About Me: สิงโตในถ้ำ

Hi there, I'm Nortee. Usually I'm pretty horrible at introductions but this time I guess I can say whatever I want here. By the time I post my ever changing thoughts onto this platform I’ll be 20 or approaching 20 (if I get antsy and release this early). A bit about myself: (This part is pretty indicative of a person’s character at times in my opinion so kinda hard to say lol) I’m a Thai American boy living in Brooklyn, New York. I would say currently there are two large organizational impacts on my life and that would be my upbringing in the city parks foundation community and my time with my university's Asian Student Union. Both these organizations I will discuss later in other articles, but for now the current piece represents my view on my own identity and how that came to be.

I guess I would say I'm a lion in a cave (สิงโตในถ้ำ). Alternatively, an extroverted introvert but then again wouldn’t that mean a cave in a lion? Anyway, disregarding my questionable ramblings, the lion in a cave reference was from a horoscope website that described some people with the astrological sign: Leo. Besides the point, I think it’s actually a really descriptive claim to be a lion in a cave. When I was growing up, my dad always reminded me of two things: be a good person and learn how to survive in the world (*My dad’s version of “survive” meant financial stability and access to essentials). What confused me as a child was that a good person may not survive in a world like this. As a kid growing up I loved history stories as well as the eurocentric fairy tales of knights conquering distant kingdoms; I thought that it was always clear that the good guy wins. Mix that in with my upbringing in Buddhist values and you get a kid who was optimistic and happy about the state of the world.

But things change rapidly through adolescence. As I went to middle school and high school I learned that my prior mindset was detrimental to me as a person and with some bad teenage experiences / family trouble, this subsequently marked the start of the decline of my mental state. I will come back to mental health in a later article, but I want to backtrack to an important point that dismisses my early mindset by explaining why being a “good” person doesn’t equate to “surviving”:

#1: A concept of good is increasingly flawed. Righteousness, charity, and “chivalry” are all questionable topics which are easily biased and corrupted.

#2: Doing the “right” thing (which was in my case back as a child: maximizing happiness for the greater number of people (Side note: What kid is a Utilitarian? lol) ) leads to the person in action being easily taken advantage of.

#3: The biggest lesson I learned from my flawed mindset in my early childhood was that you lose a sense of self. It becomes no longer a value when you forget to analyze situations on a case by case scenario. You easily disregard opinions and your own feelings in decisions when you’re stuck on one mindset.

So in conclusion, doing the right thing with disregard for “survival” or I would say responsibility leads to undesirable outcomes. What next? Well, an analysis of how to “survive” or to be responsible. My dad comes from a working class background, immigrating to this country and working as a hotdog vendor, bus boy, and other odd jobs until eventually he worked his way up to become an executive chef. What he likes to tell me is that people are not really rewarded for the amount of work they put out. A lot of the time, privilege as he saw it is gained from skin color and how much butt you've kissed to get into your current position. As a POC my dad had to play to the “Model Minority” to get to where he is even though he knew that the upper white hierarchy was indeed racist. Other minorities to him didn’t help him much either as the Latinx community was struggling right along with him and a majority of encounters for him with the Black community were from him being harassed and mugged for being Asian (Note: Keep in mind this was like 80’s NYC). (Another Note: A distinction is to be made between east asian experiences and Southeast Asian (esp. darker skinned) experiences in the states as Southeast Asians separate from the “Asian” diaspora represent one of the most impoverished cultural groups in America : https://tinyurl.com/y8nzl9yg)

I’m lucky to be in a position today to unite people because my dad didn’t have that option. It was very much a one for all situation. So how does this tie back to me? My take away from his stories was that in order to survive or be responsible you need to assess your own current situation and adapt. My definition of survival is no longer only “financial stability” but also legacy and leadership. The impact you have today allows your ideas to make a change to the world you see and understand others. The skill to understand and be patient with others is a key part of my identity. Many people today have amazing ideas yet fail to convey them to the right audiences because of the limitations people place on themselves in the social construct.

I’ve learned that observation of a social group’s behaviors combined with throwing yourself out into awkward social situations allows one to connect another individual so much more. Empathy and humbleness are key when meeting someone new for the first time. It’s a skill you get by constantly meeting people: not judging a book by its cover per say but predicting the genre based on the blurb.

Ultimately, I would like to see myself as a garden, a mask, and a lion in the cave all at the same time. There’s a level of uneasiness about my personal identity but full confidence in my values rooted in wanting to hear and share in the experiences of others. The role I take on always changes, whether that’s student, teacher, leader, listener, speaker, etc. What remains clear is that as a lion in a cave, it’s rare to see someone actually understand the lion or understand the cave.

Perhaps, whoever reads this and my writing in the future will come to understand me. Maybe even more than myself.