The One Person

Note: This blog was written on October 24th, 2015.

Today is the United Nation's 70th Anniversary and to mark its creation I went to celebration event at Chapman University, hosted by a local UN Association Chapter of Orange County.  The event focused on discussing the purpose of the UN and how it is affecting the world and Orange County on a local level.  The key speakers and panelists came from different local organizations in Orange County and there featured a lawyer in Irvine whose law practice is focused on international law.  I have learned and read about the UN  in high school and college but I never really grasp the importance of the UN.  People say in youth we learn and aging helps us understand; I finally understand the purpose of the UN and this knowledge broadens my mind to see what is out there in the world.

The best part about the event was the people I met at the meeting. As the event is set in a university setting, I expected to meet mostly law or political science major students as Chapman University is known for its liberal art majors but I ended up meeting professionals from a wide array of career paths.  I met health science students, an international law lawyer, an aerospace engineer who explained to me the difference between aerospace and mechanical engineer, an engineer student who lived in Singapore for eight years and now returned to the US to complete her education, and many community leaders.  My most memorable conversation was with an 18-year-old refugee from Iraq and whose family had to fled three countries before he turned eighteen. He lived in Iraq until the age of five, then his entire family moved to Syria due to the political conflicts in Iraq and where he lived for nine years before moving to live in Turkey for another two years.  In Turkey, the law prohibited his family from working so his parents was constantly struggling to find ways to survive and make some money.  Luckily the UN processed and completed his family paperwork and his family and he were able to move to the US. Despite how blessed he was to be able to move to the US, the paperwork was not easy for his family as they had to wait for two years for the process to complete.

The people I met opened my mind to the reality and the suffering out there in the real world, where I will never see myself having to experience it.  They showed me how blessed for me to have the privilege to live in this country called America and how not living in fear is the greatest gift of all. The 18-year-old refugee stated he was constantly living in fear while living in Syria as he was always afraid of getting bombed and killed from the attacks and all around him was in a constant chaos. There are different types of observations. There are observations that we have to do by ourselves, and there is vicarious observation where other people retell their observation to us. I believe we all have to do our own observation but sometimes letting other people do the observation would help us and save us from the hardship that goes with it.

I did not have to go through all of the discrimination and sufferings that the 18-year-old refugee did but I have had to live in fear.  Though the extent of my fear is not as great and dangerous as his, our conversation shows me how much similar I am to him.  As humans, it is normal to have fear, what we do with that fear is all that matters.  Instead of letting it weaken us, we should use it as the fuel to strengthen us and propel us to be a better person.

And knowing his experiences shows me how insignificant my fear is.  I don't have to constantly fighting to for my life and having a hard time getting the basic life supports such as food and water; even if I don't have the finance to get the necessaries in my American life, I still have help from different sources.  My fear is the future and what is to come and now looking at it, they are insignificant compared to what other people have to go though.  Like the 18-year-old refugee, millions of people in the world are constantly fighting to surve and all they want is enough food to eat and make through the day.  That is the best part about meeting people, we will never know who we will run into and one day one person will walk into our lives and change the way we think and turn us into a completely person. It may take years for that one person to come, but if we search for opportunities he will walk into our lives without us ever expecting.