The Beautiful Music of a Foreign Tongue
Yesterday I was shopping alone in a COSTCO where I am often entertained with the overwhelming array of people and products.
The staggering selection of merchandise, both in quantity and diversity sends me down abstract thought trains of blockchain distribution systems, energy trails, deforestation, chemical use, deferred economic costs, and the amazing luxury of wealth this country has come to take for granted.
Eyeglasses, electronics, appliances, clothing, furniture, light fixtures, tents, saunas, batteries, hardware, beer and wine, and more wine, vegetables, and fruits, some of which I had not seen in the first three quarters of my life, pastries and bread, meat and fish, prepared foods, including the famous rotisserie chicken, eggs, cheeses and dairy, paper products, pet food, all manner of water, bottled, canned, sparkling and flavored. Coffee, tea, rice, beans, other dried foods, frozen processed food, oils and condiments, isles of snacks, nuts and chips, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, vitamins and supplements, houseplants, automotive supplies, HVAC equipment, even cars, sheds, and travel packages, all there under on roof. And I failed to mention the food court.
I am a relatively simple person, with a short attention span and am easily distracted. When I am in the right frame of mind, a trip to Costco is like taking a 12-year-old kid to an arcade, and I am struck with the wonder of it all. Sometimes I do find myself going down the path of being appalled at the opulence and waste associated with our basic existence in this country. It is a fine line to walk, and on one side, I am enchanted, on the other, I am completely depressed with the shortsightedness of resource consumption, and the disparity of wealth across the planet.
As I was passing the last wall of cheeses, on my way to find some sparkling water, (the store periodically moves items around so a shopper has to hunt for things, and thus increase the likeliness of spontaneous purchases), I rounded a corner and was immediately enchanted with a lovely sound. As you might suspect, I am susceptible to audio stimulation and I felt myself break into a smile. There were two ladies, dressed in some traditional clothing, talking in a language I couldn’t recognize, but found to be so musical and pleasing to my ear.
Of course, it isn’t surprising I wouldn't recognize, their language or dress. For the first 18 years of my life, I grew up in a situation where my exposure to different languages was incredibly limited. I heard various “southern accents”, the nasal sound of upper mid-westerners, in high school, a little Spanish from classmates taking a foreign language, and brief interactions with the occasional exchange student.
When I was 8 or 9, my older brothers brought a Cuban refugee, Raphael over to our house, and then when I was in high school, we had one foreign exchange student, Claus, who was from Sweden. It wasn’t until I was in college that I had any routine interaction with people from other countries or even other parts of the US.
I did have one black friend when I was in junior high, but that was only for a few months, and then I changed schools.
Early in my life, my cultural exposure was extremely limited.
The exotic sounds of these two women talking in Costco were just delightful. I would have liked to stop and ask them where they were from, but in today's world, I didn’t want to run the risk of drawing undue attention to them or making them uncomfortable in any way.
What a terrible shame it is that our country has developed such a huge level of animosity toward immigrants. While a great deal of attention and rhetoric has been directed at illegal immigrants, this appears to me to be just the surface of a multilayered malicious bigotry directed toward immigrants.
We entertained a beautiful young couple and their two-year-old son for several days over Christmas a few years ago. They were from France, one was a physics and the other was a metallurgical researcher. They were working through the process of becoming American citizens and were in this country with work permits. Unfortunately, due to a shift in political policies, their permits were not renewed and they had to move back to France.
It was a shame.
Like many folks walking around in Costco who are unaware or do not think of global trade, and the fact that the grapes they bought in January were grown in Peru, most folks do not have an understanding of the complicated process of immigrating to the U.S. I don’t profess to be an authority on the matter either, but I have spoken at three US Naturalization ceremonies, and worked with many local businesses involved with immigration, and migrant labor.
Just the sound of these two women talking brought a little unanticipated joy to me that day. Unfortunately, this was followed by the deep sadness that so many people in our country are afraid of diversity and are threatened with anything that could expand their narrow definition of our culture.
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate at common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”
Buckminster Fuller