I’m starting this letter from Turia Park in Valencia, Spain — one of the last few times I’ll be here before returning to the United States. Ending this chapter of my life.
Time passes by swiftly, we can all agree on that. It feels like I just landed in Taipei at 1 AM a few days ago. Jet lagged as hell, but eager for the adventure to come. One that would take me across continents, climates, languages — inevitably home.
But when I check the date, it’s been seven months.
I’m certain I’ll get asked “What did you learn from your travels?” once I return. Or not. You think people care, but usually they don’t. Within a few questions, they’ll go back to asking what your thoughts are on this political melodrama or that, the newest movie or viral trend, rather than what’s been imprinted on you. Your soul.
And that’s okay. We’re all bogged down with our own humanness — we’re more than a handful or two as we are. We have winding careers to navigate, kids we’re deathly afraid of fucking up, and Love to realize. Atop it all, we still have to think about what to make for dinner.
But before any of those thoughts appear, before we latch onto them to be bucked around, there is simply the moment of waking up.
Experiencing the sun pass through the sliding door and paisley curtains. Enjoying the dance of cascading shards of light and shadow onto the wooded floor beneath bare feet. Hearing the sweet symphony of an orchestra drawn out through tiny holes in metal. Or the unadulterated shrieks of joy of a child somewhere in the distance, but immediate, alive, in your inner ear.
Is there anything more miraculous, more beautiful, than the experience of being human?
//
Growing up in the United States, and I can imagine most Western countries, we’re raised in environments that laud individualism. While important, particularly in realizing our unique potential, individualism also plants the belief of “us” against “them.” As if we’re not all human, not all one.
A common critique of Americans I heard time and time again (especially from Europeans) is that we view ourselves as the center of the world. As if everything revolves around us, just as Earth revolves around the Sun. A self-centeredness that leads to a dense ego, ignorance, and dumbness.
But don’t we all do that on a singular level anyway?
In egoic fashion, we paint ourselves as the main character of life. The de facto center of the universe. Our gravitational pull says everything is happening to us, rather than merely happening. In the process, we nurture belief into a story we identify with and live by — one of separation.
You’re from that country, I’m from this one.
You’re on that political side, I’m on this side.
You like vanilla, I like chocolate.
Our minds, in service of our egos, are brilliant at finding every possible way of creating division. Somehow negating the universal truth “we’re stronger as a whole.”
//
As I’ve traveled the world and soaked myself in the normalcy of everydayness, the story of separation continues to lose its luster. Its oomph.
Regardless of the levels of melanin one has, the nature of sounds one emits from a hole, or the word embossed in gold on the front cover of a palm-sized book, we experience the same melodramas of being human. We seek Love and grieve its supposed absence. Have kids we try not to fuck up. Hope for meaning from what puts roofs over our heads and food in our stomachs.
The human struggle is universal. We simply forget we belong to the Universe, and therefore, to each other.
It’s fascinating. We judge others because their features aren’t as symmetric as ours, or because they sweep the ground beneath our designer-shoe-clad feet. As if there was something we did to warrant our gifts, and they, their lack thereof.
The more I travel, the more I realize Life is pure circumstance. It sounds so obvious, but we tend to forget this truth as we get ensnared by our egos.
We use our minds to try and explain everything. Logic or science our way backward into truth. But the only truth is that at a certain point, logic and science break. You go beyond and beyond, and everything dissolves into simply wonder.
Mystery.
What led me to be born in the United States, the son of Chinese immigrants — but with the privileges I have? In another roll of the dice, another multiverse, I could’ve very well been the teenager you see manning the cash register at the family-owned Chinese restaurant where you order sticky orange chicken and greasy lo mein from every Friday night.
Or you could’ve been.
No agency on my part was involved. Nor on yours. Those who claim ownership over life’s happenings fail to surrender to the truth in a “Me, I’m the center, I made all this happen!” type of way.
Each of us is born into lives that immediately determine the experiences we’ll have. The type of doors we open, the type we feel unworthy of approaching at all. Above all, the layers that comprise the conditioning we must work through during our lifetime. Some of us will deal with the injustices of being born with certain reproductive organs. Others with having more or less melanin in their skin.
Religion. Class. Femur length.
On and on and on.
But beneath the mess, beneath everything we use to sow seeds of separation—a story of “you” and “I”—is Universal Nature.
Yes, there’s humanness. We are indeed a fleshy water balloon of blood and water. Some calcium and protein mixed in for good measure. Beyond that, atoms. Beyond atoms, what then? What are we? That question I won’t answer for you just yet, but encourage you to ponder for a moment.
If you really go beyond and beyond and beyond, what is there separating you and I?
//
Is the human experience sunshine and rainbows?
Fuck no.
There’s war raging on all the damn time. Injustices committed reported or unreported. Declining ecosystems and mistreatment of a Nature we rose out of and grew up with, but now treat as property to be passed around. On and on and on.
But does the sun not shine? Not set? Cast its sparkling glow at dawn? Its velvet radiance at dusk?
There’s so much beauty in life we’re able to miraculously experience on an individual level in our humanness. Truth is, we find it beautiful not because it’s something other, but because we’re witnessing ourselves.
Individual expressions of One Whole.
I cherish the moment, not because it’s mine, but because it’s ours.
Breaking bread with G as we spoke in a mixture of Mandarin and English about Christianity. A pointer toward the truth beneath.
Compassion, kindness, unity, love.
Oneness.
Celebrating a Vietnamese woman’s birthday and leaving with a faint bite mark on my arm. Also leaving with a connection that would lead to playing volleyball with a group of locals in New Taipei. Over hot pot, sharing stories of growing up in the United States.
Spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve with an island girl. Workouts and car rides. Fresh-cut fruit and washed-up squid on a secret beach. Hearing of her hopes and dreams. Feeling her breath slow down against my chest.
Talking to a 75-year-old man, the grandfather I never had. Someone I’m certain would’ve been a close friend if we’d been born in the same generation.
Under different circumstances.
But isn’t it beautiful that circumstance, fate, brought us together at all?
As much as I shared those moments with them, I share this moment with you.
Having the faculties to realize all this beauty, this wonder, despite all the other mess we deal with, is beyond miraculous.
What makes life, being human, the most beautiful happening.
Albert Einstein on mystery and separation:
“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”
“A human being,” wrote Einstein in reply, “is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
That last Einstein quote is 🤌🤌
Oh my gosh. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever read in my life. Literally speechless 😩😩