Turning 27

I just turned 27.

Exactly 236,664 hours since I was thrown carelessly into this existence. Was I one of those kids who were tossed, or one of those who were gently placed? I wonder if there is a way to tell. Maybe by looking at the way my nose is shaped, or feeling the sharpness of my elbows, I can gauge how much effort was put into my creation. Or maybe I can just ask my parents, who willed this whole thing into reality: why did you choose to have me?

Wait. Never mind. They told me not to waste my time thinking about it. There’s time for questions after I have a job. After I’m married. After I have kids. After those kids settle down. After I retire. After I fall terminally ill. After I die.

So here I am. Unemployed, single, broke, and curious.

God. Or god. Or space being. Or that mystical force out there. Or empty void. Or pure, utter random chance. If you can hear me, I don’t understand. Why am I here? What would it have been like if this life had always just been blank? An empty slate, left undistributed, pure with the potentiality of possibility, untainted by the stains of action.

It’s been nine years since I left home for the first time, alone, star-eyed, and naïve. I was sure that after all these years in the world, some magical lightning, preordained by your greatness, would have struck me and left me eternally in a state of bliss, understanding all there is about this world. I thought the puzzle would have been complete by now, but here I stand, shivering like a coward, with the first piece held loosely by my side.

I really thought it would have been different.

Please tell me, is there something I’m supposed to be feeling today? It’s my birthday. A special day. Is there something I was supposed to have done by now? Answers I should be spouting off effortlessly when asked about where my life is going? A resolute certainty I should have about my future? After all these years something of consequence should have happened, right? Right?

I see your patience wavering. Don’t leave yet. I know you have an infinite number of others to attend to, but please stay. You threw me here,    remaining silent,      callously watching as I tear myself apart,         looking for something. A something for which I don’t even know It's shape    size       smell          appearance             essence. I imagine you’re laughing.    A lot.       I get it.

It’s quite comical to look for understanding in a universe that is so seemingly random. In fact, the search itself belittles the art piece that was meant to be experienced, not understood. But even though I know that, I still search. Like an idiot.

That’s the only thing I’ve ever known how to do. Question. I don’t know what it feels like to experience this feeling of “foundness” it seems like everyone else has found. That feeling that comes when the randomness seems to finally make sense. When you wake up with a direction, knowing where to go, when to go, and how to go. Day after day after day. Always assured in your decisions, even when they are left ambiguous.

All I do know for certain is that I’m so tired. I feel so afraid. I want to go home, but I don’t know where that is anymore. I want to feel held, loved, and accepted, but that also seems like a place that will always exist just one step ahead of me. Makes sense. Who loves someone who questions? I was always told disobedience is the calling of the devil. And call me it sure did.

Today I turned 27, but when I say that number out loud, it doesn’t even come close to expressing the complexity and the depth of that statement. Of the distance it represents. To you, who sees all, this is simply just another insignificant blip in the infinite timeline. Those 27 years are probably just that singular moment of nothingness when one breath comes to its slow end, and the next begins to form. But to me, these few years are all I’ve ever known. All I ever will know.

The universe to me simply did not exist before I came here, and it will not exist after I depart. Do you know what 27 years feels like when blurry, disconnected memories of it are all you have to hold pathetically on to?

But I see the irony in this predicament. Even though I know that this life is only to be experienced once, I treat it as if there is always another waiting.

Tomorrow, I’ll go on a walk, watch the sunrise, and count the stars. Tomorrow, I’ll start loving better. Tomorrow, I’ll confront my deep-seeded fears of intimacy. Tomorrow, I’ll rub my mom’s feet, tell her to lay down, and let her know that I’m coming home to take care of everything. Tomorrow, I’ll forgive my dad and thank him for his love and sacrifices.

Tomorrow.   Not today.                    Tomorrow.

It seems absolutely absurd to wait, when tomorrow isn’t promised. So why do I do it?

The answer lies in your design of this game as you chose to make it such that I will never know when this journey will abruptly end. You locked that answer behind some mysterious black box, so that I’ll never know when that same walk to the grocery store I’ve taken a million times will be the time my body turns into a innocuous speed bump for some unsuspecting driver.

And because of this uncertainty, I hold my breath with my eyes clenched shut, and pray again and again. Hoping for another moment to exist around that dark corner. Praying that this won’t be that time.

Just one more year. Let me get to 28 please. I have so much left to do. I promise I’ll do something worthy with my life if you give me this.

A daily routine. Every time I step out of the house. Uttering this to myself like a broken record. And in doing so, I wash away moment by moment. Covered cheaply by the scent of fear, greed and cowardice.

Fearful to experience true finitude. Because to feel this, would mean to finally confront your devious design. To admit that I too will inevitably die, today or in the ever illusive tomorrow. My body left cold gray

mute.

To experience true finitude, I would have to admit to myself that death is not some theoretical concept, to exist only in abstraction. I would have to stop hiding behind some weakly constructed concept of a peaceful afterlife or being reincarnated into a gazelle. I’d have to accept that maybe, after all of this. There is only

Is               white? Is               jarring? Is               numbing?

The word, emptiness itself, is far from what potentially awaits me tonight. It tries to label and capture the indescribable. The unquantifiable. A nothingness less than 0. This is what awaits me. No matter what I do.

These last few years, I feel like I’ve been in a mindless trance, being pulled by the thinnest of ropes (perhaps some extra floss that you had left over) closer and closer to you. And as I draw nearer, I look back to see everything I’ve sleep walked through. Unpresent. Ungrateful. Emotionless. Jaded. Disconnected.

Dazed through the small moments, thinking that it was in the large ones where I would find a moment of peace. But on arrival of those large moments, realizing that it was comprised of the same emptiness.

I want to cry. But I don’t know how.

I don’t have the tears within me to truly grasp how simultaneously, beautiful and painful this life has already been. The tears ran dry a long time ago, replaced by a cold stoicism that I thought approximated what it meant to be brave. What I thought it meant to be unyielding. What it meant to be a man.

But I always noticed the presence of death waiting in the shadow of every moment. An infinite farewell, hidden, ensuring that nothing will ever take place in the same manner again. No matter how hard I try to capture any given place or time. It whispers to me, in its emotionless mumble.

To live, is to lose.

To live, is to die.

One second at a time.

I come closer.

I welcome you.

Though I am still here, I think, death has already visited me time and time again.

Death came to my high school graduation when I failed to take in everyone’s faces around me. People that I had shared over 12 years of experiences with, from growing through the awkward phases of puberty to co-learning what the American identity was. I just spent that day with my friends, thinking I was too cool to feel anything more than carelessness. I escaped high school, what more was there to feel? I haven’t seen any of those people since.

Death visited me when I dished out my last assist to my best friends in elementary school, giving them one final high five as our season ended. I was the worst point guard in the history of Forest Park Elementary, but I’ll never forget the feeling of jubilation when I hit my only two points from the back right corner of the court. Running down in my new LeBron James shoes, itching the scab on my leg out of joy, bleeding all over myself, staining those white sneakers forever.

Death said a brief hello when I walked into my home in 2017, when the people who changed my life for the better were all living with me in San Diego. Our last day moving out, screaming at the TV as we tried to win our first game on Fortnite. The living room served as the beacon for everyone to find acceptance, joy, and love in its comforting ambiance. I would hear their voices ring out one last time as I walked back from the dining hall.

Death sat in the back seat when I learned to drive with my dad in my high school’s parking lot. It didn’t even laugh when it watched my dad yell at me every time I drove over 25 mph, his hands turning as white as its face, clenching the grab handles as tightly as possible. I’ve driven across the country three times now and will never hear his voice scolding me for driving over the speed limit on the small roads of Fremont.

Death rested its sharp chin on my shoulder when my mom sat lovingly near me, telling me the story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves for the ten thousandth time right before I slept. She would allow me to pick new names for the characters every day. I loved picking names that were absolutely ridiculous just so I could hear her make nonsensical sounds. I haven’t heard that story since.

Time and time again.

In fact. I see it sitting in front of me now. It’s face expressionless as always. Just staring. Waiting. Pulling its string. A little By little.

I want to punch it. Hard.

I’m not going to pay attention to it anymore.

While it has the ability to take everything from me, I will be resolute, and never-ending in my revolt.

Right now I’m sitting in a café called PS Cheese Café in Hyderabad, Telangana. I’m wearing these pants I just bought from Zara when I was staying with my aunt. These pants were so poorly stitched together that they’ve been ripping apart a little bit every day. I decided to wear them endlessly until they have completely come apart. I just finished some French drip coffee, which was a little too strong. I feel like I’m floating, and these words are just pouring out of me without restraint. I’m listening to Miss Independent by Ne-Yo in my JBL headphones, which have these noise-cancellation options that make me feel like Ne-Yo is singing directly in my ears. A personal concert. I’m feeling really good from the yoga session I had yesterday that I just restarted. I’m really excited to go back to the hostel and do another session. My toes and hips feel really happy, and my knees are doing their dance. I had a beautiful conversation with Mylon today, letting the sun hit my face and hearing his angelic voice. We talked about the resentments we hold that make moving on and loving so difficult. He has been doing so much better, and that makes me so happy to hear. I taught some really interesting classes today and made a lot of progress with the report we’re doing on the game of Clue. I got destroyed in a game of Risk I played online. The Lakers won! I got to sit with my friends on Zoom and write this morning, which was also so nice.

This is my day.

In the past, I would have detailed every thought, idea, and philosophical rambling my mind put lazily together. But it’s clear to me now that I only did that to run away from the moment and delude myself into thinking I was doing so in search of something greater. Something better. I thought that by doing so, I was evading death’s pull and that I could think myself out of my inevitable destiny. I lied to myself.

There is nothing left for me in ideas, dreams, or memories. There is nothing in the future or the past that does not exist in front of me now. So long as I am dissatisfied with my blessings today, those same dissatisfactions will be waiting for me patiently in tomorrow and in yesterday.

I’m so tired of allowing death to keep taking from me before I’ve even had the time to sit and experience the moment myself. But on this birthday, I think I know what I feel. I no longer wish to try to outthink death.

To outsmart it. 

To evade it.

It will never leave. But only through accepting its constant presence can it leave the shadows and be revealed through the light. To join us in our activities. To share our love and laughter. To share our tears and pain. It need not be ignored.

There is no happiness without its presence. There is no joy. There is no wedding, baby shower, or birthday party that exists without feeling its presence, in the same way that there is no funeral, car accident, or war that exists without the markings of life. Of presence.

God. Or god. Or space being. Or that mystical force out there. Or empty void. Or pure, utter random chance. I’m done running. I am ready to meet you. You can take me when you will, but know that I will be here. I am no longer trying to hide you from my vision. I see you.

When you come, I’ll be watching the birds fly over my head in their beautiful formations, letting the ice cream drip down my fingers as I watch the ants work in unison to carry the leaves of the banyan tree, hearing the babies laugh with joy as people crowd around them making silly faces.

This year you can find me in the

emptiness.