As little kids, we learn things in accordance with fairly predictable milestones. You learn to walk before you're 1, learn the alphabet when you're 3 (if you get put into nursery school/ day care while your parents work), and learn basic hygiene habits by kindergarten (my memorable experience involves painting brown paper bag pumpkins with orange tempera paint, and having to go so badly that I peed in my undies, dress, tights, and got orange fingerprints all over everything as I fumbled in the bathroom). And in four to five year increments, you hit another milestone. Elementary, junior high school, high school, college-- and with each step, you have another chance to (1) to be a better student, (2) re-invent yourself aka good girl turned bad or vice versa, (3) meet new people, and no matter how you think you have yourself figured out, you transform and mature. I always wondered what happened after college once the 4-5 year reset button was gone? Would we mindlessly work as drones for thirty years if we didn't study a profession that we loved? Would we still hang out with the same friends from college? Would we get bored with them? Do people just stop reinventing themselves at a certain point? Would people be less likely to carelessly slip into and out of relationships now that there was no longer another college party to attend or another pool to become a bigger fish in? What would we learn after the ripe age of 21 that we didn't already know? I mean most of the major firsts have already happened by this point, haven't they?
The answers to all those questions are varied, and our insignificant lives are part of this complex microcosm now, so when we discover those answers is unpredictable. I am formulaic though (being an accountant does that to you) and I prefer milestones to be predictable. Consciously or unsconsciously, most of my turning points and the answers to most of those question have uncovered themselves in my sixth year outside of school.
(1) One year ago today, I was tearing my hair out, working from 6pm to 3am to fix the work of a reckless senior auditor, who didn't know how to conjugate verbs, let alone audit revenue recognition. From 9AM- 6PM, I would work on the project I was actually assigned to. I walked into work at 9AM after a week of doing this and I started bawling in front of everyone, including those who worked below me, and an innocent intern, when the partner asked me how things were going. Despite his understanding- he told me to go take the day off, disconnect from email, and sit in Starbucks in silence for a few hours, but eventually I still needed to do what I needed to get done. 2011 would be the year of the giant snowball effect at work, where timelines never shifted, and one terrible project merged with mediocre projects, and I became a drone. I was tired. I lacked enthusiasm, and despite my meager attempts to make things work, or briefly escape by applying for an international project, or for a rotation to a national office position, there were no solid outs. When my biggest advocator second guessed what made me think I could get the positions I applied for, I lost confidence. The last year of my old job was so difficult, and while I still think what I was learning was valuable in terms of being technically competent, and cohesive in communicating and selling to high level execs, the fast paced sink or swim mentality broke me. Six years into my first job, I hit the reset button.
In terms of whether I would mindlessly work as a drone for the rest of my life, the answer is No.
(2) I had no idea at the time, but looking back, the frustration at work seeped into my personal life. When you are working 12-15 hour days, trying to get people to do what you want them to do, arguing with clients on doing the right thing, and having stressful, difficult conversations, and then having to go back to your desk and write up reports, or review crappy work, you fall into an existential crisis over the meaning of life. You go home after midnight, and veg in front of the TV since you have so much going on in your head that you can't fall sleep. The few moments that you call free time are so precious that it feels so empty when nothing meaningful fills it. Last year, in an attempt to make things happen, I thought meaningful moments were to be spent in the company of Prince Charming, aka random weirdos on match.com or okcupid. It was really unfair for me to do that to them- give them the duty to make my life meaningful and project my feelings that every 4 week relationship was really going into the realms of "happily ever after." No wonder I was blocked on g-chat.
I must say that Ted talk on vulnerability changed my life Iris. I used to struggle for that sense of love and belonging, always thinking that I never did enough to warrant a good relationship. Once I slowed down, I saw that everything and everyone around me exudes love and I can finally appreciate it. I am no longer searching, but patient with matters of the heart.
(3) Eleven days ago, in attempt to practice my toe side carving, while speeding down Timberline trail in Killington Vermont, I caught an edge, tumbled twice, using my right ankle against the ground as the pivot point, carrying on my full body weight. I've never sprained a muscle or broke a bone before, so this was a first for me.
In a city I know like the back of my hand, I can zig zag between any crowds, and know the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B (except anywhere near Sheridan Square- which I consider NYC's Bermuda triangle). It is by far a humbling experience to limp at snail's pace in Midtown. With the extra seconds with each walk I've taken, I learned how important it is to recognize your physical limits.
In an attempt not to mess my ankle anymore than it already was, I was bed-ridden for the weekend. With an active mind, this was the most difficult thing: to sit still because I physically had to, not because I wanted to. My mom told me that's probably what it's like for her elderly client (mom's a caretaker)-- overweight, with alzheimers, occasionally disoriented, only watches TV game shows (easy because there's no plot as my mom says) and always asking to eat oreos to pass the time. I cannot even begin to imagine what life is like when your physical and mental capacities deteriorate. Note to self: stock up on gingko biloba and omega 3 fish oil supplements to strengthen the brain.
(4) Yesterday, my 98 year old grandmother passed away. For the past 5 years, our conversations were only about one thing: whether my sister and I were doing well in school. Were we concentrating and working hard or from a literal translation, "were we putting 100% of our hearts into it", she would ask? With that question, she was by far the easiest to please. I'd get to tell her I graduated and started working at a large accounting firm, and my sister graduated too and worked at a bank. She would be so excited every time I would repeat this news. In the past 15 months, my mom would call her and sometimes my Grandma and I would exchange a few words over the phone. The question was always the same, except when I responded, she would talk over me, telling me over and over again to "put 100% of my heart" into it, and I was never quite sure if she even heard my response. Perhaps it is because she was illiterate that this was a question worth so much emphasis.
For a 98 year old woman who never went to school, I wonder what her milestones were, and what her reset moments were. During the Communist Revolution, when farms were being confiscated by the central government and redistributed, there was a mass exodus of people from the Guangdong province to Hong Kong, which was a British colony at the time. In the mad dash, people who travelled long distances with the few valuables that they could carry on their backs would inevitably lose sight on their children in the crowds of refugees. My grandmother, in her 30s at the time, saw a crying little boy about eight years old, hungry and without his family in sight. She adopted him, and they would eat whatever tubers they could find for a year. Ever since then, I've never seen her eat a potato. Even in her 80s when she had high blood pressure, she would always order the shrimp dumplings at dimsum. I think that's where I got my foodie tendencies from. She was a woman who spent some time in Singapore, and in her second marriage, she married a sailor, and she would live vicariously through souvenirs he brought back from different places that he had been. She didn't lead an easy life. She would be widowed twice: my grandfather, her second husband, passed at 51 years old, and she would make ends meet with three kids, without an education, subletting rooms in a small apartment in Mongkok, Hong Kong. During the lazy summer nights, like me, she would play maj-jong based on memory- without knowing how to read the characters on the tiles.
In her life, she made the most of her circumstances, and I will never forget the many times she reminded me to put "100% of my heart into it (Bei sum gei)."
Summer 2005- 21 years old me with 92 years young Grandma
I see my life through a different perspective now. I learned that the heart grows with patience. I respect the impermanence of our lives. I understand the limits of the human body. 2011 was spent testing the limits, and pushing myself to change, to find someone and to find a new career. 2012 will be dedicated to slowing down and learning more about myself.
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"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
-Rilke, Letters to a young poet
