Monday, January 9, 2012

A World of Perspectives

This morning as I stuffed my coat and hat into locker #56 and started working on peeling off my gloves, I looked across the locker room toward the only other person in the room and we exchanged hellos.  He too was removing his outer layers of heavy clothes to get down to his workout gear underneath.

"Whew, it sure is cold out there today," he said.

I had not actually met this fifty something Chinese man before, but I had seen him around the gym and pool on quite a few other mornings; nonetheless, today was our first exchange.

I responded, "yea it sure is. I saw 12 Fahrenheit before I left the house."

He laughed and said, "my friends from California keep calling me and telling me that it is 75 and sunny.  I tell them I don't want to hear it."

I laughed in return saying, "you know, back where we come it is snowing right now, so we are kind of used to the cold this time of year.  They probably wont even have school tomorrow.  I was teacher in the DC area and schools there tend to close when it snows."

"Oh really," he said, and with this I could sense the shift in his inflection. "In California, where my daughter is a teacher, they only close school when they run out of money."

"Really?" I said, knowing that this unsolicited conversation was taking a weighty turn.

He now was speaking from a place of frustration bordering on angst.  "Yes, she and all of the other teachers gets a pink slip every March because of budget cuts and then they have to compete for the fewer open jobs the next year.  This it the problem with the American economy-"

"Ouch," I responded, attempting to turn my attention away from this growing conversation and toward plugging in my iPod and lacing up my shoes.

"-and," he continued, "I don't think any of your candidates I see on TV can fix these problems either."

At that moment I looked up and gave him a dismissive, "mm, hmm,"  sticking my left earphone into my ear.

Despite the fact that I claim none of those candidates as my own, Granny and I did spend a good part of the morning watching the New Hampshire debates(of course following watching the Tebowing of Pittsburgh), so I did have politics on my my mind; however, I never expected today's pre-workout chit-chat about the weather to take this turn towards the views of the GOP candidates or a condemnation of American politics in general.  

He carried on, now taking the tone of laoshi lecturing his xuesheng .

"In this country we also teach our children the principles of democracy, but as opposed to you Americans, we know that the evolution of democracy is a process of contraction. In its earliest stages, democracy provides a chance for many parties to have a voice; in this case, one of the parties at the extremes, that which more people identify with, is voted into control.  This is happening in the infant democracies of the Middle East. Eventually the people discover that this no longer works, as a majority is not necessarily represented.  Thus it evolves into a two party system, like Washington DC.  For a while this system works and the parties trade leadership back and forth making some progress, but like Washington DC today, eventually the two parties become polarized and gridlocked to the point that nothing can get done and no problems can get solved.  This is when Democracy evolves to it's highest form - the one party system."  He smiled and winked, releasing the tension from the last few minutes, "America will get here someday."  

"Have a good workout," I said, and plugged in my other earbud.







  

--
Paul Koch (@pkoch9999)
+151 1692-2787

No comments:

Post a Comment