Courage and curiosity
And tangents on immigrant life, northern lights, and a podcast I'm quietly working on
For the last few months, I’ve been having conversations with people who knew my late mom at different phases of her life — family, friends, and community. With some of the recorded conversations, I’m planning to create a podcast at the end of the year.
My goal is fuzzy, and my timeline is loose. It’s still very early, but so far it’s been inspiring, heartwarming, and meaningful. I’m not only getting to know my conversation guests, but through conversations, I’m getting to meet versions of my mom whom I thought I’d never have the privilege of meeting.
This has been so meaningful to me, that I find myself wanting to talk about it with others. I almost cannot help it. It makes my heart full. I am so grateful to have people in my life who give me the gift of presence, listening to me ramble about something meaningful to me. 🥰
“Your mom was quiet and thoughtful,” my last conversation guest said to me, “but then she’d surprise you and say, we’re gonna go to Northern Canada and see the northern lights. Both your mom and dad were very curious people. They wanted to see the northern lights, and they were willing to make it happen. I wouldn’t have done it.” (Paraphrased)
I remember that trip well. It was December 2016. I think we spent Christmas and New Year in Yellowknife, chasing northern lights every night for the week we were there.
We saw northern lights for every, single, night we were there.
It was a magical trip, and I’m grateful for my parents’ curiosity as well as the actions they took in response to their curiosity.
I think most of us immigrant families had to have enough courage and curiosity to leave the familiar and start anew. Especially those of us who were neither wealthy enough to comfortably uproot, nor in a crisis severe enough to flee our roots.
In China, we were a lower-middle-class family supported by two teachers’ salaries. We were frugal, but so were most families around us. My parents had begun feeling discontent about the culture in which they worked. But the discontentment was not a raging fire; it was a slow simmering, bubbling just beneath the surface.
When you’re in a place of comfortable discontentment, you gotta be both curious enough about “what could be”, and courageous enough to convert a dream into a reality.
My parents had some reasons to leave (emigrate from) China, but more reasons to come (immigrate) to Canada. They had to be both curious and courageous to leave their home country.
My family had a tough many years after we first came to Canada. Teaching in China wasn’t comfortable, but when my parents arrived in Canada, instead of standing in classrooms and sitting in offices, they had to pick up physical labour (think janitor) and menial jobs (think hotline operator) to keep the family afloat.
Despite that, they never lost their sense of curiosity and wonder. They wanted to try everything at least once if they could afford it — food they hadn’t had, activities they’d never tried, places they’d wanted to check out. Looking back, I admire that tremendously. I’m also grateful to have had that influence on me, despite the lack of means to fulfill our endless curiosities.
For the last few years, though, I have not been very curious. I don’t dare diving into an obsession too deeply, getting too close to others, planning places to go to and goals to hit. Perhaps because life in the last few years had beaten me down a bit. I’m afraid that by prioritizing my curiosity, I’m being selfish. I’m afraid of wasting time and starting failures. So I’ve taken safe decisions, turn after turn.
Perhaps curiosity and courage are interconnected.
Courage to be curious.
Courage to dig deeper, especially where others turn away or throw their hands up.
And I suppose that’s what I want to do with my podcast about my mom. To challenge myself to be both curious and courageous, about who my mom was, what she stood for, what she meant to the world that remains, and how we’re (imperfectly) grieving and honouring her.
Happy heavenly birthday, mom 🤍 1963.06.14