Expanding the Lee's Blogging Family by One

Just when I was thinking about what to blog today, the what presented itself in the most uncanny manner. You know our family’s blogs are now endowed with nice looking headers, the result of an outpouring of creativity from our elder daughter.

Then our elder son also put in his own request, alluding to his new blog, Living in the Present, in the process. I guess this is his own way of letting us know that he has come of age. And he is now confident enough to share his thoughts in the blogosphere, thoughts germinated by his avid reading of English books ranging from Buddhism, martial arts, to philosophy, and now bearing fruits after some period of gestation.

From a young age, we know that his forte is English, his foundation having been laid through his four years of elementary (Williams) and middle (Lincoln) schooling here in Gainesville. I can still recall looking at his English class assignments on vocabulary building through such exercises as filling the blanks to giving synonyms and antonyms. I can tell you that each time there would always be a couple of words that I had not come across, even though I prided myself on having a respectable repertoire of English vocab honed through constantly matching wits with the Word Power gang of Reader’s Digest.

So welcome to the blogosphere, Wei Joo. But that also means his Mom has to do double duty in making sure that we exercise self restraint in voicing out against injustices. She believes in the Buddhist way of disseminating good deeds but refraining from washing dirty linens in public nor publicizing harsh criticisms on unfair treatments meted out by short-sighted bigots because she believes each of us would have to bear the consequences of our individual karmic accounting.

I think she does have a point, seeing how people can be blinded by irrationality and driven by mass hysteria. Often times, the adverse reaction originally targeted at the “guilty” party can unexpectedly be diverted to target those around the said party, even though they may have nothing to do with the furor except sharing some blood ties.

At the same time, keeping silent can be misconstrued as submissive, capitulating, even condoning, hence, perpetuating the injustice. The western way is to encourage speaking out, like what the Chinese bloggers are doing in China, though the cloak of internet censorship is widening its grip.

Each will have to tread this volatile business of speaking out and potentially incurring the wrath of those who feel “targeted”, perhaps with unintended backfires that bring harm to the innocent.

Fortunately, our lady of the house would see to it that we are not in harm’s way nor unwittingly channel harm to others who we care through our blogging.