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Equality
To my people — you are the ripple in the pond.
I think about my own mortality often, mainly about if I’ve made an impact, what I’m leaving behind, and have I affected change for the better on some small level. Each of us is a ripple in a pond and the things we say and do reverberates onto others, rippling across society until it dissipates against the shore. Some of us make bigger splashes than others, that’s for sure.
I suppose this is what you can call “being deep,” thinking about the responsibilities of one’s own choices and how it’ll ultimately remain after we’re gone. I think beyond myself, knowing that I’m only a temporary entity and that part of my responsibility is to leave things better for those who will remain after me. I don’t have kids, but I do look at the faces of my little nieces and nephews and I think about what kind of world I’d like to leave for them.
In November, I had the opportunity to be the artist in residence for 200 Hmong high school kids in the Twin Cities area. For four weeks, we talked about racism, social justice, domestic abuse, and mental health. My job was to help them understand and to break down what was happening right now in the world and to also break down what was happening in their own lives, adding on depth and understanding to their own struggles.
It’s funny to think that in 20 years time, they might just say to their kids, “When I was your age, we had this lady Yia Vue who came to talk about systemic racism…”
I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’m a “big deal.” I’ve always felt insignificant and small, just chirping away from my branch in the tree. I’m just making ripples in the pond, adding myself to others to hopefully make the on-coming wave of change stronger.
I sometimes think that maybe all of the pain and hardships of my life is all accumulated for this purpose. Knowing what pain of the heart and pain of the flesh feels like, knowing how dark one can get, and knowing how to break surface and gasp for air, it all leads to being able to share them with those who suffered the same but couldn’t say it. Perhaps that is my purpose.
