"Home Is Where the Heart Is" Reflection

***please read "Home Is Where the Heart" poem in the prior entry first***

If people last year asked me where I thought my home was, I probably would have answered in the west suburbs of Downers Grove without hesitation. However, I consider Chicago as my home more and more now at my second year here at UIC. I wouldn’t say I’m a “true” Chicagoan, but I’m getting there; I want to get there (my definition of a “true” Chicagoan will be explained later). The reason for this change is because the City is now the environment surrounding me that is affecting me, shaping me, and changing my perspective about life, the world, society, and even my own identity.

Having established that my home is now in Chicago, I began to ask myself how I felt and thought about the City. One of the first things I felt was fear and anger as I thought about the City’s corruption, segregation, violence, injustice, and racism. A big part of UIC’s education in the Liberal arts and Science department is learning about the social problems in our society, and living in the City allows us as students to see these problems if we choose to. These thoughts got me really confused because… why would I want Chicago to be my home if this was how I felt about it. I started to think about racial segregation that’s seen so starkly in Chicago neighborhoods and reflected on UIC’s campus although it is one of the most diverse campuses in the US, but one of the most divided. For the most part, from my observation, Asians stick with Asians, Blacks stick with Blacks, Indians with Indians, and so forth. One would think that there would be a lot of opportunities of interracial mingling at such a diverse university, but it’s not happening, at least not to the extent that UIC has the potential to do.

Then, I started to think about all the prejudice and stereotypes people, including myself, have put on one another. I began to write about all the prejudice thoughts I’ve had about each racial group and even collected some ideas from my friends. When I wrote them all down, I got even more scared. But this time, I got scared of myself and how I had thought these things and even believed them at times. I thought about times I’ve walked to the other side of the street when I saw a black man walking toward me at night. Or when I thought Indians and Pakistanis were all mean, selfish, and inconsiderate people because I didn’t like this one Indian girl in my class. So, I really began to question, “Can I consider Chicago my home when I can’t even accept all the different types of people around me? Chicago is such a diverse City, how will I survive with these kinds of thought? Where did these kinds of thought even come from?”

This was when I began to think about the home I grew up in, and how my home during my adolescent years shaped my thinking and attitude about life and about other people. I originally wanted to blame my safe, sheltered environment in the suburbs for not exposing me to the violence, economic injustice, and what not that are more clearly seen in the City. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized those are all excuses. My high school was pretty diverse compared to other high schools around my town. I was educated about social injustice and racism from the books I read and discussions with friends. So again, where did my prejudice come from? I wanted to point the fingers at my parents because all parents have a great influence on how a child thinks during their developmental stages. My parents, both Taiwanese, had prejudice against the Chinese and Indians. Many discussions at the dinner table were about how cheap Indian and Chinese people are when I was growing up. However, I knew they were biased and ignorant because they hardly interacted with Indians and rarely tried to get to know any Chinese. So, my questions still stood. What is the root of my misconceptions?

I finally realized that these thoughts were rooted in my own, pride-ridden heart. I don’t mean to put these labels on people, but I realized living in the City, those thoughts just kind of pop up in my mind. Sometimes, when I walk pass a black person, I think, “don’t think they’re bad or stupid people.” But the fact that I have to remind myself to NOT think that way shows me that I AM thinking that way. I find myself suppressing my prejudice when I ride in the CTA and even in class, consistently reminding myself that I am no better, no smarter than other people. I hope there will come a day when I’ll be humble enough that I won’t have these thoughts about other people. In fact, I constantly ask God fix my heart to give me a heart of humility like Jesus’.

With all that said, the phrase “home is where the heart is” is pretty abstract. It kind of evolved as I was writing my poem from home as an environment to where my literal heart was. Home “as an environment” is where the heart is because, whether we like it or not, we have some sort of connection to the environment we grow up in. This gives us that “homesickness” we feel sometimes. A bit of ourselves, a bit of our hearts stay with the places we grow up in. In another sense, home is where the heart is because what I think and what I say is often a clear a reflection of my heart motives. So, my heart motives itself creates an environment that I can also call my home. It sometimes ain’t a pretty place, but Jesus is fixing it one day at a time.

Back to what I mentioned earlier about what it means to be a true Chicagoan, I believe a “true” Chicagoan is someone who really has a heart for Chicago; one who is really aware and actually cares about what’s going on, and one who is determined to make a difference. Someone could have grown up in Chicago all their lives and not be a “true” Chicagoan because they don’t give a crap about issues that are affecting people everyday. I think this is true for any town or city. Therefore, this is why I say Chicago is becoming my home: I am growing a bigger heart for my City, my home.

(Note: this was an assignment for my Asian American Literature seminar)