I was born in Romania and my parents left the
country without me in early 2000's. They one day saw the opportunity in a
newspaper to apply for full citizenship rights for America in a lottery style
system. They immediately signed up and within a month they got a response that
they won the lottery. The problem was
that the lottery only included two citizenships so they had a hard decision to
make, they either disregard the free citizenships to go to move to a better
life and then try to bring their kid there or to stay in Romania and not feel
like they abandoned their son.
They
ended up realizing that this was a great opportunity for our family and that
they could later figure out how to bring me to America also. They eventually
left me with my grandparents for a couple of years until they were sure that
they had a place to live and a place for me to grow up at. Although I struggled
to understand their thinking for many years after that and I even felt so
abandoned to the point of me not wanting to come to America to live with them
anymore I slowly over the years started to realize that they made the right
decision. Over the 12 years that I have been in America we have frequently
visited Romania and each time after seeing how bad the economy and the
education system is I started to understand more and more at what one of a kind
opportunity they had and that they at that time realized that in order to give
me a better future they had to be opportunistic and make sacrifices.
This
has been a life lesson for me and a lesson that my parents always tell me
about. They always emphasize that at one point in my life an opportunity will come
up and I have to be aware of it when it comes. This opportunity will never come
twice so once I see it I have to act on it and take advantage of it. I have
always asked them at how they were able to just act on the opportunity in an
impulsive manner and leave everything they owned in Romania including me. Their
response was always the same; although it was the hardest decision they ever
had to make and they were both depressed for a long time after they arrived in
America and even debated many times to just go back and be reunited with their
family their friends and all of the little things that they liked about
Romania. But in the end they always came to the realization that this sacrifice
was not done for their own benefit but more for my benefit and for me to be
raised in a more civilized society where I would have more opportunities to
move up in life and achieve more.
Because
of their advice I already had one opportunity when I was in high school I got
invited to a chess boot camp where a lot of good chess player from around the
world would come and either practice with us or host mini info sessions to help
the more inexperienced kids get better at chess. At the time I would regularly
go to chess competitions and often I would end up in the top 3. I felt pretty
confident in my skills and I didn’t even think about me going to this boot camp
since I thought it would be a waste of time and it wouldn’t be that fun to
spend 2 months of time in the summer to play chess every day. But regardless of
what I thought I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to get
better at the game and to learn from the grandmasters that were going to be
there over the summer. Me realizing that this was a special opportunity to
develop myself and my taking it was truly a blessing because the first couple
of tournaments after the boot camp I finished undefeated in each single one. After
that moment I realized that no opportunity can ever go ignored and I have to
realize that all of the opportunities in life are one of a kind and I have to
take advantage of every single one when they come just like my parents did
fifteen years ago.
This is a touching story. There's no doubt about that. But I wonder if it is a good example of refraining from opportunistic behavior.
ReplyDeleteOpportunism doesn't simply mean taking advantage of opportunities. It focuses on behavior that if carried out harms other people. So there is an ethical dimension. Acting opportunistically means not being responsible for the welfare of others, only caring about oneself.
Of course I don't know your parents, but I'm guessing it hurt them very much to leave you behind in Romania. The move, when looked at as a long term decision, may have made the entire family better off. In the near term, however, there was clearly a lot of pain, some of which you described.
The only other question I'd ask here is about the lottery itself. Was that run fair and square. Or might your parents have bribed somebody to better their chances of winning. Such a bribe would be opportunistic behavior, without a doubt. It doesn't sound like that was a possibility, but I thought I mentioned it so you have a better sense of what the prompt was about.
I really enjoyed reading your post because it shows such strength that you and your parents had to see the light at the end of the tunnel when it came to leaving you in Romania knowing that it would lead you to living a better life in the future.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the content of the story, I think that many people in our class, myself included, had a tough time this week really nailing down the true meaning of opportunism in terms of the post. I would definitely agree that this story includes an opportunity of a lifetime, especially since your parents won this lottery, but maybe not the best example of opportunism in terms of the decision to make an action would be unethical or do harm upon someone. I think that without proper knowledge of the term, which I think maybe of us didn't fully understand when making our initial post, that writing about an opportunity of a lifetime would be an easy mistake.