Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [12]
It is also written for refugees. I hope the book is a guide to America, but also a warning that here there are new dangers and perils. American streets are not paved with gold. Freedom is not absolute. Credit-card bills can create new kinds of servitude. Families can cross the tundra on horseback, fearful all the way of being shot, only to encounter what they consider a worse crisis here: children who won't come home at night and don't obey their parents.
Looking at America through the eyes of refugees, I have seen a very different America than the one I've inhabited for fifty years. I've seen Americans' kindness and eagerness to help newcomers. But I have also seen how some businesses use up their employees, how some landlords manage not to rent to people who have accents or brown skins, and how some doctors and police give very different kinds of service to the rich and the poor. I have seen the INS treat refugees like criminals and make their lives needlessly anxious and difficult.
Refugees reveal the strengths and flaws of America. To be fair, we are the country that takes people in. We educate refugees and allow them to become citizens. And yet, when they arrive, we often exploit them and make them suffer needlessly. And, for the most part, we Americans are abysmally ignorant about the rest of the world. We have both an immense innocence and an enormous sense of entidement. We are spoiled children in a world of hurting people, and we take far too much for granted. As my friend Pam put it, "We were born on third base and we think we hit triples."
I do not want to idealize refugees. All cultures have lazy, cruel, and even dangerous people. All cultures have malcontents as well as people who are wiser and kinder than others. Some people are more open to experience, more eager to learn, harder workers, and more fun to be around. Some operate on a higher moral plane. I wanted to study this variation between people across cultures. Why do some people crumble and withdraw while others with equally difficult situations move into mainstream America? I identified what I call the attributes of resilience, which are the personal qualities that help refugees make it in their new situations. These attributes have relevance to all of us as we move in an increasingly new world with all our familiar props left behind.
Refugees come from a fire into a fire. Like all who live in crucibles, their experiences are defining ones for them and for all who witness their lives. We all are interested in what happens to people in extreme conditions. That's why Tuesdays with Mor-rie, The Perfect Storm, and Into Thin Air were best sellers, and that's why Titanic was a hit movie. After we see or read a story of trauma we ask, "What would I do in that situation?"
Ernest Shackleton said, "Optimism is true moral courage." The ways people are damaged are also the ways they are made strong. Suffering can create bitter people but it often creates people with depth of character and empathy with other people's suffering. Easy lives can produce spoiled, soft people. Hard lives can produce lovers and fighters. Refugees who make it in America manage to find meaning in their suffering. Many become kinder and more generous people. Anne Frank's father, Otto, a refugee himself, said, "Giving never makes anyone poorer."
Another great survival strategy is connecting with family and community. Many have lost some loved ones, but they have held on to others under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Their attitudes toward family put ours into perspective. An American might be in therapy complaining of an intrusive mother. An immigrant will be working three jobs so that she can bring her aunt to this country.
Globalization will