Arn Chorn Pond Reflection

I thought Arn Chorn Pond's event was a very valuable one to attend. While I had previously seen him speak in 7th grade (if my memory serves correctly), I thought this event provided a lot of fresh perspective on his life as a survivor of the Khmer Rouge and an immigrant in the United States. 

Some points that Pond made that especially struck me were the ones concerning his actions in America. Pond talked candidly about his experiences entering high school with little knowledge of English or the regional culture. He stuck out like a sore thumb in his school environment, and thus, his classmates teased and mocked him. Pond said that the loneliness and ostracism he faced in school pushed him into a deep depression. This especially surprised me because he had previously elaborated on his struggle for survival after fleeing the Khmer Rouge and braving days isolated in a jungle, with little food and little assurance of any. In a sense, the environment Pond would face in America would drive him closer to death than in Vietnam, which is a chilling thought. The struggle for an immigrant isolated from his family thousands of miles away and shunned from his peers in America really brought home the message the idea of belonging, and how I thought about it, mental health in a sense.

This is not an easy problem to solve. It's certainly a global problem, as evidenced by this example, it can affect our friends in Vietnam just as much as in America. I suppose what really comes across here is the importance of being sensitive to another's culture and history as much as you can. We are not the "perfect community" that Pond first thought we were when he arrived to America, we all have problems. What mends relationships and stabilizes communities is not perfection in communities, but rather acceptance of each other.