2025-11-15 Freewrite

My main method of learning is to walk. There’s little that cannot be learned by seeing it for oneself. This may not apply to mathematics or chemistry or literature, but I believe it true to the most important things of our world, that is to say, how people live and what we do about that.

I think this because on my feet is where I have learned so much. I am in Vietnam today, and here I remain so aware of my nation. Americans have reputations, in both good and bad ways. Most consider us friendly, as a people, and outgoing. They may think us too ambitious, perhaps, and to that I don’t contend. We can be bull-headed and plow through problems, which is both a blessing and a curse.

But what I consider most is simply a surprise at how little we are despised, for all our history. We are carriers of generational trauma, a nation founded in escape from oppressors and then serving as oppressors ourselves. We got better, but I am unsure that we ever became good. But I fear we may not be as magnanimous as others. If some country had rolled on our doorstep and bombed the home of my father, I’m unsure that I could truly love him.

Perhaps it is my folly to mistake my treatment as love. It may simply be a matter of respect, or yet more likely it is a matter of acquiring some of the cash in my pocket (same as any American would do).

Being treated this way almost makes me feel bad. A man today tried to shine my shoes, and I wanted to lift him by the arm and confer to him that he shouldn’t have to do this. I struggle with that often: it is not that there should be a world without shiny shoes, but to see someone at your feet feels monstrous. And anyways, the spot that gleamed so brightly in the sun is now already blackened with dirt again. I would have hated for his work to go to waste. He was friendly, and in his eyes I saw the kind of man I could bow deeply to. Perhaps I should have washed his feet instead. The world lays me low every day with the beauty of my neighbors. I should like to thank them all for their kindness, thank them for their beauty being laid on my back, too much to bear. That, I fear, is the only answer to my worry. I must be laid low with the beauty of the world.

Such is the purpose of my walking. The more mileage I get under my feet, the more free I become. It wears thin the layers of my soul. I become porous and bright and new, a person of the world and new in spirit. I become a child again, helpless and tired and recalcitrant, and from there I can be broken, and from the cracks I can grow.