I come from a family of immigrants, and I am lucky to say I have been blessed in many ways, despite growing up in a family that struggled for money. To share a bit of my history and how it has molded me today: My nana lived on a rice farm and was a child to a huge family- born into poverty, she had to walk great lengths just to get an education, even trekking across a river to do so. At a young age she was forced into an arranged marriage and found herself pregnant. It was an insanely toxic arrangement. After she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, she soon entertained the necessity to flee to the freedom of the states to build a name and home for herself. She was able to live freely with the one she fell in love with here, and that person also happened to be another race. While here she found the opportunity to be alone and thrive that way, here she found the opportunity to work, here she found the opportunity to escape poverty and live in a large house of her own where she was able to take care of our family herself. Her nobility is admirable, and her perseverance is something to be proud of, although it is not uncommon in immigrants. It’s quite perplexing when you take into account the mass amount of white Americans complaining about being American. Of course capitalism is flawed, but as a child of an immigrant I know that for my family coming to America was a blessing.
Immigrants come to America to build a better life for themselves, where they are free to build their own wealth, to get a better education, to get their own jobs, and escape the cards they have been handed in their home countries. I find a great number of white Americans who have never travelled to third world countries particularly ignorant to the extent of their privilege. They fail to count their blessings. Their freedom to eat any meal they want, their freedom to marry and date who they please, the freedom to live in a nice home, accessibility to numerous innovative technologies such as VR and gaming systems. These privileges are not common in poor third world areas.
I communicate with a lot of my cousins in the Philippines, and they often tell me they want to come to America to build a new life for themselves. They love their home country, but the poverty they were born into and find hard to escape holds them back from achieving the dreams they may be able to achieve in the United States surrounded by successful family members that have immigrated themselves and can offer guidance.
I never use to think this way. I use to be rather bitter towards America, ignoring my own family history to find comfort in ignorance. I also use to be a rather ungrateful and negative person. That mindset got me nowhere and I found that was not working for me. Now I wake up everyday and count my blessings, and take every opportunity I can, directing my life the way I envision. That was something my nana had to learn how to navigate, when she had never been given those opportunities before.
The lesson I am trying to offer is to practice more gratitude. If you have not seen or lived a life in another country, you should consider all that you have been blessed with in America. There is a reason this is the capital of diversity. Because America welcomes that, and does not discriminate to the degree other countries do. Most places see other ethnicities as tourists and always will. America welcomes immigrants, despite the extent of racism that riddles the masses, which is inevitable anywhere in the world and is also a global issue.
Practicing gratitude can improve your quality of life. Instead of dwelling on the stagnancy of American life, consider that we are a rather progressive country. It is proven in things such as Pride, which would be absolutely unheard of in many parts of the world. America gives me the opportunity to build the life I wish to live, to choose my future and mold my own destiny. It gives you that opportunity too.
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