Inevitable

Here is my third attempt to write an honest reflection.

"I feel like death for one of us, or for someone I love, is right over my shoulder. I'm finding it hard to dream big or plan for our future. I'm afraid that hoping for one thing and having it be taken away will crush me. Maybe I should just take life one day at a time and see how far I can go." -me.

"I've accepted that you and I are going to die one day. But we can't live our lives just waiting for death. That's not living. If I die and I don't meet my goals--that doesn't mean the pursuit wasn't worth it." -b.c.

I've learned that dread is part of trauma, anxiety, and panic. Worried thoughts are irrational, but the feelings that come with them are too real to shake.

I've learned that allowing oneself to feel, process, and accept these feelings enables us to move on.

I dream big because it reenergizes me, it keeps me moving when I get discouraged by tough times, and because it's fun. I used to see goal-setting and the 'chase' as an attempt to "win at life!", air quotes and exclamation point included. Death after death after death after death after death has erased that notion from my outlook. There's no winning and losing at life before death. There's only life.

I'm going to focus on joy, humanity, love, gratitude, and betterment. I can still pursue my goals, but not without these five pillars.

Joy. I once believed that joy was attaining your goals. Turns out, I was chasing a carrot on a stick but stuck on a hamster wheel. When I was in high school, I needed to get into a good college. When I was in college, I needed to survive my classes. Then I needed to get a job. Then I needed to excel at my job. I suppose I was reaching my goals along the way, but why didn't joy magically appear with each Level Up?

Attaining my goals could lead to joy, but not automatically. Not attaining my goals can also lead to joy, depending on where I'm putting my focus.

Where have I found joy in the past? Friends visiting us in our little town in Japan, family gatherings with significant others, long runs, writing, sinking my teeth into a good book, feeling pretty after assembling a cute outfit/doing my make up/getting my hair or nails done, getting massages, going to the Christina Aguilera concert (solo! up close and personal!), wandering foreign cities, lazy evenings cuddling on the couch, and the onset of vacations when I have an entire 3-day weekend/week/2 months stretching ahead of me with few responsibilities. Whether I die today, tomorrow, one month from now, or 90 years from now; whether I progress in my career or not; whether I have 4 children one day, no children, or have children but am met by tragedy; these moments of joy comprise each tile in the inevitable mosaic of my life.

Humanity. For so long, I've lived my life trying to figure out the rules of life. Obey your parents, get good grades, get a stable job, climb high up whatever ladder (education, career), do extremely well at your job, eat well, be fit, raise a family on day, maybe buy a house, do no harm. I thought that everyone in the world was operating under one universal recipe on the correct way to Live Your Life to the Fullest.

My recent reading list has provided some insight on why that assumption is utterly and completely wrong. These books include: Gwan Anthology, The Bread of Salt and Other Stories, The Arrival, America is Not the Heart, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and the Story of Return, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and The Best We Could Do, The Sun is Also a Star, and Pachinko. I'm in awe of the women in these stories and memoirs who fought to survive in seemingly hopeless situations. They didn't grow up in the bubble and safety of surburbia with only dreams to do thing the Right Way and just generally try not to mess things up. No, these women forged paths for themselves in unwelcoming environments in the face of authorities who did not value their power or intellect.

What lesson can I take from this? For starters, I want to shed the notion that there is a right way to teach and that if I'm not teaching the right way, then I am a bad teacher. I want to forge my own path. I want to shed the notion that I must look at the furthest that a path can take me and go there only. I want to grow myself radially, not linearly. I can learn from others, but I need not follow their paths.

Love. If all I ever accomplish in life is showing love to the people that mean most to me, then already I'll have lived a life worth living. I used to throw my entire being in dream-chasing. I took living under one roof with my family for granted. I often wake up thinking of work, get home late from work/school, have dinner separately from BC and my sister, prepare for the next day, sleep, and do it all over again. I often forget to make time to connect with my loved ones. The holidays are a good time to take a break from the grind and spend time with one another, but it doesn't have to be the only time. I can call loved ones more frequently. I can have meaningful conversations at home in the evening. I can make plans to have meals with loved ones (everyone's gotta eat, right?) and go for hikes/runs/walks with friends and family.

Gratitude. I can either live my life continually wishing for something else, or I can live my life noticing what I have. I've noticed that for me personally, it's less about what I have and more about how I feel about having the thing that I have. Sometimes, I thank God. Sometimes, I verbally appreciate a person in my life. Other times, I just notice and feel grateful. Today, I am grateful for a warm and cozy home in San Diego, for family in San Diego, for the relationships I've nurtured throughout my life so that I can still call upon those people 15-30 years later, for Thanksgiving break, for adobada tacos, and for Brian.

Betterment. OK, I've said over and over again that it's not about the goals. And it's not. But that doesn't mean that I want to stop learning and growing completely. It feels good to feel like I'm going somewhere in life. It's less about the degrees and more about what I learn in my classes. It's not about the number of years spent teaching, it's about how I spent that time with my students. It's not about the checking cities off of my bucket list, it's about the experiences I had while there. Every day, I want to be able to rest my head on my pillow and know that I took a step in the right direction that day--whether it be in my relationships, career, health, or in a hobby.

Perhaps next year, instead of NYR, I'll focus on these tenets. Then, rather than fearing a life cut short, I'll bask in having lived a fulfilled life.

Biting Bullets

Here's my second attempt to write an honest reflection.

It took me five months to hit 'publish' on my last birthday post. I didn't bother writing a NYR post this year. Those are usually the two posts per year that I look forward to the most. As a 'goal-oriented person' (as my mom calls me), I always looked forward to the new year because it was a perfect time to look forward and ask, "what next? I'm so excited!" My birthday conveniently comes a half year later, when I'm able to look at the my progress in the year so far and even reflect back to my previous birthday.

In between, I would write and ramble about damn near anything because it felt good to express myself, to get my thoughts on "paper", to turn over every rock in every corner of my mind, to understand myself better, to create an identity for myself, and hey, maybe even flaunt myself a bit for whomever was out there reading my blog.

Then... 2018 hit me like a truck. Or did it? Maybe my bucket was filling over the years. Maybe I was walking around with a full bucket for decades. I'm not sure. I do know that whereas I used to write in a journal every single night before bed, I suddenly stopped. Whereas I used to relish in times that I could hole up in the apartment and blog for hours, I abandoned self-reflective writing completely. I didn't want to face my thoughts any more. I didn't want to relive my days. I wanted to forget whatever happened that day. I woke up thinking, "I can't wait to go back to bed tonight." I drove to work thinking, "let's get this over with." I ended my evenings with replies to "how was your day?" with "I don't know, I don't remember."

Doctors, therapy, self care, leaning on an empathetic audience, a change of environment, cutting toxicity out of my life have been ladders out of a deep pit. To say that I'm seeing the light would be an overstatement; disillusionment is keeping my light dim.

I'm planting seeds of productive thoughtlines in my psyche. I'm processing grief and the reality of loss and death. I'm confronting the humanity of mortality and the fear of loss and grief and death.

How was I once so goal driven? I believed anything and everything was possible. I believed that I had a whole lifetime on earth--and that my loved ones has whole lifetimes on earth--to live out our dreams. There were absolutely no "but what if..?"'s. Whatever I wanted, I set out to attain it.

I'm brave enough to admit that I have dreamer's block right now. I want to type out my dreams like I once did, but would I be setting myself up for heart crushing disappointment? If I hold no expectations, then perhaps I would only be met with tempered, pleasant surprise as one day leads to another and another. I try to pretend that my future is open and limitless, like I once believed, but I retract with fear that it will can all be taken away with one catastrophic swipe. A missed stop sign. A stray bullet. A careless, fleeting moment.