Faith trespassers

This morning a stranger knocked on our door. I opened the door and asked what he wanted. My dog started barking at him. He said that he wanted to tell me that he had a good news to share. “I have with me the truth about the true religion,” he expressed with great enthusiasm. With all due respect to his belief, I was annoyed with his statement because it meant that my faith is fake. At this point, I was ready to unleash my dog to scare him away. My dog is a great poser, he could have done a great job doing it. I did not do that of course. I courteously said that I was not interested.

This is not the first time that I encountered similar situation. This is a clear trespassing of cultural boundaries. It is unfortunate that one’s faith is thought of as a true version of the others’. Faith is a personal conviction that needs to be respected.

Amigos

Authentic friends are around when things get tough in life.

Ocean deep

I placed my job on the line more than once to fight for my principles. Last Monday, I led my co-workers to a dialogue with the management. I was actually surprised to learn that those who were very vocal before the dialogue were silent. The issues presented ranges from abuse of power to ethical standards of practice. After the dialogue, those who were silent started talking again and made a comment, “well, it was okay.” They were part of those who requested for this dialogue but when it came to the actual discussion, they were like bunch of scared dogs. Other just changed their positions to save their asses.

…you speak English…

I attended a diversity committee meeting today. This reminded about my experience when I first got here and was looking for a job. I went to a non-profit agency where they were teaching newly arrived immigrants how to apply for a job and how to build their resumes. So, I enrolled for their services. It was nothing new from what I knew.

A beautiful Asian lady approached me and started asking questions about what kinds of job that I wanted to do, etc…She sounded like a white person. Her accent was American. No trace of being Asian except her looks. I was surprised when she said, “You speak English very well. I am surprised.” I smiled at her but in my mind, I was saying, you idiot!!! Just because I was not born here, I can’t learn how to speak your language.

There was also one time when the person interviewing me was using baby-talk with me. At first I thought there was something wrong with her phonemes and pronunciations. But when I heard her speak with other staff in that office, her speech appearwed to be normal. Then she spoke to me gain using the baby-talk manner of talking. As a clinician, I was doing my diagnosis on her. She either has a selective split-personality disorder or Schizophrenia (she heared baby voices and imitating them). Then I made my final diagnosis, she was suffering from a severe case of selective-stereotypic disorder with psychotic features with very poor prognosis (my own diagnosis). I found out that this kind of disorder is very common here in the US.