The writing space 2

I went to the second session of the writing space today. Here’s what I wrote with the given prompt within 20 minutes:



What is the spiritual background of your upbringing?

My spiritual background is not the one my parents, my mother mostly, would like me to have. As Taiwanese, not particularly sophisticated or well-traveled, they would do what most other people would do here—mixing Taoism and Buddhism, visiting temples during major festivals, praying for some kind of safety and stability whenever they felt like it.

My beliefs were not tied to those buddhas or whatever historical figures they put on display in those temples. My childhood circumstances taught me that those figures could not answer to my prayers; I must find the answers on my own. When I was left at my grandparents’ house, 300 miles away from my own home, at age 5 without any prior notice from my parents, I prayed to whatever Buddha image I had in my head that it would not be permanent, that my parents would come back to pick me up in just a few days. No one answered, and I didn’t see my parents again for the following 6 months. That was the first time I learned, religious figures couldn’t really see me; they must be too busy with all the other prayers from other bigger people, and I must find a way to create a majestic force on my own to get myself out of whatever situation I was in.

As I got a bit older, maybe at age 7 or 8, I started to find spirituality in stories about people and animals. I was reading constantly, fictions or non-fictions, for magical stories that absolutely did not align with my real life. I tried to figure out why events in life often happen in a chain and why some people could break them while others continued to be chained by them for good. I began to narrow down to a few things—will power, patience, temperament. When I was slapped on my face or humiliated in public by my caregivers, nothing spiritual would come to my rescue; when my siblings were covered in blood from domestic violence, no matter how hard they prayed, nothing could stop it from happening. The only way out was to build the will power to be independent, away from home, so that safety and stability could arrive, at least for a while, at age 9.

In my teenage years, I developed even more understanding between people, animals, children, and nature. I started to see the goodness in those things and somehow the real magical things actually happened around me. Friends and teachers remembered my help and inspiration for a long time, and whenever I was overwhelmed and scared, the nature always had a way to catch me. Since then, I have believed that spirituality was in me, around me, and between me and everything and everyone else.