vas, vis, et deviens

Maybe it's because I turn 29 tomorrow, and I feel rather insignificant in light of such a formidable age for myself. Julius Caesar, on the eve of his 30th birthday, had wept at the foot of Alexander the Great's statue. He had cried in disappointment at how little he'd accomplished compared to the latter's feats around the same age. I do not long for world conquest. I long for adventures, to be a part of brave social movements. Instead, here I am, almost at the end of my 20s, and all I have done in life is teach a little over a hundred students, write, marry my life partner, raising a child... Ok, there are big things here. But they are also so mundane, not at all the stuff of my dreams as a little girl, reading about the college-aged revolutionaries of the early 1900s who joined Dr. Sun Yat-Sen in overthrowing the last dynasty of China to form the first republic and true democracy in Asia.

For some reason, Paris kept coming to mind. The two weeks I spent there during the summer of 2005, right after my year of working in Taiwan and before arriving in the unknown city of Pittsburgh. How I spent a whole day at Sacred Heart Basilica, wrote pages upon pages of reflection in the Tuilleries Garden, bought a ticket (much to the horror of the billet-dispenser at my broken French) to watch Vas, Vis, et Deviens with my cousin. Revisiting the plot of that movie, the theme of being a minority among minorities rears in my thoughts again. Last Tuesday, someone referred to me as being bi-cultural in the manner of Moses. And--not to seem like I have delusions of grandeur--I do take comfort at times with how Moses was raised Egyptian as he longed to belong with the Jews. Everytime someone asks me who I am, nationality-wise, I could only say, "It's complicated." And I wonder if God will ever use this mass of complicated connections that is my cultural background the way He used Moses'.

Oh, I hope I don't have to go through forty years of living in the backside of the desert too, though. Maybe this period of time, while I focus primarily on raising my son and maybe one or two more kids, will be akin to that. Who knows.

The thoughts I had last night surrounding the above made me want to re-watch that movie again. To comprehend all of it instead of just the parts that my cousin enlightened me through whispered translations in the darkened theater six years ago. Would you believe that the Carnegie library system has this French-Israeli film on file? I love the Carnegie libraries. Oh, I'm going to miss them.