Relationships and Social connections
I remember the first day I started school, my mother told me to make friends. I had just lost my two front baby teeth. Sure, I was ridiculed by my classmates, but I wanted to make my mother proud of me in making friends. I was determined to make 1 friend that day. Instead, I was attacked, robbed, and abandoned at the school quadrangle by older male students. Not one single person in my class bothered to call the teacher or helped me.
When I transferred to a different school, I couldn’t bring myself to make a friend. My mother bought me a book written by Dale Carnegie, “How to win friends and influence people.”
Dale said, ”Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” I was never good at remembering people’s names so I trained myself to remember people’s faces.
My name was given to me by my paternal grandfather. 麗安 (lì ān) means “Beautiful Peace,” in Chinese. In Mandarin, it is pronounced /lee-ahn/ whereas in Hokkien, it is pronounced /leh-ān/. However, my father changed the spelling to English. I was 7 years old when I met a woman, who was about the same peer as my mother, named, “Anne.” I got excited and exclaimed, “That’s my name too 🤩!” My mother scolded me by retorting that my name was not “Anne.” To add insult to injury, my mother introduced me to a novel “Anne of Green Gables,” to correlate my identity with the name, “Anne.”
Whenever I meet someone new, but they happen to associate me with Leighanne Littrell or LeAnne Rimes, I feel a deep sense of umbrage. The etymology of Leighanne is a compound name of Lee (English for meadow) or Leah and Hannah (Hebrew for delicate and grace respectively). Since I emigrated to the US, I graced my presence by introducing myself as “Lei, like the Hawaiian garland, and Anne, like Anne of Green Gables.”
Most 2nd generation Europeans in America are able to pronounce Lì Ān while the majority of Americans have to live knowing me as “Lei, Hawaiian garland, and Ann — with an ‘e,’ of Green Gables.”
I had the opportunity to educate this elderly American woman while I was working at Macy’s. The conversation started when she saw my name tag. She asked why I wasn’t using my real name. I was taken aback and asked her to elaborate what she meant. She claimed having an English major and has traveled around the world to learn how to respect other people’s name. I stated that even though my name is in Chinese, the pronunciation of “Lei Anne,” spelled in this manner, is still the same as Lì Ān. If my father had left the spelling as Li An, everyone would be calling me “Leon.” That’s how Li An is pronounced in South East Asia. She felt embarrassed for imposing her professional knowledge on the etymological meaning behind my name.
The Wizard’s second rule, “The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.”
If I was being honest, the only thing that truly offends me, is if someone gets unruly when I am unfamiliar with certain social cues. What’s the point of getting upset with me if I was never made aware of what I needed to know about someone else’s situation, background, or condition?
Regardless of how you relate to others, it’s always important to be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves because you are giving the genuine impression that you are interested in their life experiences. The caveat is, that you are sincere in wanting to know about them.
When I enlisted in the Air Force, I was trained to be an active listener. When I asked for clarification, the training instructor gave me a script to read from. However, with every sentence I ended, he kept interrupting me with “okay,” “yep,” “uh-huh,” and “yeah.” I had to stop reading the script. He then asked me what the matter was. I explained to him that if he were to do that in Asia, he would get a slap on the face, since it was considered rude to interrupt someone. He proceeded to reiterate my frustration, but ended with “Is that right?” I just glared at him furiously. He made a snide comment, “You are in America now, act like one.”
Where I grew up, our education system was established by Britain. When a speaker is presenting a lecture, all audience must stay silent. No one was allowed to make any type of remarks, or comments, nor could anyone ask a question until after the lecture ends.
The act of engaging oneself as a listener was not only foreign to me, but also an absolute nonsensical methodology. Carl Rogers claim that being an engaged listener, shows that you are intentional in actively paying full attention to the speaker using all senses to understand verbal and nonverbal messages, emotions, and unspoken context. Here’s the thing, I have trained several new hires in the last 8 years and not one single person remembered what I taught. I’m sorry Carl, but your theory is flawed. No one can fully pay attention if people are being taught to make noises while the speaker is talking. It’s like someone hammering a LAN line while someone is transmitting a message over the network.
I should have been assertive in advocating for myself. Since I grew up in a domestic violent home, it was safer for me not to argue with a fool.
I only found out that I was deaf 🧏♀️ and hard of hearing 🦻when I enlisted in the Air Force in 2000. According to my audiologist, my left ear drum showed long term damage long before the 1997 incident I had in college. It was only recently that the memory returned that I had inadvertently damaged my left ear. It was when I was attempting to wake my younger sisters with a miniature air horn. I was punished by my mother, who hit me with a clog on the left side of my skull.
It’s a strange sensation being able to hear everything all at once whenever I wear my hearing aids. Of all the times I was accused of not paying attention to instructions, I could have been saved from all the beatings if my parents had just believed me when I told them I didn’t hear what they said.
The moment I was informed that I was deaf, I stopped being frustrated about repeating myself. What if the person truly didn’t hear what I said?
It’s impossible for me to truly hate someone. I tried. I felt guilty afterwards. My entire body would get lethargic, nauseous, and constipated. I examined myself thoroughly as to why I decided to hate my father. The reality was, my anger towards his role as a father. It wasn’t truly hatred in the sense of the word. I was angry because he mistreated my mother. He abandoned me. By the time he began to show interest in my wellbeing around 1997, I was indifferent to his concerns. It was in 2002 when I wrote him a heartfelt letter about why I was angry with him. It wasn’t until 2009 we had a meaningful conversation about our relationship. My hope of reconnecting with my father for lost time together died with him when he passed away in 2010.
If I learned anything from Dale, it would be to talk about my own mistakes before criticizing the other person. I was beaten a lot for being clumsy, or for not following instructions properly. The thing is, my mother gives instructions with little to no information. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions.
The few times my father intervened:
- He suggested that I had my own cookbook
- He demonstrated how to walk on high heels
- He suggested I needed a dermatologist to help with my acne
There shouldn’t be any reason to hate someone. The moment you start hating someone, the ripple effect will continue to affect others until you decide to change that mindset into love. Imagine throwing a boulder into a river because you hate getting wet. You have now negatively impacted the ecosystem of the river. Salmon schools are unable to maneuver the stream like they used to. Bears may have to change their hunting grounds. Campers have to stop setting camp at the usual spot. The park is in danger of closing down or being renovated for residential development. All because you decided it was too far to cross the bridge that was there all along.
Just to be clear — tragic events happen to good people because of the ripple effect other people have caused by their detrimental choices and indifference towards their surroundings.
I was raised to always be aware of my surroundings. I understand why it was a very important thing to remember. I became aware of this concept after watching the movie, “Crash.”
When I was a young Christian, I was taught about Job’s (Iyov, אִיּוֹב) suffering. The Sunday School teacher was very solemn about this passage. She told us that the devil will always find ways to make us sin so we have to keep our wits by obeying God’s will. When I asked her why would the devil want to make us sin, she began to tell the story about how Lucifer, an archangel fell from God’s grace. In Isaiah 14:12, theI came to the conclusion that Lucifer is a mythological being created solely to scare children. After witnessing a demon-possessed human, I know in my heart Satan only wants me to believe that God's love is conditional. That, is so far from the truth. God loves the world. God wants to restore what was lost in the Garden of Eden.
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