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Celebrating Love & Life through Arts, Literatures,& Photography
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Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. Since I was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say One of the early symptoms of my Parkinson’s disease is its effect on my mobility and speed of movements. As my disease progresses, my agility regresses, which gives me more time to sit back, look around, observe and think. Recently, my thoughts have been preoccupied with the current status of the Iranian community in the Bay Area. I would like to share my thoughts with you. In our old house we used to have a small pond. The pond had still-water with no inflow or outflow. Every year, the water would become stagnated and all kinds of algae started to grow in it. And every year by the beginning of spring, we had to empty the pond, clean it up and fill it again with fresh water. I’ve noticed a remarkable resemblance between this pond and our community. Our small closed community has become stagnated and desperately needs a flow of fresh water. I can’t create a flow, but I am hopping that I can at least stir the water in the hopes of creating a more livable pond. I’ve been asking myself, where has this unhealthy atmosphere of anger, distrust, suspicions and paranoia come from? What had kept our community pond fresh for the last 20 years that is missing now? Maybe the flow of fresh water, which kept us going so far, was our struggle for survival in a new country.
Our road to today’s success started over 20 years ago with our effort to survive and adapt to the new environment. Most of us moved to the US in our 20’s when we were young and energetic. For the first two decades, we were struggling with finishing our education, getting a job, moving up the corporate ladder, getting married, starting a family, buying our first home, etc.
Now we are in our 40’s and early 50’s, we are accomplished and successful, we are living in our own house, and we are driving brand new Mercedes, BMWs or luxury SUVs. We have families and children. In general, we are well-educated, with an education level higher than the national average. For most of us, day-to-day survival is not a concern any more.
We have become proud and accomplished individuals, but we have forgotten to become a united community. In our small community, we have lawsuits against each other, we are gossiping about friends and enemies, and disrespectfully and publicly making unsubstantial accusations against each other. What is worse is that we judge others based on rumors, without questioning their validity or seeking out the truth. The rumor mill and gossip factory is so powerful that we even go as far as disassociating and avoiding old friends just to protect our own reputation. No one wants to be connected with someone who has been defamed by gossip, regardless of facts. I am not only talking about a few well-publicized cases. I am more worried about the day-to-day friendly gossip that is affecting all of us. Why do we gossip? Maybe we are doing it just to hide our own flaws and to elude accepting responsibility for our own actions and behaviors. Or is it possible that we are trying to get attention and sympathy by pretending to be a victim?
For whatever motivations we have, the direct by-product of these gossip factories is the current unhealthy and unproductive atmosphere of distrust and paranoia. These rumors hurt people, affect their lives, and lead them to eventually withdraw from the community. William Golding in 1954 wrote Lord of the Flies, a thought-provoking novel. The book is about a band of young children who are the only survivors of an airplane crash into an uninhabited island. Without any adult supervision and guidance, they start their own society with made up roles and vocabulary. The book describes in detail the horrific exploits of these young children who make a striking transition from civilized to barbaric. The Lord of the Flies commands a pessimistic outlook that seems to show that man is inherently tied to society, and without it, would likely return to savagery. Have we been living on our own isolated island, separated from our rich heritage and not connected to the others? Here are some of the questions I like us to ask each other:
I am proposing that as a community we create a mission statement. To start with:
This is my mission and commitment to our community. I would like to hear your concerns, suggestions, and commitments to reunite our community. As Rumi once said: Out beyond ideas of
Bijan Farzan February 22, 2003
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