An Essay Inspired By the Lost

I wrote this essay after the experience for an Asian-American Scholarship.
Sorry it's raw but isn't the situation as well?

I saw it all tonight. An entire life of hurts and pains; loneliness and rebellion stood before me today at the local boba shop. Caught in our headlights, looking in, she waved and smiled and I was the one to look like the deer--lost, confused, and scared.

She was an old acquaintance, one who graduated a year earlier with a GED to escape the pressures of high school. We were never too friendly nor were we ever close. You see, I was trying to find my own self in the clutter of expectations. I did not have time for her; she could take care of herself. As I did my initial scan to see if she had changed, I saw her hands shuffling a box of cigarettes. Her cigarettes going in and out, in and out from her pocket, drew attention to the reality of the Asian-American culture.

It is a sad reality when high school becomes a test of the fittest in which there is a diving point of doctors, lawyers, and politicians and drug dependent partiers. Huge expectations with constant nagging about success defined by monetary gains probably are the culprits. I don't blame the parents though. Most can't read and have built their lives on their backs. They have done laborioius work; the kind that they don't want us to ever do. They have sacrified their lives for ours and it would be a waste if we repeated the cycle. But during tonight's encounter, these thoughts did not process in my mind.

First I thought it was a waste, and then I realized she still has so much life to live, only to get frustrated at the negatives stresses that had created the person speaking to me. And although I am usually awkward around smokers, I felt as ease knowing that past her supposed image of maturity was an innocent soul with youthful compassion and joy. She told me that she was balancing partying with more studying as if that was an implicit way of saying that she was better off. I could care less about the increase in logged studying time. But she continued to say that if she is going to continue to study hard, she would party hard. And right then i wanted to give her a hug, revealing to her my deepest desires for her to believe that she does not have to live up to the expectations of her parent's anymore, possibly revealing that her idealistic act of rebellion symbolized by broken bottles and hills of ash could not free her.

She questioned me about my future. I told her my future will be one of a pastor. She looked down, disappointed. After all she is a pastor's child, one who strugged as her father's finances never allowed her to live comfortably. She warned me to look elsewhere. My ears were hearing discouragements but my eyes were seeing nothing but encouragements. I saw that my life can be a direct impact for her and for all those that represent the desperate outcasts of the Asian-American way.

As I entered my friend's car to leave, a friend in the back seat told me that my occupation with the cigarettes had created an awkward environment. However, I was occupied with more. I realized that the very essence of this boom or bust cycle has to change. I saw that if I could not become a person with life-changing abilities, my very people would continue to be stuck in the same cycle: a cycle in which broken children become broken adults who nurture broken children.

My friend dropped me off at my car. My car had been parked in the parking lot of my church- a Korean church. Right there I realized the severity of the divide. I was at chuch while she was smoking and loitering in a parking lot. And even though we were miles apart, my acquaintance at the boba shop reaffirmed that I'm here to help heal the broken and to cloes the gap that has been created by an Asian-American culture of pressure. And as I drove off, I promised myself that I will never look like a deer-in-headlights again.