A friendly little chat

We often like to complain about how we are always so busy with work, about how there are numerous deadlines to meet and exams to take. We worry about seeing the school year through, and then we proceed to worry about where we are going to go next for the holidays. We remark about how competitive life is, and about how we still have to find well-paying jobs, and start participating in the mindless monotony that is working life. And yet, so very often, we fail to recognise how fortunate we are that we can afford to worry about these kinds of things.

I had a little chat with one of the housekeepers today. He asked if I was Vietnamese, and I told him I was Singaporean. We spoke, at first in English, and then a couple of sentences in Mandarin, before I told him that I could speak Cantonese too.

He's been in Canada for almost 20 years now, and he's from Vietnam. He fled Vietnam as a politcal refugee, went to Malaysia and stayed in a refugee camp for 10 months before arriving in Canada. He managed to get a job after arriving, but the company he worked for closed down after 7 years, and so he worked in the food services at McGill. After 13 years, McGill food services decided to let him go as they could find cheaper alternatives. So now he's working as a housekeeper in my residence. He's got a family to support and to care for, so to make ends meet, he works Mondays to Fridays in the dorm, and on his weekends off, he works another job.

Despite all that he's had to face, his outlook on life is so cheerful and optimistic. He says life is only tough if you tell yourself that it is. It's so very true, and the message is really resonant when it comes from someone who has had so much thrown at him already.

So the next time I think that school and work is getting to me, that my life is difficult and complicated, I'll be thinking of him, and how if it isn't tough for him, it sure as hell shouldn't be for me.