tea with a stranger

Many people can remember a moment from their childhood when they knew they wanted to become something specific. A doctor, an artist, a robber (shoutout to Ivan from second grade, your drawing was iconic) — whatever it may be. 

We were all given worksheets to sketch out ideas, because of careerism, but I don’t think I had a singular idea in a sincere sense. I was always doing random things. I had a YouTube channel about Fantage (kind of like Club Penguin?), a DeviantArt account, and an overpriced plushie business in elementary school. It’s tempting to thread a level of unity into what I was doing, but there was no continuity actually. I just did whatever I wanted to and was free to do so.

Getting older sucked in that sense because it was in my teenage years that I discovered some interests are a lot more prestigious than others, and I didn’t seem to be able to summon sufficient interest to follow the gold, so to speak. I went to a STEM-centric high school, but I did not really enjoy STEM. It’s not like I was awful at the subjects, but nothing lit up in me while making biology flashcards. I studied enough to get an A and forgot everything afterwards.

The subject I really loved in high school was French, to an extent that made my family laugh. Why French? Nobody really speaks French in the Bay Area. But it was a way for me to connect with my aunt in Québec, who was my informal tutor. I could speak with my grandparents, too. I have a fond memory of a long conversation with my grandfather in French about his motorcycle trips while studying engineering in Brest. When the dementia set in, all of his sleep-talking was in French, oddly. But in any case, it became a very personal language for me that has led to lots of wonderful connections since.

I suppose I have invested time in French, but I don’t really feel like I chose to love the subject. The subject picked me, like the “wand chooses the wizard” idea in Harry Potter. However unusual it may be, that’s it.

I have very compelling reasons to not be this interested, actually, but alas, I am at the mercy of my intense attraction to the language. It’s almost like being in love with someone but not like that. But also, very like that.

The new year is coming and it’s tempting to craft a new self. I do love reinventions like a different haircut, but over the years I’ve started to wonder how possible complete personal uprootings are.

Do we ever really get to be anyone other than ourselves, and are those selves fully our own choices or set paths fate guides us by the hand to walk into?

I’m leaning into the possibility that maybe, more is written for us than we may be aware of. Not by elders or others, but some forces beyond us. God? The universe? I’m not sure. However, too many strangely coordinated things have happened in my own life that have made me question how much of my future I can truly write with free will versus step into a prescribed destiny. I have choices, sure. What I wear, what I speak, how I carry myself in this life. And I of course have every intention to present the best self I can in that sense.

But some things don’t feel as securely within the realm of personal choice, more specifically what I’m drawn to and what I see others around me drawn to. Are we really responding to social conditioning, or are calls from the soul real?

I had the opportunity to visit Hanoi this year and see paintings by my great-granduncle. It was the closest thing to a spiritual experience I’ve had in a long while, and I remembered my younger self sketching out similar figures before I even knew his name. Of course not at his level, but I wondered… did he choose? Did I choose? Or were we called to our interests, and our only intentionality came into how we chose to cultivate or stifle those inclinations?

Disappointingly, I don’t know. But I’d love to follow and see what happens.

x, Elizabeth