Who’s Irish?Choosing to leave the country where you were born behind, simply to become an immigrant to the world, in hopes of finding true happiness and security for both you and your family, may not turn out as what you may have expected it to be.
For choosing to live in a new country, truly introduces the cultural differences there is, both when it comes to what kind of prejudice you will experience, how families are built up, and what people definition of happiness is.Prejudice is extremely common amongst people, since we all have an idea of how people from other countries are. A more positive word for prejudice is “presumption”, prejudice is used in connecting with negative thoughts about a different country, ideology or religion. While presumptions have a less negative origin behind them. Western countries often have a lot of prejudice for the eastern countries, that they are poor, badly educated and thieves. While they (the east) have assumptions, that has led them to believe that the western countries, have roads paved in gold, and that no one goes hungry to bed.
Natalie’s mother for example believe that the Irish and the Chinese have a lot in common, since both nations have had long periods of history, where they had to do a lot of hard physical labour “I always thought Irish people are like Chinese people, work so hard on the railroad…”.Families will always be filled with hardships, either the kids have a problem with their parents, or the other way around. Though family members are bound to each other by blood, they aren`t so much when it comes to their personalities and opinions.
As such family members have a tendency to really get in each other’s hair. In most cases it’s the kids who disagree with their parent’s view of the world, their method of raising them or their way of forming their lives. This can lead to a lot of different scenarios, where kids maybe don’t want to have anything to do with their parents, or they try to be the direct opposite of them. Depending on which country a child is born, affects the method of upraising greatly, if the child is born in Denmark for example, it is taught to be creative, to develop its own personality, to be unique. While being in china, the kids a taught to do their best in school no matter what, there is no excuse, but they are lazy, they aren’t taught the same principals about being creative and unique.
If mostly raised by the mother, then she is called a “tiger’s mom”, since in wild tiger are taught by their mom to hunt, and if they don’t catch anything, then they don’t eat (from a certain age of course). Natalie`s mom brings up the part about not learning kids to be creative “creative—another word we do not talk about in China…. we talk about whether we have difficulty or no difficulty”. The reason for this, is that with a country whose population has reached over 1 billion people, forces both the government and the general population to leave such privileges behind, to insure that their kids can get a well-paid job in either their own country, or preferable outside of China, which is what their parents hopes for them, the government no so much.
Happiness is something every human try to obtain. Some obtain it through spending time with their family or friends, some acquire it through a successful life, filled with the perfect husband/wife, a good position (job) in either a big company or by creating their own. While happiness can be a kind of “object” for some people, it’s obtained through other emotions for others. Denmark has been given the title “the happiest country in the world”, mostly because of the welfare model we have, but is it the possibility to get money from the state that makes us happy? Or is the fact that we have access to it if we need it, in case we get fired, have to leave work for several month because of an injury or go down with stress. I believe, that this fact is what truly makes us happy here in Denmark (along other reasons of course), simply that we are relived of such a burden, makes us feel safe, which have let us to become happy.
While happiness is also a fleeting thing, and something we may never be sure about, if it`s the kind of happiness we truly want or need. Let`s use a scenario involving Natalie and her husband, for while she may love him and their child like nothing else, it’s still taking a heavy toll on her “These days my beautiful daughter is so tired she can just sit there in a chair and fall asleep”, while she wants to do everything she can for her daughter and husband, is it then the happiness she really want or need?Though the thought of settling down with your family, choosing to live in a different country or to pursue a carrier, may be what you wish for the most, but is it really what you want? Should you value your family higher than anything else? Or should u revaluate your vision of the world? Being humans like we are, will always lead us to question what we really want.
