Lessons from Massacres

I was reading an article about a recent book release called Afterparties, by Cambodian-American Anthony Veasna So, who died before it came out. 

This passage was quoted in the article: 

One young woman says, "Forty years ago our parents survived Pol Pot, and now, what the holy [expletive] are we even doing? Obsessing over wedding favors? Wasting hundreds of dollars on getting our hair done?"

I'm sure you can tell why I was taken with this. 

We call our grandparents "survivors," and whoa, did they survive a lot. Whereas today, some of our difficulties are tied to first world problems—materialism, peer pressure, staying grounded.  

Neither Han nor I had any grandparents by our wedding—his grandmother had died earlier that year. We are both full descendants of survivors, and I wonder what they would have thought about the "stress" of wedding planning nowadays, especially considering the basic simplicity of their own, in decimated towns or DP camps.

But then, for their own children, they didn't say, "Well, we got married with barely anything and that was good enough!" They happily got the gowns and the chicken dinners. 

I suppose, as with everything, it's about balance. Demanding perfection of every minor detail is missing the big picture, losing sight of what is important. 

After our ancestors narrowly missed death, time and time again, we should hopefully have some idea of what that is.