The Simplest Pleasure

by Wayne Chan

This will be the final column that I’ll contribute to AsAmNews. That’ll be nearly 60 columns I’ve written, and it’s been an incredible honor to work alongside so many dedicated journalists and reporters focusing on the Asian American experience.

I’ll continue to write from my perspective as a dad, husband, brother and son. Most of my stories tend to be written at my own expense, just another shared example of how things can go awkwardly awry in the funniest of ways.

No more stories about how I tried to impress a date in my single days by taking her out in a sailboat and getting it stuck on the bottom of the lake which forced me to get in the water to push it free.

Or when I took another date out to a fancy dinner, had one too many glasses of wine and ended up laying on a couch while being serenaded by a formally attired string quartet playing a Mozart chorale piece. I don’t know if they were trying to lull me to sleep or jolt me awake during the crescendo.
I thank my lucky stars that I’m no longer single anymore.

If there’s anything that I’d like to leave you with, it’s this: Life is too short not to spend your time looking for joy whenever you can find it.

We all live busy lives. We’re inundated by information, and most of the information collected is designed to keep your attention. Unfortunately, that means much of what we see on air or online is dramatic, climactic, and more often than not, tragic.

I don’t deny that that’s all a part of life. We need to know about it. There are times that we can do something about it. But, lest we forget the times we’ll most want to remember are the ones that ultimately made us laugh, feel joy or be inspired.

I remember the time my 14-year-old son Tyler stood up for a younger Asian boy who was being bullied at school. Not only did he stop the bullying, but every day during lunch he would sit next to the boy to keep him company and make sure his young friend wouldn’t go through any more of it. We never told him to do that – he did it on his own. This simple gesture told us something about our son, but also told us something about ourselves.

There was an incident many years ago when I had just gotten out of college and was visiting my best friend who lived in Chicago, and happens to be White. We were walking around Lake Michigan and my friend Scott made a joke and I laughed out loud. A group of strangers looked at me and said, “I didn’t know you people laughed so much.” Scott, looking puzzled, said, “Are they talking about us?”, and I said, “No Scott, he’s talking about me.”

Was it the overt racism that made me remember this? No. It was Scott’s reaction when understanding what some of us must go through and my having to hold him back when he wanted to retaliate. His sudden realization and immediate instinct to do something to defend his friend is what I’ll never forget. Heck, it’s been over 40 years now.

These are the things that mean the most to me. I suspect that you have moments of real meaning in your life as well.

Look for those moments. It makes the journey all that more worthwhile.

The beauty is in the discovery.

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