Below is a personal essay I recently wrote, people seem to like it and some 
suggested it be posted.  So here it is ....



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Surely you can step twice in the same "river" ...but



 By Nguyen V.K. ©

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"You should go" my brother said "You have Parkinson's. If you don't go now, 
you may never get to go"



My other siblings often asked why I have not gone back to Vietnam, the 
country of my birth, the country that I left 30 plus years ago as an eleven 
year old.  Especially the one sister who still lives in Vietnam, after 
hearing about my numerous trips to many other parts of the world "How come 
you go everywhere but never come back to Viet Nam for a visit?".



"I will, sis. Someday, I definitely have to go back" I  promised.  To be 
blunt, I don't know why I haven't gone back. Most Vietnamese living abroad 
love to go back, like an annual pilgrimage to the motherland.  Some go back 
to look for a wife, some go back to behave as sex tourists, some go back to 
take their foreign-born children to discover their ancestral roots, some 
return to open businesses, or simply to see their loved ones. Whatever 
reasons - most have gone back since the Vietnamese govt started welcoming 
the "Viet Kieu", literally means "Overseas Vietnamese", and their remittance 
wealth.



I have a brother-in-law who never wants to go back either, but he has his 
reasons, he fought in the war for the South Vietnamese Army, the side that 
"lost".  So either out of pride of having to meet that faceless victor or 
simply a personal vow, he never wants to go back.   But I'm different, what's 
my reason for avoiding a return to my roots? I wondered myself for that lack 
of desire.  Have I turned "banana", yellow outside and white inside as a lot 
of Asians joke among themselves.  "No" is the conclusion upon my brief but 
decisive self-examination.  I still speak Vietnamese perfectly, still listen 
to its music, still pay attention to whatever success and fame the 
Vietnamese community brought forth just for the sake of ethnocentricity (a 
false belief that seems to be infecting every immigrant community).   I even 
intuited that my ambivalence towards going back to Vietnam could be the 
psychological dread of having been a boat person. May be I've been masking 
that dread with the natural resiliency (or ignorance) of youth.  Unlike a 
war trauma, wherein the sufferers have to endure re-living of the 
experience; if you survive the boating voyage, things always look better. 
The boating experience is usually comprised of - confronting the forces of 
nature with feebly empowered engines, shortage of food & water, plus limited 
if any navigational experience of the crew, thrown in with the occasional 
sightings of pirates etc.   But if you make it to land - the future is 
brighter, you get to re-locate somewhere in the first world, you become a 
landed immigrant, you have a chance to pursue an education, a job 
opportunity.



I just have to re-live that past dread of fearing the unknown before having 
to go on to face the next dread - the likely horrific conditions associated 
with a chronically worsening disease.  Like a Karma circle, life does repeat 
itself - but in different forms, except that one does not  even have to go 
through death to see life repeating itself.  What I'm going through with 
Parkinson's is also like what I went through as a boat person - fear, 
uncertainty, unknown future. Thus I decided to make my return to Viet Nam.



So this year I will take an Asian cruise that I carefully selected, one that 
has the most stopovers in Vietnam.  I thought that I must step in the 
same-yet-different river all over again to reminisce the survival of the 
first crossing and let it be an encouragement to my now second crossing of 
this river of fear.  Thirty years ago, I was on  an overcrowded  wooden 
boat.  In a month from now, barring any mishaps, I'll be on a luxurious 
cruise ship.



What a difference 30 year period can make. I can't wait to experience the 
feelings of being in the same waters in two diametrically opposing sets of 
circumstances.  Hopefully only then will I understand the meaning behind the 
Greek philosopher Heraclitus' quote from 2500 yrs ago "No man can ever step 
in the same river twice". A popular quote  first heard in Philo 101 but of 
which I always failed to fully appreciate over the years.



This one and the other quote "There's nothing good or bad, but thinking 
makes it so" by that great 16th century British playwright always gave me a 
headache back in my early education (imagine an immigrant youth with broken 
English having to grasp the meaning of Shakespeare).



Will I be able to experience life behind these abstract thoughts? 
Absolutely not, because Life is meant to be "lived".   More likely the 
saying "Enjoy what you can and Endure what you must" may ring truer to life. 
Different times bring about different conditions and situations, nothing is 
good or bad but living makes it so. As I might be indulging in the opulence 
and excess of a cruise with my rigor mortis-like health conditions now Or 
back then, enduring the perils of the seas and facing uncertain future with 
inspiring courage and hope.



Indeed for it's not the same river and I'm not the same man.

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