I dislike how people pigeonhole others according to the presumptuous perception of society. It’s as if there’s a certain yardstick to abide by in Asian society, where anything else is considered a deviant. For instance, i would like to get inked but there are a host of reasons society throws at me, hindering me from getting one: firstly, i’m christian; secondly, my parents would severe all ties with me; thirdly, reality might just decide that i’m not fit for some job due to my tattoo; the list is just inexhaustible. It really just seems way easier to cower to these benchmarks, because life is hard enough already.
I was at my great grandmother’s wake today, and i decided to help fold ’ slips of paper’ into seeming representations of gold and silver. I thought it would be really nice to lend a helping hand, especially since there were loads and loads of slips to fold. My fingers got all orange-y and silvery, sticky even; like those children’s in sweatshops. Before climbing this ‘mountain’, i thought to myself “I’m christian, will it matter to them? Will i be considered an outsider, where i should not poke my nose into such sacred business?” I think all of us go through similar thought-processes from time to time, where we actually consider what society thinks of us. One of the aunts even assumed that i didn’t go to church, probably because i was folding these ‘sacrificial slips of paper’.
However, i am still pleased with myself that i stepped outside of myself to fold, even if it seemed like mere origami, because i folded those slips for others and not for myself. What an irony indeed.
