Unhappiness

Unhappiness

If I stress the various facets of unhappiness, it is because I believe unhappiness should be studied very carefully. This certainly is no time for any one to pretend to be happy, or to put his unhappiness away in the dark. You must watch your universe at it cracks above your head

Paul Bowles, author of the famous novel The Sheltering Sky

This is the darkest time in Vietnam in the 21st century. The historical enemy, China, took away land at the northern border, took all of the Paracel Islands and most of the Spratly archipelago, occupied the Central Highlands, flooded the land with its cheap consumer goods--- legally through trade and illegally through smuggling, built dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong River and thus slowly is strangling the economy of Vietnam. Instead of mobilizing the people against the pending full scale invasion planned by the enemy, the Vietnamese Communist Party is busy arresting those patriotic and concerned Vietnamese who dare voice their displeasure at the activities of China. The Vietnamese Communist Party, the actual ruler of Vietnam, is signaling to China that the door is wide open, please come on in and take away Vietnam.

This is certainly the unhappy time to be Vietnamese, unless one is a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party or one is a China’s lackey. The Vietnamese people, in Vietnam and overseas, are watching the universe as they know it is cracking above their heads, the country as they know it is being sold away to foreigners to line up the pockets of the corrupt ruling elite, the Vietnamese women being given away as brides to foreigners--- mostly Chinese merchants, and the East Sea as they have known it for thousands of years being confined to a narrow body of water close to shore.

This is certainly not the time to pretend to be happy if you are a concerned Vietnamese. Nor is it the time to put away your unhappiness away in the dark. If you must cry, you must cry out in the open, and ask the question “why?” and then ask yourself the next question “is there anything you can do to reverse the horrendous situation facing the survival of the Vietnamese as a separate people and Vietnam as a sovereign country?”

Ah, the above “dissertation” is about political matters, something most humans find themselves uninvolved because they feel powerless in effecting a change. They prefer to let the political activists take care of those matters and they would go along for a free ride. I don’t really blame them. Politics is a game which is at once dangerous and dirty, not suitable for the faint-hearted or the high-minded people. I am not really made for politics although I studied Political Science at graduate level in college. I studied it because it was the only subject available for a person of my background in the liberal arts when I applied for a scholarship to study overseas many, many moons ago. I studied it without distinction or enthusiasm. I didn’t find much pleasure in it. Meanwhile my heart was shattering into hundreds of pieces. I was unhappy and very much so. Today, a Spanish song on the radio brought to the surface long-suppressed memories. My unhappiness was revived. On top of that, anger walked in and courted my unhappiness. Together they tormented me. Together they forced me to confront the age-old issue of love, the issue I would rather forget, bury, or, better still, kill. I am too old to talk or think about adolescent love. As time passes by, it is becoming a stranger to me. I am too hurt, too jaded, and too unhappy to believe in romantic, adolescent love anymore.

Love is a comedy for those who are not involved and a tragedy for those who are in the thick of it. Let me regale you with a story with comedic overtones.

A young Vietnamese woman of twenty without much education but plenty of wiles met an American colonel of Greek descent, aged forty-five, in one of the infamous Saigon bars during the height of the Vietnam War. He was not just a run-of-the mill colonel, but of the military intelligence branch and twice divorced. He was also an ex-pilot. Somehow he fell for her, but the military regulation was that he was not allowed to fraternize with local women. He had to go through hoops to convince his superiors that the woman was not a spy. The army investigated her thoroughly and finally gave him the OK to marry her after she already gave birth to a baby girl. When Saigon was in the throes of being overrun by the Communists in the last days of April, 1975, the colonel had to risk his own life to go here and there to secure the evacuation papers for the woman, their daughter, and twenty eight (!) relatives of the woman. They got to the States and lived in Florida. Although the colonel doted on his daughter, he didn’t give his Vietnamese wife much freedom or money. She had to use all her skills to survive as a business woman in the restaurant and later jewelry business. She made enough money to retire when she turned sixty. By that time she and her husband had moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, a nice upscale city near Phoenix. She was used to being independent during those tough years when she first got to the United States where she encountered language barrier. She was accustomed to doing things her way. When she retired from business, she and her husband had drifted apart emotionally, though not physically. She spent a lot of time with her female friends gambling in the local casino, leaving her husband at home watching TV or associating with his old military friends. One fine day she came home and found a note from her husband that he had found a new love and was filing for a legal separation. Shocked and angry, she tried to get a hold of her husband but he didn’t come to the phone. Finally, Oanh—that was the woman’s name, had to hire a detective who tracked her husband (Pierre) down. It turned out that Pierre had moved into a house of a Vietnamese woman in Las Vegas whom he had met over the Internet. Overcome with anger and humiliation, Oanh flew to the house of the other woman and made a big scene by shouting and uttering all kinds of profanity. Promptly thereafter, a cop showed up to her house and presented her with a restraining order. Depressed, Oanh couldn’t sleep. Her heart had all kinds of palpitations. That was when she came to me because I moonlighted as a counselor specializing in untangling the convolutions of the heart. The following was a partial transcript of the sessions I had with her.

-What should I do? I want my husband back.
-Let me ask you a question. Do you really love your husband? Or do you want him back simply because he is now shacking up with somebody?
-What kind of question is that? What kind of a counselor are you?
-A very good question. A very good counselor, also.
-I beg your pardon?
-I’m saying my question to you is a very good one. I’m also saying that I am a very good counselor.
-Ah, I see.
-Do you really?
-What do you mean?
-I mean do you really love your husband or is it the question of the ego here. From the way you described to me, you took your husband for granted. You ignored him. You neglected him. You assumed that since he is an eight-three year-old man, no pun intended, nobody is interested in him. But you were erroneous in your assumption. Now you want him back, but it is a bit late, don’t you think?
-I came to you for help, for getting my husband back, not to hear you putting me down. I don’t know why my friends said you are very good. You certainly are a very strange counselor.
-Strange but good. You will see. Listen, I help people deal with reality, naked reality, unvarnished reality. That’s my mission in life. Nothing but reality.

(To be continued)