Home-coming in Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong two nights ago. It is the first leg of my holy pilgrimage to Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom; also known as China. Hong Kong is intriguing, it is also my birth place. Coming home has been a profound experience. A flood of feelings has been unleashed, birthing a sort of recapitulation. My journey of self-discovery has taken many twists and turns. Sometimes you have to rewind in order to advance. To know the past offers a window to the road ahead. If Hong Kong represents the cosmos then I am the microcosm. Hong Kong is where East meets West, bridging the gap between the two worlds. Living in the midst of these two worlds are people like myself. I am bi-racial, bi-cultural, and bi-lingual. Being Bi is a mixed blessing. When the glass is half full, I have the best of both worlds. When it is half empty, I am a displaced person without an identity of my own. Day-dreaming in the park yesterday, I saw a Chinese woman holding hands with her boy. In that moment, an image of my Mom and I flashed before me. The floodgates opened and I reverted back to a local Chinese boy again. I was a sickly child growing up in Hong Kong. That was my assigned role in the family system. Self-diagnosing as a Chinese doctor, classic symptoms of Lung & Kidney chi deficiency. You name it, I had it. Asthma, chronic cough, skin problems and a propensity for colds & flus. Lung conditions are very difficult to treat because of its psycho-somatic nature. Emotionally, weak lung function is associated with grief and sadness. Extrapolating further, it lends to low self-esteem, shame, and the inability to self-express. Moreover, because of the kidney involvement with the lung, the kidney loses its ability to grasp the chi. This leaves the person gasping for air, fearful for his life. The result is a persistent and low-grade sense of hollowness along with the fear of abandonment. The individual is left with an anguished desire to recover something emotionally missing in his upbringing. I want to use this example to illustrate that physical sickness and emotional pain are not separate things. They are merely two sides of the same coin. To transform is to change the outside, the physical domain. External change brings about internal change, offering an opportunity for personal growth. True healing lies in a new way of relating to yourself. From that place, each and every relationship with the outside world bears the stamp of inner peace & happiness.