Some things are just out of our control.
I’m challenged to answer this question by Dom, a regular customer I had at my former cafe.
While I’m hiding behind my fourth drink at the espresso machine steaming milk, he prompts, “In five years from now, you could wind up in a place that you did not intend to be. You would meet different types of people. Perhaps, the friends you have now may not be in your life. How do you feel about the spontaneity and fickleness of life?”
I proceed to continue making drinks in deep thought.
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
My thoughts are as follows:
I’m scared of it, but I welcome it. If I don’t wind up where I intend to wind up in 5 years from now, when I’m 30, I believe that I would still have faith in myself that the road I took would still be on this never-ending soul searching path. As long as I am on this path, my worries should be minimal.
I just recently quit my job. And with this change, I’m pressing the refresh button in some aspects of my life, especially in my creative life. I’m fairly proud of my decision, as I take this as a sign of me reclaiming my voice again. I’m listening to my body again. Cheesy quote incoming: everything happens for a reason. Now, it’s up to me how to go about it afterwards.
I’ve recently struggled with the concept of having control over things. A grand friend of mine shared a graph depicting three circular sectors radiating out. The inner circle listed things I could control (my sleep, my social circle, my diet and consumption, my breathing, etc). Second outer circle were things I had somewhat control (my health, my disabilities, work schedule, etc). And the outer ring had things out of my control (financial responsibilities, illnesses, how friends and family perceive me, etc.)
As I grow older, I am realizing how naive I was. At the ages of 14-18, I used to buy lots of stuff online with my dad’s credit card. Our family business seemed to be thriving and growing and my family was living comfortably. I’d come home from school to freshly cooked meals from mom. Dad would be on the phone casually at dinner, doing what he loved - business and being with family. He’d sit at the head of the table and listen also to us kids bantering and chattering over the dinner table in English.
I remember being curious about my eldest brother with his science projects. The seconds eldest brother would refuse and pick away all the veggies in his bowl. He’d ask me about what I learned that day. The youngest brother, but still older than me, would be picked on by the other two, but it was all fun and games. He was the golden retriever brother. And my sister, my lovely sister, I’d be so interested in how she learned so much how to burn CD’s, organize her plastic cabinet of jewelry, and how she got to have so many cool friends around the village.
I loved them all, and I looked up to them so much.
I’m now 25. It is almost going to be 5 years since my dad has passed. I’ve been living in a city where I know no family for a year and a half. And although I do feel lonely a lot, am alone a lot, I’ve grown so much and learned how to be independent. I now pay taxes (ew). I am an adult (also ew). The proud things I own are things I bought from my own pocket: my camera, my skateboard, my scooter rental, my nice clothes I wear often, this leather jacket I thrifted, my iPad, and an Afghan rug. Perhaps the most valuable thing I’ve gained are friendships and experiences—mostly from mistakes and loss.
I’ve dealt with a lot of loss.
A lot.
As a child of refugees, I witnessed the loss of culture and tradition when seeing my community try to upkeep them. I have lost all my grandparents already at the age of 25. I have seen Alzheimer’s wither away my maternal grandma’s mind and body. I have felt the brittle bones underneath a papery layer of weathered skin when massaging both of my grandmothers’ backs and legs. I’ve carried my father around the village on Good Friday’s procession at night. And then I’ve tended to his amputated leg at the knee where I dabbed ointment at his open flesh where I knew it hurt. I’ve taken him to doctors, recorded detailed notes, promised that I’d be a good medical physician when I continued my studies in school. I did his blood charts, dialysis treatment, laid beside him, tried to share the news from Yahoo! and school projects. All of this happened yet I put an end to my medical studies and decided to study film instead.
I knew I had the heart, integrity, and discipline to continue with medical science. I was stellar at it and math. I also had a reason why.
Yet, my intuition has surfaced during all these occasions to whisper to me to take the higher road, to perhaps seek more to understand the world, to meet other folks, to gather all that I can in this short, grand, spontaneous life, without the obligations of medical school. Still to this day, I feel a tiny bit of disappointment for not following down that medical path. The truth is I feel more obligated to be true to my soul.
I now dream exorbitantly about my passion project titled “Ships” that I want to be a novel, then adapted to TV screenplay. If all goes through, I hope to be the director of it, if possible. It’s going to be a long journey. It’s constant work as working on myself is also constant work; it’s setting the sails out everyday.
I am where I am today, because I have followed my heart. As for everyone else, I hope they can accept the place where they are at, too. Even if at times, we can feel unsatisfied with where we are at. As long as we are at home with ourselves and the universe, I don’t think there is much to be afraid of. Instead, there is much to be grateful and proud about.