Tae Yoon: Life from 2006-2021

Happy 4^th of July.

With no regular contact with people, I am usually uninformed about what’s going on back in the States. I mean, I love the news and stay current by reading things every day, but outside of those few sources, I’m usually unaware.

That’s when I realized a few day’s ago that July 4^th is just around the corner, and the entire country is probably having a blast celebrating America’s Independence Day right about now.

Residing outside of America during important holidays makes me really miss being back home in NYC with my friends. But something it also makes me appreciate is how proud and happy I am to be an American.

I thought that being born and growing up in NYC, I had learned all of the basics about humanity and the way certain things worked—but man I was so wrong.

Living abroad for a few years and having the opportunity to witness the utter poverty that many people around the world consider as their norm, well, it completely helped me understand things in such a vastly different way. The actual concept of slums never really entered my mind until I moved to Thailand, and I don’t see how I could’ve misunderstood the term for so long. I know that I had always been exposed to the word through pop culture. Movies such as The Slums of Beverly Hills and Slumdog Millionaire come to mind, as well as the terms “slumming it” and “what a slum.” But still, the word always just seemed like slang whose true meaning and source of origin never mattered much.

Never would I have imagined that true slums do exist all over the world, and that these places are realities for its inhabitants who most likely hope for the same things in life as you and me. Sometimes I look at the array of people in Thailand who live in slums and what is considered to be the day-to-day norms of their life—and that’s when it feels as if life can be really unfair. When I study their faces, I can totally imagine how they might have possibly existed if they had had the opportunity to grow up in America and live in NYC. It's quite easy to visualize a different life for them under more auspicious circumstances, and it makes me sad that they weren't afforded those opportunities. That’s not to say that I’m judging them and assume they are unhappy, but to have extra layers of adversity to overcome under circumstances that don’t seem to offer equal opportunities, well, I completely empathize if they were to ever feel momentarily hopeless. And now whenever I’m reading the news and see an image of what is considered to be a slum that’s in another country somewhere, I totally get it… it’s like, oh wow this is so prevalent and obvious—how was I so oblivious before? The United Nations estimates that there are currently over ONE BILLION people all around the globe who call a slum their home. This staggering amount of people live in distressing conditions with unreliable electricity or running water in structures that have wooden planks and metal panels for walls, and sadly it just seems to be the way things are in these many places.

Living in Bangkok, it’s impossible not to pass by slums on a daily basis. And that’s when I realized that NYC isn’t the only place where such two completely different income brackets can be neighbors. It’s like you have these beautiful and expensive high-rises that are very common all over Bangkok, and directly next to it, there will be a cluster of slums that I’m guessing misses seeing the sky outside their windows on one side of their units. A parking lot with luxury and expensive cars might be within arms reach of shanties with glassless windows and rusted streaks of metal adorning the shoddy walls.

In addition to many other reasons, since I left NYC more than two years ago, this—among many things—is why I’m so proud and grateful to call myself an American. I know that America isn't perfect and that the country has its own issues, but being away for this long has helped me understand so many other things about the greatness of my home country, why people emigrate to it in droves, and why my own parents immigrated there for the American Dream. I love America because no matter who you and or where you come from, working hard can bring success. I love America because if an eight-year-old boy is seen washing dishes at a restaurant in the afternoon on a school day, the police would show up to question why they’re not in school. I love America because the freedoms that are granted as the standards of acceptability for its citizens is what others continue to fight for all over the world. I love America because the country represents hope for more than the one million people who legally immigrate there every year. I love America because it’s where I’m from, and there’s no other place that I’d rather call home.

And now I just need to figure out how to celebrate the holiday while alone here in Bangkok. Hmm, it would be nice to go to a fun BBQ or other social event where I could interact with some interesting people, but I will most likely end up eating Thai street food unaccompanied.

Happy 4^th of July, America!