Whether you realize it or not, living on a college campus can really isolate you from different forms of life. What do I mean? Well, for one, you don’t regularly see babies on the street anymore. Nor the elderly minding their own business (I mean, besides your professors). You also don’t see as many dogs, other pets, and other critters such as high school students (and you know you’re always wondering “what are they doing here?” when you do see them).
Essentially, you are surrounded by people your age all the time, which is some getting used to once you’re out of that situation for the breaks. As members of the same age group, we tend to understand some situational behavior we take as a norm, and the life we lead as the regular. Perhaps especially with our generation, we are sometimes flippant, perhaps overly critical, perhaps not forgiving enough…what have you, on our generation. However, spending a week with my grandparents abroad made me rediscover my own faults in interacting with them.
When I was younger, my grandparents sometimes annoyed me either because I couldn’t really understand what they were saying, I would have to repeat myself a hundred times in order for them to know what I am saying, or they would repeat themselves so many times that I got sick and tired of hearing it. Before coming to Taiwan, my friend had told me, “once you come back, you’ll soon realize that nothing has changed”.
That’s impossible, I said. The structures that house enclose us might not change, but people’s situations and internal structures inevitably will. I hadn’t seen my grandparents in four years, and I didn’t really know what to expect. What I found was that I always saw them with my ‘young person perspective’. In fact, their love is a fierce love that is different from what we are accustomed to now. They really try their best to engage, and I postulate that is the reason why they’re so keen on stuffing us full; food, as we all know, is a very easy way to please and connect. In that love, they sometimes don’t realize their limits, as my grandfather refuses to let me help him do chores around the house. And it is easy to take advantage of that, and become selfish, and spoiled.
Their understanding of life is different from mine. Sometimes, I have to remind myself of that. Sometimes, I realized, they don’t repeat things for me, but for themselves, and when that is the case, I should just let them be and not point that out.
They’re getting older, they’re changing, and getting small. They don’t seem to have changed but internally they always are. That is what we should understand from them and be forgiving, because these people are definitely those who come in a close first when you need a hand.
