On Importance

Today I sat in bed feeling wimpy,and mulling over this idea of importance. How does American importance differ from that of the Chinese? Also, how does it differ within ones society and even family?

In America it seems most people want to find an important job. But what jobs are truly important? Often I believe people get a job that sounds important i.e., makes you a lot of money. We have so tied making money with being important. I mean truly, movie stars make a ton of money but how important is their job. Instead of challenging people to think and imagine for themselves, movies allow us to escape and let someone else do all the thinking for us. Unless of course it is a great movie that gets your brain functioning. Although, I can’t say that I have watched one of those lately. (Perhaps I am underestimating the importance of escape.)

Importance is most often subjective, much to my dismay. I spent a year studying microfinance and believing that it was important. Other students in my class studied beer pong. Like I said, importance is subjective. If you sound important people leave you alone for the most part and admire you. You feel good about yourself.

Now I have a job which I rather laughed at before moving here and felt like it wasn’t really a great job, at least not my lifetime goal. Now I am having a whole new thought about it. Perhaps it is my own way of making my time here feel important. My job is not really about entertaining a mass of 7th & 8th graders, but it is truly a diplomatic feat. Most of these kids don’t have too much money which means they don’t travel. Our town is very small by Chinese standards and I may be the only white person some of them meet, at least for now. Who cares right? They are just punk kids and what I say won’t really change their view of anything. With any luck they have watched at least one English movie or TV show and that in and of itself concerns me.

What I find extremely interesting is that “children are our future”. If we, myself and the other foreign teachers, get this right we may be able to change some perceptions. We also interface with many of these kids parents. The wealthier (mainly government officials) ones want us to tutor their children and take us out for fancy meals. What a great opportunity right.

Now back to the States. Within my own family there are what feel like degrees of important. Some of my uncles have “important jobs” while others just have jobs. Granted they all provide for their families so in that sense they are all important. However, when I look at my own family I believe that many of my aunts have the most important jobs. Many of them stayed home and raised their children. All of the cousins are grown enough now that this is no longer necessary. I believe two of my aunts, in particular, have highly important jobs. One is a middle school teacher and one works in a state university but she is not a professor. She too “manages” students. I think they are both amazing and their jobs are truly important. They are shaping and guiding the minds and behaviors of the ones who will surpass us.

I didn’t move to China with any of this in mind, remember I just came because I had something else opening up. Perhaps I am just trying to justify my time here as important. I am not naïve enough to believe that my one year here will make some dramatic diplomatic impact in the next twenty years, but wouldn’t that be nice.