemplify a better standard…to each make it our personal mission to contribute positivity, acceptance and - dare I say it - Love to the world through which we pass.

So, to Scott’s post…

Just had lunch at a popular, crowded Vietnamese place -- no empty chairs allowed, so we were seated at a table with a lovely couple, a Filipina woman and her Mexican husband. They bragged about their two "Mexipino" kids (his word), we made no secret that the American and Guatemalan guys they were sharing their table with were "together" together -- and they cared not a bit. Next to us the red-bearded white American guy was with his Vietnamese wife, their two kids, and her parents. All around us, impossible to tell how many different languages being spoken.

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, of course, but I was struck by the difference between the world I inhabit here, in the big city, where everybody is just thrown together, and doing their best to get along, vs. other parts of the country where people are getting ready to build walls, shrieking at each other to "Lern English er get out!!," and fearing and hating on each other for believing in a different god. 

And not just getting along -- mixing it up, marrying into different cultures, meeting each others' families, learning each others' languages, eating each others' food, learning by everyone's very proximity that the "other" is not your enemy -- we are all the same. Shortly after the election I was depressed by the fact that my country, maybe not the whole world but this place where I live -- had shown itself to be a much darker, meaner, shittier place than I ever thought possible. Today's lunch has helped me pull up from that somewhat -- I've been letting the news of all the rising anger get to me -- today I saw the flipside -- people who want to see the best in the "American promise" -- immigrants who came here because we've been telling the whole world that this is just the bestest country EVAR, so they take our word for it, and come here. Just like my European immigrant ancestors did. Today I was surrounded by people who have moved themselves outside the familiar and the comfortable, marrying and mixing their families with families from the other side of the globe -- this is SO much more the world I want to live in, than the sad, frightened mind-prison of the "build the wall" people.

Learn a language that's not your own. Make some friends who speak only that language. Spend some time in a country where nobody looks like you or speaks your language either. Put yourself in situations where you're the minority and take note of what you feel. It is things like this that are going to save us. Not more walls, more prisons, more registries, more war.

Don't get me wrong -- the world is still hurtling downward in that handbasket and I have very little hope we're going to survive as a civilization much past the end of this century -- I would love to be proven wrong -- but if we are to be saved, it's going to be by people making a genuine effort to understand people who are different from them. Not by building walls and fomenting division.