for you,my friend.

Sept 4, lost in transborder time:

I just watched Sex and The City: The Movie on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Washington D.C, with many transits in between, and it made me think of the common struggles that people in their 20s face, as opposed to those in the 30s, 40s, etc. I will be 22 in a month’s time, just another recent college graduate returning at the end of summer for a new chapter in her life: job-seeking.

The common thread in the lives of my friends and mine is no matter how uncertain the future is, we plod on with our doubts and fears.
There is the friend who just returned from her gap year where she backpacked around Latin America, looking for adventure, different perspectives, new relationships, etc. Talking to her over breakfast in her parents’ newly-constructed bungalow, I exclaimed at the stark differences between the tiny, sparse Guatemalan house she had rented and her current life at her airy, spacious house back with her parents.
“It’s too comfortable-lah, if I stay here I won’t be able to do anything because I would not be challenged.”
I completely understood what she was trying to say, because it was my own story as well; as if we both had to live, and glimpse, what was different from the lives we had, in order to find purpose and give meaning to our undecided futures. Even now, I struggle to put into words to explain to people why I chose to live in a high-crime-rate, segregated yet convivial neighborhood, where people waiting at my bus stop to go back to our neighborhood loudly proclaim their grievances of the day, and we wonder together where the resident homeless woman went today; a place where our next-door neighbor takes out our trash because he thinks he’s our guardian angel and warns us to be careful because my housemates and I manifestly stand out in this neighborhood.
“You both like to lead difficult lives, ah?” a friend asked during our last conversation together before I left KL.
Ironically enough, he will be heading to India à la medicine school, where he had previously glimpsed the equivalent educational systems at Adelaide and Kuala Lumpur already. Our parents are big factors in the decisions we make, and what happens if we fail to convey the urgency and importance of being able to do what we want to do? Caught in the transition between graduating from college but not yet from our parents’ pursestrings, our upbringing demands obedience but it is not necessarily immediate. I wholeheartedly respect this friend who will “give my mother another five more years” of his life by finishing med school, despite his talents and yearnings to write and play songs on his guitar.
Fast-forward twenty years later, and this friend would probably face the demands of providing for family and fulfilling his passion at the same time. A columnist cum playwright I knew told me that his desk job was a way of sek wan (Cantonese for earning money) while he writes his plays and books during his off-office hours. He is also an active family man. I shall not complain further about my impending juggling act in the coming months to study for the GREs, apply for jobs, be a model intern, and actively contribute to my household and our mission.
If anything, being surrounded by the overworked, ardent culture of Washingtonites–replete with NGOs, politics, segregation- has made me earnest to acquire skills and live out their ambitions too.
Although I have to say, take my words in stride, I have so much more to go.