I finally started reading a book that’s been on my reading list for a long time called Fortune Cookie Chronicles. The book delves into the history of Chinese food in America, spanning all the way back to the 1850s when Chinese from Toisan (ya, aka Taishan, which is my paternal side’s region of origin) were trying to come to America in herds, looking for gold, riches, and opportunity. The book does a pretty good history lesson when reviewing newspaper articles and magazine publications at the time, denouncing these “strange” looking Chinese people with their even stranger and disgusting food.

Reading the quotes from these old articles in the mid to late 1800s, I couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of anger and disdain for the ignorant mindsets of local, predominantly white people of European descent at the time. They really believed that their boring baked potatoes and pot roasts were the true, civilized sustenance, and anything that had spice or was stir-fried (so novel at the time!) was filthy, made of chopped up rats, or encouraged promiscuity. Today, Chinese food is far more embraced by non-Chinese people, whether it’s for the “authentic” Chinese food I know and am still getting to know (I truly don’t think anyone on this earth, even those who live in China and travel all over China, will ever know ALL there is to know about Chinese food given how ridiculously diverse it is depending on the region you’re in), or for the generic Americanized dishes like General Tso’s chicken or stir-fried beef and broccoli. I still get frustrated when I hear people say that they don’t like Chinese food or Asian food because chances are that they haven’t had the “real thing,” or a true representation of how great the cuisine can be. But then I think, it’s really not all that bad. Ignorance will never fully be eliminated. And it just means I should appreciate people more who do appreciate cuisines that are different to what they grew up with and are used to eating.

It was a rainy, miserable day outside today, so other than seeing a show down in Astor Place early in the evening, Chris and I stayed home most of the day, cooking, cleaning, eating, and watching Tony Robbins speak at the Dream Force conference. I never really knew much about Tony Robbins other than the fact that he was a very successful and wealthy motivational speaker, but today while streaming his talk that happened earlier in the week in San Francisco, I realized why he had been so successful at his job. Despite all the setbacks he’s faced in life, the negligent father, the abusive and drunken mother, the health episodes he’s had, he still keeps going and uses all of his life adversities to motivate his next steps in helping the entire world. He doesn’t have any self pity. He doesn’t have a single fear, he said. And based on the way he delivered his talk and the way he’s lived his life, I actually don’t doubt his sincerity at all.

The strongest people will never have self pity or self loathing for a long period of time. They might mourn the loss of a loved one, be frustrated temporarily by losing a job or having some inconvenient life event happen. But the strongest of the strong will see all these “setbacks” as motivators to do better moving forward, and the best will help others with their knowledge and experience. As sad as it was, I thought about my cousin in Brooklyn a little when watching Tony Robbins speak, thinking of his dysfunctional marriage and his young son celebrating his fourth birthday this afternoon. He will never be strong because all he thinks is “poor me” for every possible reason in the universe. People can only be positively affected by someone like Tony Robbins who are open to change and open to leading happier, more productive lives. Tony Robbins said tonight that most of our disappointments in life could be solved by replacing our “expectations with appreciation,” and I realized how true it was. The more we expect of others, the worse we will be and the more upset we will get because no one in the universe will ever meet *all* of our expectations. But when people in our lives end up doing things that we love that make us happy either for ourselves or for them, if we appreciated it and expressed that appreciation and gratitude more, we’d be so much happier and more fulfilled. I never thought about it that way, but it’s so true and resonates through my life and even my own parents’. So many people in my life could benefit from Tony Robbins’s teachings, but they would be deaf to hear him speak.

Today, I took a break at a nearby coffee shop with a colleague who I’ve been working with for over two years. I knew a while back that mental illness affected her family, but recently I found out via a message she sent to me attached to the donation she gave to my AFSP drive that her brother was recently hospitalized for a relapse in alcoholism and seriously expressed a desire to harm himself. We spoke a lot about her family’s struggle to grasp her brother’s problem and her own desire to help him despite distance. Her family, like mine, doesn’t openly talk about mental illness or depression, but her parents have already started attending a support group for families who are touched by at a local hospital. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this, and sadly wished that my parents could have even considered for a second.

It was really hard for me at times to listen to what she was saying, not because I didn’t want to listen, but because it hit so close to home for me in terms of her fears, her frustrations, and her anger about the way her parents were handling the situation, and the way society handles or refuses to address mental illness. Her fear of losing her big brother is the same fear I had of losing Ed in the months leading up to his suicide. Her feeling of helplessness is the same as how I felt. “I’m scared that next year, I’m going to be joining you in your fight, that I will lose my brother the same way you lost yours three years ago,” she said to me. I had to keep my tears back as she looked me in the eye while saying that.

She told me she wished more people would be open about talking about mental illness in the way I was, and she was really happy to have the opportunity to speak with me. “You’re just so brave to share your story and all the details of your brother’s life through your fundraiser,” she said to me. The truth is that I don’t really think what I’m doing is brave. I just think it would be very selfish if I never tried to help anyone else who may be suffering from mental illness after what my brother went through. I wasn’t able to do enough to help him. But if I could do something small to help someone in the future, I think that is the very least I could do in his memory. I can’t fail my brother and what he meant to me.

If there are themes I drew from the RNC speeches last week, they were that of division, negativity for the future, hate, anger, anti-tolerance masked as tolerance (Peter Thiel – really? Do you really think the Republican party sees you as a true equal when if you wanted, they wouldn’t even approve of your marriage because you’re gay?), and a deep desire for Hillary Clinton to be dead. The idea that grown adults could say that Hillary Clinton had a partnership with Lucifer seems pretty senseless and embarrassing to me.

Yes, there was yelling at the first night of the Democratic National Convention, and yes, there were Bernie protesters and divisiveness in the DNC crow;,yes, there was criticism of Trump, but one thing that resonated throughout is optimism for our country and the future. When Michelle Obama spoke these words, I could feel tears in my eyes welling up:

“That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.

And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.”

The White House was built by slaves. Who ever mentions that — ever? And the idea that it’s actually a realistic possibility that the United States could have its very first female president 240 years after being founded — it’s absolutely chilling to me — in a good way. This is a potentially historic moment that awaits us. Eight years ago, we elected the first (half) black president of the United States. Eight years later, we could be electing the first female president of the United States. Progress is possible. Acceptance of progress is possible.

Michelle Obama’s speech made me feel proud to be American, and I honestly rarely feel that pride ever. I’m sure her speech made many others proud to be Americans, as well, or living in America with the privileges that many of us take for granted. How incredible it could be if one day, it was just a normal thing to see women running and getting elected for the highest office in the land right here in this country.