Just Passing By

My drives to and from work were usually spent in deep thought and contemplation. Well, maybe that’s fluffing the truth a little. I don’t always have profound thoughts during these half-hour trips. If you’re following this blog, you’ve read quite a few entries where the people and events that made it to my posts came from me being a full-fledged “usisera.”

I’m still as nosy as your next door neighbor but I’ve been preoccupied lately. As soon as I hop on my car, I’d turn on the CD player and “read” whatever book that’s in there. This week, I join Wan Lung and O-Lan’s tumultuous journey. I found myself heartbroken when they and their children starved during the famine. My heart warmed when Wan Lung carried all three children and his ancient father over the great wall that separated their small Chinese village from the town, even when he himself was weak from not having eaten in weeks since the winter started. I cheered for him when, despite his poverty, he chose to pull a rickshaw and earn a pittance instead of beg in the streets, like most of the able-bodied refugees in the city that embraced them during the drought.

I admire this man, Wan Lung, for his integrity and hard work. I am inspired by the hope he held within his heart that got him through the roughest, most difficult time in his life. I am in awe of his wife O-Lan who as a little girl, was sold as a slave. She toiled the land alongside her husband even when her babies were due. She gave birth to all her children alone, and hours later, would cook for the whole family, like the slave she was brought up to be. She was the quiet but steady force in the Wan Lung household.

I’ve never been so poor as to live in similar circumstances as this family. But there is one thing that reminds me about what makes a man or woman. Poverty alone does not ruin a man’s character nor do his riches make him great.

I have a few more chapters (5 CDs) to go before I finish this book. And for the first time since opening “The Good Earth,” I can say I don’t mind this Friday afternoon’s commute at all.