July 1st, 2020: Canada Day
This was written on July 1st, Canada Day.
Today
is Canada Day. The entire city is quiet due to Covid-19. There is no
public celebration, no parade, and no firework. It is rather depressing.
The more I think about it, the more I see that we as a country are not
in the celebrating mood because there is a strong push against
cherishing what is our history as a nation. There is a movement that has
been advocating deleting history and cancelling culture altogether.
Those of us who have a different understanding, now feel threatened to
be accused of crimes that we do not commit. Once again, celebrating our
national history by no means implying that we support what happened at
this present time. It is about how a nation can move forward truthfully
despite all of its mistakes.
Let us pretend
that we can go back to where we were born then discover that all of the
landmarks and all of the physical memories have been destroyed and
erased. We know that not everything about home is perfect, but these
landmarks are helpful to remind us of who we were, who we are, and who
we are becoming. If we can do that properly, there are many great
reasons to celebrate.
I have met many
Westerners who are so impressed by how Asian folks are keeping track of
their family history. We don't destroy. We just read them, talk about
them, and learn from them so that we might have a better understanding
of our ancestors, why they did things and what they did with the hope
that we will be better. That is why it is critical to embrace the nature
of contradiction so that we can pursue deeper learning of our human
nature and all the conditions attached to it. These Western friends of
mine would say something like this: "We cannot go back more than three
generations when it comes to our family trees."
Maybe
we have failed in our school system when it comes to teaching history.
We fail in teaching critical thinking and reasoning. I am baffled by
the fact that while the business community continues to stress the
importance of "Emotional Intelligence" (EI), we don't see much it in
recent years in our public display of disagreement. One of the keys to
EI is to develop our empathy after taking time to explore our
self-awareness. It is our willingness to put ourselves in others'
positions and learn to understand their views, emotion, and experience.
The polarization that has been encouraged is very unhealthy. We are now
living at a time when we don't know how to engage in a meaningful
conversation. There is almost no empathy when we happen to disagree with
one another. We need to understand that taking a moral stand on a
specific issue, for example, can be offensive. It is offensive because
that is the nature of the conviction.
How
should we celebrate the birth of our nation? How are we going to walk a
balance between making mistakes and progress? That demands that we have
a fair assessment of where we came from and where we are. So we won't
end up with name-calling, which is the lowest form of human
communication. Name-calling exists everywhere, in politics, in academia,
in business, in faith practices, and usual daily relationships.
Canada
is a very young nation with a lot of potentials. I pray and hope that
it will be a nation of beauty, compassion, and truth in God.
Philippians 3:12-14
"Not
that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I
press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold
of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold
of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching
forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of
the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
