Somehow I tuned into the 2005 speech "This is water" by
David F. Wallace this morning. It might have to do with the
episode at a beach in Crissy Field park yesterday where Tim
and I had an unpleasant experience.
We arrived at SF around 2:30pm and spent one hour parading
up and down Market street (Tim loved the city.) before
driving up north to the park. The breeze was strong and we
decided the beach was only lightly populated and tried to
fly our dual-line sport kite.
The two lines were entangled and we had a hard time getting
it to the sky. In the process, the kite hit the ground
several times. We had flew it mostly in areas with few
people around and got used to trying with lines slightly
twisted without separating them first. It worked after a few
tries most of the time.
As the kite thudded landing in the sand, the noise alarmed
people. We first moved west to avoid a couple relaxing on a
towel. It eventually went up in the air, the initial
uneasiness went away, and we enjoyed a few moments
before our kite landed again on the beach.
The subsequent effort to re-float the thing was unsuccessful
and meanwhile it hit the ground a few more times before we
were confronted with an angry woman walking across the
beach. I tried to be proactive and apologized. "Do you have
any idea how much damage it can do?" She demanded. "No. Not
really." I replied somewhat guiltily. "Then you shouldn't
fly it. You could have killed a kid with that!" she snapped
back. "I don't think I could do that. It's not that bad. As
I said, I am sorry." "Sorry is not enough!" was her sharp
retort. I felt the meaness and became defensive: "We are
leaving. What do you want?" She went on toward the parking
lot without saying more while I was winding up the lines. It
was not a good idea to fly the kite here, after all.
I felt somewhat enraged and attributed the incident to
racism immediately. (It was so easy and natural to feel a
victim of discrimination.) I told Tim that I was lucky not
being told to go back to China. We contemplated how to
improve the image of Chinese Americans. I fumed in the car
driving back.
This morning, however, I started to look at the incident
from another light. The woman didn't utter any abusive or
racially-charged word and I had to adimit that one never
experienced a sport kite the way we did might indeed be
startled by the sound. She might have reacted the same way
toward a white dad and son. I probably would have similarly
felt provoked by the inconsideration and my reaction might
have been less straight and to the point.
I reached the conclusion that I handled the case better than
I thought. I didn't show my Chinese cowardice in this
particular case but simply judged the situation and did the
right thing. I could have added a little humor to down-play
her exaggeration but at the moment the stituation was too
much for me.
And here is part of what Wallace said in that speech:
“Learning how to think” really means learning how to
exercise some control over how and what you think. It
means being conscious and aware enough to choose what
you pay attention to and to choose how you construct
meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise
this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
OK. Thanks for Wallace.
