the reaching (2020)
who && what are you reaching for?
notes from 2020 aug 08
i met someone today, two people actually, who look like me for real / have the same racial mixture as me and are at least one generation older than me. ever. first time ever in 29 years. i’ve never met people with mixed japanese and white european ancestry who are more than 10 years older than me.
i never really thought about what i didn’t have, in terms of intergenerational visibility and representation. i just considered myself lucky for having mixed peers in my life, growing up. but to see folx with the same or similar mixture as me, in different stages of life, really shifted something in me. life i see the future differently. i don’t think i’ve thought much about the impact it’s had on me to not see people like me — at least racially — who are older. i’d never seen myself in anybody the way that i could, at least in some way, with them.
…
it’s possible that i need to lead as me. that i am done doing things to please others or to prove a point. i want my life to support a collective, a bigger thing, a greater good. i am unlearning a lot of internalized messages around duty, obligation. responsibility, purity, and what it means to be japanese.