The first generation’s pursuit of essentials

When you grow up poor, security becomes one of your top goals in life.

It is especially paramount if you’re a refugee or immigrant. After all, you left your homeland and took great risks in pursuit of security, both in the physical and financial sense.

A secure life is a life where you’re physically and legally safe. It’s a life where you have a way to make a living that’s well-paid and sustainable, and you have safeguards when things go wrong.

Thanks to our parents’ and grandparents’ sacrifices, many in my generation who grew up in America have that security. In fact, we got security and then some more.

Many of us not only obtained a college degree but several advanced degrees. It’s a drastic change from our grandparents’ generation when illiteracy was common.

Thanks to access to nutritious food our generation’s concern is staying in shape. Our parents’ generation’s concern was starvation.

We can afford not just safe shelter but nice comfortable homes in American suburbia. It’s a giant leap from our parents fleeing their homeland and living in underprivileged neighborhoods upon arriving in America.

We have more than reliable transportation, driving functional single-occupant, if not brand new cars. That’s a world away from the bicycles our parents rode in Vietnam and the public buses of their first years in America.

Our jobs have paid vacation and sick time to guarantee income even when we’re not working. So many people in the world don’t get paid when they don’t work.

Retirement and pension plans ensure income when we will be too old to work. During our parents’ career when survival needs left nothing extra, savings would have been a dream.

Life insurance provides needed support to loved ones lest we die, a safeguard that is still rare for most people in the world.

Most of us earn a decent living and many normalize a 6-figure salary. The simple fact of working in America, even if you make minimum wage, puts you in the top income bracket across the globe.

The second generation’s pursuit of purpose

I got what my parents dreamed for me, and I admit that I’m unsatisfied. It feels empty – the well-paid job, the beautiful house, the nice car, the saving accounts, the delicious feasts, the shop-therapy, the jet setting, all this security and then some…Just. Isn’t. Enough.

The dissatisfaction started long ago. At first it was a tolerable misalignment between my calling, to serve my Vietnamese people, and my activities, to fulfill whatever academic and job requirement in order to get security in life. It has gradually deepened to an unbearable void. It’s gotten to a boiling point where I can’t ignore it anymore.

They say if you declare your true desires, the universe will conspire to help you. So I’m admitting this.

I feel guilty for feeling this way, since the security I have took multi-generational sacrifices to achieve. It’s a good life that most people in the world strive for as my family and I had. I should feel grateful, and I do. But it’s possible to feel grateful and discontent at the same time.

My parents worked to survive. They worked to put food on the table, to keep a roof over our heads, to send money back home to our family in Vietnam for basic needs, to keep the bare minimum together.

Now that I have security, I yearn for meaning. My parents derived meaning from providing for their family and investing in their children’s future. I used to derive meaning from fulfilling their hope and pulling our family out of poverty in my lifetime. Now that I’m there, I feel a void that stems from neglecting my people’s and my own emotional needs. It’s a sign inter-generational progress, really.

What happened was in our pursuit of security, we focused on what was lucrative because it was the practical thing to do. How many of you do not know a Vietnamese doctor, dentist, pharmacist, computer scientist, engineer, nurse, entrepreneur, or some other lucrative profession?

The problem is what pays (well) doesn’t relate to addressing issues in the Vietnamese community at all, and work that serves the Vietnamese people doesn’t pay. It must be done on the weekend or at night, on a volunteer basis, or as a side thing pulled together by sheer passion after our day jobs leave us exhausted.

If I want to pursue work that serve my people, I’d have to choose between financial security and purpose, essentially giving up the former for the latter. I find it hard to make a career pivot that is both secure and meaningful.

Why it’s hard to close the gap

It doesn’t have to be either or, but it feels that way because the labor economy doesn’t pay for work by Vietnamese people and/or work that serve Vietnamese needs. Hence that work remains under-invested or just not done at all.

Why doesn’t the economy value Vietnamese goods and services performed by Vietnamese people worldwide? For instance, in the U.S., why is the price of pho as low as American fast food even though it costs more to make?

Why does a dish of pasta at Olive Garden cost more than a bowl of bun bo hue when the latter takes more effort, time, skill, and ingredients?

Why does the same Vietnamese dish cost more when sold by white people at their white restaurants than at a Vietnamese-owned restaurant? Think a $14 “bahn mi” or “bon me” at an American-owned joint versus a $5 banh mi at a Vietnamese-owned eatery.

Why is it okay to use American tax dollars to fund the teaching and learning of European languages in public schools but not Vietnamese (or Hmong and Oromo) when the local student population are more likely to use their ancestors’ language than a European language? Because the teaching and learning of Vietnamese language isn’t valued by mainstream society and economy, we run Sunday Vietnamese language schools completely on a volunteer and self-funded basis in addition to our day jobs.

Why does the economy pay more for books, therapy, and expert advice on mental health topics like work-life balance but the topic of war trauma remains neglected?

In the U.S., I struggle to think of any type of work done for and/or by the Vietnamese community that is actually valued for its worth.

I’ve thought about going back to Vietnam to live and work, but it’s not feasible to have financial obligations in U.S. dollars while earning an income in Vietnamese dong. (The international currency exchange system is rigged, a topic I’m saving for a later post).

A popular way to make a decent living in Vietnam is to work for a foreign corporation. But many corporations  have a profit-driven mission and oftentimes realize their profit at the expense of the Vietnamese people and the environment. I don’t want to go back to Vietnam to serve foreign interests.

Furthermore, wage is geographically-based and nationality-based, not talent-based or effort-based. For the same job duties and skillset, a worker in America gets paid many dozen times more than a worker in Vietnam. Even in the same locality I’ve always wondered why, for performing the same job under the same employer, a Vietnamese citizen is paid a small fraction of what a U.S. citizen is paid. The Vietnamese worker may even be more talented, more efficient, and more effective at doing the job. Something is off. Unpacking this will be another blog for a later time.

My point here is the economy doesn’t pay well for work done by Vietnamese people or work done to serve the Vietnamese people.

Figuring it out

I know there is demand for culturally appropriate services that actually serve my people’s needs, in America, in Vietnam, all over the world.

There’s demand for work that educates and celebrates language and culture, from Vietnamese language learning to Vietnamese children’s books to Vietnamese cultural celebrations.

Many Vietnamese people need mental health services after surviving war and migration. Their children need services for second-generation trauma.

There’s definitely demand for Vietnamese food, so much that even non-Vietnamese restaurateurs are making Vietnamese dishes.

The needs clearly exist. Where is the respect, acknowledgement, and dollars to reflect the value of skilled work to meet those needs?

I want to believe that it’s possible to have both financial security and purpose. I want to make working with Vietnamese people my main thing rather than a side, weekend, or occasional thing.

Work with Vietnamese people and Vietnamese issues deserve professional skills and full-time dedication. For those who want to do it, they shouldn’t have to choose between doing meaningful work and paying their bills. I want to figure out how to do this.

I know this question applies to many in the Vietnamese community and other communities as well. Do you feel a tension between your parents’ dream for you and your dream for yourself? Between the pursuit of essentials and the pursuit of purpose?