Everybody grows, changes, and eventually matures. The
difference is the rate of change.
As I went through editing my blog posts starting with the
oldest, I was shocked at how different I sounded back then compared to how I do now, and
I am thoroughly glad! Distance—both time and space—do give you a sense of perspective that
is in dire need to this generation that are too attached to their online profile, unable to judge their own actions from afar. When I see and read the
way my peers—sometimes those older too—communicate to one another, I wonder,
doesn’t clarity come with age?
The old mantra goes, “nobody’s perfect.” Yet, if I can grow
in three years, why can’t others? I’m still learning, of course, to become a better person, but as John Mayer sings, "Did you know that you could be wrong, and swear you're right? Some people been known to do it all their lives." It shocked me when I hear those in their twenties declaring they need no
correction. Being true to oneself does not equal to being rude.
It may be an exaggeration to say Malaysians (in our entirety) are rude, but they are not polite either. Malaysians, especially
Malays, talk highly of our Asian culture. Personally, the only Asian culture that I am
proud of is our respect for elders, and even that is slowly eroding into oblivion. We don’t
start our conversations with a simple “Hello”; we don’t even say thank you
enough. We don’t say “excuse me”; we would rather squeeze ourselves through
discomfort. And please don’t let me start on our drivers who have no regards for others.
I am lucky in that I got plunged into a first world country:
a country with a first class mentality. Sure, not all Americans are as nice as
I may be portraying them to be, and so are there nice Malaysians out there.
Subtracting the exceptions, however, the difference becomes glaringly bright.
There is this idea we learned at school called “groupthink”. At the end of the
day you are molded as the people around you, and after being back in Malaysia
for only a week, I pray to God to not let that happen to me.
So to answer those who are unconvinced of the benefits of
sending Malaysian youths oversea just to get a degree that they could obtain
right here at home, I can assure you the benefits are too manifold for the
skeptics to comprehend.