I Am A Bridge

I'm working on my thesis and I've been reading about "Cultural Marginals". I've studied this concept before, but tonight it kinda hit me. Definition? It's a long one but here goes:

“Living in a world textured with threads of changing cultural contexts,
they live in the place inbringingbetween…[As such]they have the opportunity
to achieve identities informed by all,
constricted by none,
balanced on the threshold of each;
to live in a both/and world rather than
an
either/or world.”

This place in-between,
then, can be anywhere from confusing,
chaotic, and paralyzing(encapsulated)
to powerfully
and positively
dynamic.

A further explanation is summed up by a poem:

Mary Taylor in “The Emigrants”:

If you came back, you wanted to leave
again;
If you went away, you longed to come
back.
Wherever you were,
you could hear the call of the homeland
like the note of the herdsman’s horn
far away in the hills.
You had one home out there
and one over here,
and yet you were an alien in both places.
Your true abiding place was the vision of
something very far off,
and your soul was like the waves,
always restless,
forever in motion.

This explains me so well. I am a cultural marginal. I live in two worlds ~ always have. It's manifested in so many facets of my life. Call me crazy, but it's darn true.

I was born in June ~ right smack dab in the middle of the year.

I'm a Gemini (twins ~ representing two totally different personalities)

I am hapa ~ my mom is Japanese, my father, American

I was raised in Hawaii ~ a conscious decision on my parents' part ~ they wanted to live in between Japan & the U.S.

Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

I have lived (& still do!) in Mililani for most of my life ~ Mililani is in the middle of the island.

My profession ~ an English Language teacher for international students

In group situations ~ I am always the one seeking out the "new ones" and inviting them into the group, but after they're settled and made their own friends, I don't bother anymore. (& sometimes get a little "j" for being "innaz")

I have always felt like I didn't really belong anywhere. I wanted to be a part of certain groups, but always felt like an outcast. In gymnastics, I was never good enough on the bars, in hula, I wasn't Hawaiian, in school, I wasn't the "good girl" or the "bad girl", in church, I was spiritual but got irritated during lessons & meetings... all of those feelings still continued in my adult life. I seriously considered taking some kind of medication. I thought I had social anxiety or something. That poem up there really explains a lot... always restless and in motion trying to find where I truly fit. And then it hit me. "Cultural marginals feel at home with other Cultural Marginals". That sooo makes sense!

My whole perception of this has completely turned to the positive. I'm not weird. It's so good to realize this :0)


It reminds me of when I was visiting the Nagoya castle on my mission. There were a whole bunch of pictures of WWII and the castle was bombed my U.S. militants.


An old Japanese man was next to me in front of one certain picture, and he told me that he was there when it happened. Although he was a young boy, he remembered the smell, the feel, and the raw emotion he had. He asked me what I knew about the war, and all I could say was that it hurt me because of my ancestry ~ Japanese and American.

He then reached up and held my face. He looked at me with such soul in his eyes. He said to me, "You are a symbol of peace."

I can now live in a live in a "both/and world rather than an either/or world.”

and

This place in-between, then, can be anywhere from confusing, chaotic, and paralyzing

to powerfully

and positively

dynamic.


I AM A BRIDGE