Reflection 38 -- The Metamorphosis

Reflection 38 -- The Metamorphosis

 For most people, year-end is a time of reflection -- looking both forward and backwards. As one-year dissolves into the next with regularity and no apparent change, 2017 turns into 2018. But for this cancer survivor there is a little more. It can best be described as a metamorphosis. I have become or more appropriately, am becoming someone, I wasn't. I am changing.

 I selected the word "metamorphosis" with a great deal of thinking. For it describes something very unique in nature. Most beings start and end life in essentially the same state. They are unchanged. For example, a young dappled white pony ends up as an old white mare. Its "mortal coil," to quote Shakespeare's Hamlet, remains the same. It is very few that experience such a large change in their physiology, anatomy and psyche to merit the label a metamorphosis change. That small percentage that do may be considered very special indeed. I contend that cancer survivors are included in that category. They are very special people.

 This Reflection uses the literary device known as a flashback to reveal a little of my life before the metamorphosis. Since up to this date, I have been concentrating on the after cancer and not the butterfly. I think that it is time to write about the caterpillar. Don't you? That will give you, dear reader, a more comprehensive profile of this writer.

 So, allow me to move over to a more comfortable position in front of the window and into my thinking chair in front of my thinking and writing desk. Now where did I leave my thinking cap? Aha, here it is. With a glass of soybean milk, some tofu pudding, my iPad and portable keyboard, I am ready to begin to write about the caterpillar.

 My name is Sun Wukong. (In Chinese culture the family name goes first out of respect. My given name is Wukong.) I was born nine years following the Second Sino-Japanese War in Nanjing (Nanking), the capital of the Republic of China at the time. 

 Rather than little old me, Nanjing is better known for an infamous act of horrific aggression and human rights abuse during the war (December 1937 to January 1938) by the Japanese army against the citizens of my hometown, particularly the girls and woman. A scholarly consensus suggests that between 40,000 to 300,000 civilians died. I still pause at the anniversary of the beginning of what became known as the "Rape of Nanking." My goodness, why doesn't anyone in the West knows anything about our war?

 Shortly following my birth, I was kidnapped out of the nursery at Nanjing Jianye Hospital of Traditional Medicine by a visiting Canadian couple and smuggled into Canada. Here I have lived in various places for the last 70+ years. I have been raised as Canadian and love this adopted country. But I always have had a sentimental weakness for my homeland. I study its culture like a religion. I think that everyone loves their homeland, no matter where their journey takes them. I believe that my roots go back to the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). Like all Chinese, ancestor respect is a significant part of my personality. I try to follow Taoism and listen to the Goddess of Mercy.

 Stop the presses! As exotic as all of this sounds, it is a fairy-tale. It is a complete fabrication. I am not Chinese. I was not kidnapped. It is a persona. I developed it because I wanted to offer my students a different kind of teacher; one they have never witnessed. I want them to see and become comfortable with a unique individual who is about to offer then a different view on adult teaching and learning. Above all, I don't want them to bring into the classroom old baggage and think my class will be managed by a "traditional" teacher (whatever they think that means) and build walls of fear and anxiety. I don't want them to yet again confirm that learning by rote is the cane to understanding. Too many returning adults carry too many uncomfortable experiences about the whole teaching shtick, the usual student / teacher relationship in a classroom. Too many recall old 'hard-wired' phobias such as a math or a writing particularly a grammar phobia. By becoming informal, comfortable, smile and perhaps laugh a little, learning becomes so much easier. (Yes, laugh out loud.) I have used this approach for over a decade. It works. My students often call me an "un-teacher" teacher. We are colleagues in learning. My Introduction to my persona smashes to smithereens any assumptions anyone brought into my classroom. 

 With all of that, allow me to get back to the business at hand, my past. 

 I have decided to look at six large segments; public school days, the Canadian Forces, back to civvies, ("Civvies" is an age-old term that military folks give to civilian life outside of the army, as in "civvie street"), university life, and finally post-graduation / teaching including my fascination with China.

 To begin.

1964. The Cuban Missile and the 'who-will-blink-first' contest between Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union and John Kennedy, the USA president; followed closely by the assassination of JFK was still fresh in everyone's mind. (There is nothing new today with the shock and awe media stories about the showdown between North Korea's Kim Jong-un and American's Donald Trump.) 

 So here I am, a 17-year-old know-it-all bumming around in my hometown of Toronto. Out of school...unemployed. Do you know the type dear reader? Am I catching you nodding in agreement? 

 After about three weeks of 'sort-of' looking for work, (if the truth were known, I spent most of the that time in my favourite pool hall with friends.) Two of my best friends and I decided to drive to Buffalo NY and join the US Army. The Vietnam War was raging and Canada was helping the Americans do God knows what. We could care less about all of that. We were interested in adventure. Only one of us met all of the prerequisites because only one of us was the age of consent, 18. We were a team. All or none. We returned home, deflated. 

 We collectively decided to try to join the Canadian military. We did just that on 12 March 1964. The three of us made the grade. Mom and Dad were 'tap dancing' when I told them that evening. After all of these years, I can still see them smiling.

 Hey, wait a minute. Wait just a darn minute. THIS IS BORING! COLOURLESS. UNEVENTFUL. I WAS FOLLOWING THE PRESCRIBED GROOVE. I WAS BORN OUT OF A COOKIE-CUTTER! 

 "Wukong, why are you shouting? You certainly know better than that," interjected my inner voice.

 "Well...well because I am having a defining moment. And it is depressing."

 "That is due cause to shout?"

 "Well...."

 "You are embarrassing yourself in front of your readers. Now, don't you feel silly about it?"

 My inner voice pauses.

 "Rather than relying on a purely emotional outburst like a spoiled 5-year old, wouldn't it be better to simply analyze the situation and perhaps concentrate on changing little bits for the future? Explore and concentrate on new avenues, forgetting regularity."

 "But I am not a Forrest Gump type who stretched his interesting life over a one hour plus movie. The readers will not be reading about misfortunes told in the Life of Job, or the carefreeness of The Wizard of Oz or Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, my favourite Chinese classic. No, they will not. Not even close. 

 "The truth of the matter and what they will be reading about (if I allow it) is akin to an Everyman, a regular Joe Lunch-bucket in today's terms.

 "Dear reader, life of this caterpillar is a succession of familiarity, uneventful and untoward happenings. Allow me a little time to tell a story. Above everything, I really am a storyteller.

 "Everyman (I like that 15th century English morality play allegorical character) woke at precisely 5:55 a.m. every morning. After doing his deep knee bending, ankle rotations, and arm swinging exercises, his feet hit the floor at 6:05. A quick shower and a shave found him pouring a bowl of Cheerios and soya milk into the Disney World bowl the grandkids brought back with them three years ago. Cereal, toast and jam. It never changes. Even the cereal boxes are lined up alphabetically in the pantry! Glancing at his Mickey Mouse watch, he is out the door in time to catch the 6:45 bus downtown.

 "Climbing onto the bus, Everyman is more than a little miffed since his usual seat is again occupied by the fat lady in a faux fur jacket. She needs a seat and a half. She should be charged more money. The city is always saying it needs more money. Why isn't she charged more? He sat in a different seat and thought about it for 5 stops. 

 "The bus rocked and rolled all the way downtown. A Winnipeg bus! People entered and departed. They were usually the same crowd, day-in-and-day-out.

 "At the designated stop, Everyman exited the bus and entered the college for yet another day of teaching the same Microsoft Office syllabus. Why don't they add a little variety. Let's teach Google Docs."

 "How are you doing?" asked a colleague.

 "Same old same old."

 "Have a...."

 "Good day."

 "You see, everything about Everyman is predictable on this predictable day. There was no glamour or fantasy. No riding on a white horse with a Buddhist disciple, fighting demons along the way to India in search of truth. No, none of that. 

 "Then, the predictable became the unpredictable. I had a life-altering experience. Cancer of the head and neck changed everything dear reader. It challenged and shifted my current paradigms. The caterpillar was forced into a metamorphosis...and is still there."