Instead of seven things, just one.

Years ago-- I'm getting to the age where all my stories start with years ago-- I took a year of Chinese language classes at our community college. The professor was here for a year on a Fulbright scholarship from a university in northern China.

The class was interesting, but sadly I was in the midst of peri-menopause and I have almost zero memory of the Chinese I spent a year learning. At least that's my excuse. Xie xie is about the extent of my Chinese. (I can say thank you in five languages. woot!)

But that's not the story I wanted to tell you. The class met five days a week for two hours, so we had a lot of time to get to know our professor. His English name was Eric. Part of the way we learned about Chinese culture was by observing his culture shock during his first extended stay in the US. He had been to California on vacation, but rural Montana is not exactly the same.

Interesting(?) aside: the locals here don't consider our area to be rural. For Montana, this is a crowded city. And we now have Costco, Walmart, TJMaxx, and three Starbucks, so maybe they're right.

So one day after months of mini-discussions about cultural differences, we (somewhat naively) asked Eric how/why the Chinese people put up with living under an oppressive government. And he responded (I'm paraphrasing): the Chinese people are ancient. We will outlast any government. We just wait them out.

I've thought about that a lot, especially recently. There's quite a bit to unpack there, including the idea that in his mind, "we" includes future generations, since the change in government might not occur during his lifetime-- it certainly didn't look like it was going to at the time when we were talking to him.

But even more interesting to me: Americans (including me) are all about being upset about what's going on at the top of our government power structure. ALL ABOUT IT. But in some ways, that makes us more a victim of an authoritarian power structure than the people who are genuinely living in an oppressive power structure, but view it as merely a passing phase.

We Americans grant those people at the top all the importance by focusing so intensely on what they're doing, and pretending that what's going on in our country is all about them. Which mindset is truly oppressed?  Watching my own mind these days, I'm thinking it might be us.

Thought for the day.