The Brutalist, Pachinko, Comrades: Almost a Love Story. Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys, Jia Zhangke’s Still Life, and the novels of Tash Aw. Even with just a little reflection, there is no shortage of great works centered on outsiders, but how truthfully do we really understand and connect with what we call “the lives of immigrants”? A few days ago, I found myself facing that weighty question life had put before me. As if epiphany often comes from wise answers, but sometimes from clear questions.
About a year after starting a small massage business in a foreign land, I met a client. A, now in his late sixties, had worked as a police officer for over 25 years before retiring and had also taught police administration and criminal psychology at a college for quite some time. Yet, despite such a conventional background, when I first met him, with Einstein-like unruly white hair and Harry Potter-like round glasses, he seemed to think and live a little differently from most people.
As I got to know him better, I learned that he was a public official who first came out as gay in the 1980s, when even progressive California was much less open about homosexuality than it is today. I didn’t know all the details, but he was also very wealthy. Intrigued by him in many ways, I slowly and steadily continued our relationship, partly out of a desire to keep him close and explore who he was.
And one day, B appeared by A’s side. B was A’s new boyfriend, a young man around my age and a well-presented Mexican immigrant. Despite their age difference, the language barrier, and seemingly having nothing in common, I had the impression that they somehow suited each other. Sure enough, they soon began living together, and about a year later, they became a married couple. And as they held hands and overcame the hurdles before them one by one, I was there beside them at almost every step, both as their massage therapist and as a friend, celebrating together, exchanging small gifts, and sometimes sharing our worries and concerns, and little by little, we grew closer.
Looking back, it has been more than two years since I met B, yet ours remained a purely social relationship, like anyone we might encounter at school or work, greeting each other appropriately without ever having a deep conversation or genuinely connecting. It wasn’t that I had no chance, but after tossing a few stones to gauge the depth of the lake called “him” and finding it wasn’t very deep, I made no further attempt or effort. A kind and friendly person, but not very deep and different in nature from me. I was the one who arbitrarily put that label on B, but looking back, it wasn’t he who was trapped by it, but me.
Like many young people my age, I thought B was kind and simple, with little to worry about, and lived an easy life after marrying a wealthy husband. But at some point, I began hearing that B was suffering quite a lot from insomnia. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but over time, his psychological symptoms seemed to worsen into physical reactions, including digestive problems, headaches, muscle stiffness, and trembling. Meanwhile, knowing I was studying TCM and practicing acupuncture, A asked if there might be a way I could help him, and that was how the chance for us to have a serious conversation came unexpectedly.
At the root of his symptoms were recurring anxiety attacks, and since I needed to understand where they came from and what they were, I carefully asked him a few questions. And at the end of the long, dark, difficult cave we entered together, what I encountered was something I had never expected.
Born into a poor family in Mexico, where the gap between rich and poor is wide and most people belong to the working or lower-middle class, B began working in kitchens at a young age and naturally became a chef. The kitchen world is already rough, dangerous, and physically demanding, but he also spent his late teens and twenties working under abusive people without proper compensation, leaving him with deep scars. But his elderly parents and surroundings, where, looking around, almost everyone was poor, made him keep quiet and endure it, and eventually he began to grow sick from within, without anyone knowing.
Meanwhile, time passed, and like any life, B eventually crossed the border and moved to the US for his own reasons. Coincidentally, around the same time, I too crossed the Pacific and began my life as a stranger in the same country, in the same city. I had already spent years living as a stranger in Australia, England, and Malaysia before arriving on this continent of the American Dream, like Jack in Titanic and Laszlo in The Brutalist, accumulating more stories than I could ever recount. So I knew well that for people like us, putting down firm roots in this arrogant land was no easier than a sapling breaking through concrete to take root. The reason I had lived the past few years with the heart of a boxer stepping into the ring every day was simply that I had little choice.
However, not everyone is as relentless and fiercely driven as I am, so B, who began the same life as a stranger in the same city, around the same time and at a similar age, seemed on the surface to walk a much easier path, but on the inside he was still suffering from the vivid remnants of past nightmares, unable to break through any of the countless obstacles he faced in this unfamiliar world, becoming more and more of a reclusive loner.
"Tao, I know. My husband is a wonderful man, we love each other very much, and I know I have so much to be grateful for. But all of it makes me unbearably anxious. What if something goes wrong and I end up back in the poor country I came from, in that kitchen filled with swearing and thick smoke? Now, even looking at my husband’s face scares me. I’m afraid everything might disappear as if it never existed."
When he answered my question about his greatest anxiety like this, I can’t quite explain it, but the walls I had built within myself came crashing down in an instant. And for the first time, I felt I was truly encountering the other before me, having finally discovered something essential about who he really was.
He was, after all, an immigrant and a stranger like me, and that alone made our connection clear enough. Yet I had always used my own struggles as an excuse, never leaving room to spare even a glance or a thought for someone close to me who was bending under the same burden I carried, desperately looking for a way out of that dangerous, suffocating situation. That realization made me ashamed, and seeing my past self overlap vividly with B broke my heart. I gathered myself for a moment and carefully began to speak to B, or rather, as if I were trying to rescue the version of myself from those days when no one had come to save me.
"I’ve lived a life full of twists and turns, and along the way, I’ve met all kinds of people, the rich and the poor, the well-educated and the uneducated, those from the privileged upper class of the developed world, and those at the absolute bottom in the Third World. And through it all, the one conclusion I’ve come to in my own way is that the central force sustaining human existence doesn't come from external conditions like wealth or good education, but from something within us. No matter how much someone enjoys or how comfortably they live, without that core, they tend to drift; and no matter how harsh the conditions, those who possess that essential strength ultimately find a way to turn things around.
When I think about what that central force might be for us strangers, struggling to plant our roots in a foreign land, I believe it is none other than self-esteem. It is refusing to surrender our dignity as human beings, our love for ourselves, and the quiet faith that we are worthy, even when surrounded by everything that looks down on and disregards us. Of course, that self-esteem also doesn't come from what surrounds us or what we possess, but rather wells up from within when we strive to achieve something through our own strength, no matter how small. I hope you will reflect deeply on this fundamental force. And always keep this in mind: no matter how much you enjoy, no matter how safely you are sheltered, you can never be truly happy without that self-esteem that fills your soul with pride in who you are.
I also want to talk with you about how to wisely navigate and heal from the painful trauma you’re going through. While our specific details may differ, as a fellow stranger who has walked through nightmarish times, I know all too well what it feels like to be tormented by trauma. And yet, you know what wisdom I uncovered after wandering, breaking down, and making countless mistakes in my attempt to free myself? It was the simple truth that ‘my thoughts are not me, and my emotions are not me.’ Perhaps this isn’t something you can fully grasp all at once; you may have no choice but to keep exploring it, piece by piece, until you awaken to its true meaning and embody it for yourself.
Yet, once you begin to see that the thoughts and emotions boiling over in your mind aren’t actually reality, and when you can finally detach them from who you are, safeguarding your inner peace becomes far easier. I hope you will hold these words close and think deeply about what they mean.”
I know that the advice or counsel we offer in the hope of being helpful rarely actually saves another person. Yet the reason I couldn't help but deliver those words with all my heart, pressing down every single word with force, was that even if I couldn’t save him, I had to save myself reflected in his eyes, no matter what.
Because living as a stranger in a foreign land while preserving one’s dignity is, in truth, less a noble or glamorous thing than desperately holding back a bursting dam, running until the soles of your feet sweat and using every resource you possibly can. And so, whenever I had the chance, I was asking myself to hold on, not to grow tired, to become clearer, not to collapse here, but to grow wiser and more radiant, hoping that as I held with all my strength the hand of myself reflected in the eyes of another, the soul before me, too, would discover the self of today reflected in my eyes and become fully connected with it.
© Photos & Text by Tao Jung