to be in 2B.
I’m reminded of my longing to discover and expand, reminded of how I must make space for the vestige of fire awaiting to re-ignite within me.
“Treat school like a hobby.” My mom once told me. I frowned in response, ever so confused at the absurdity of her statement. How can school be my hobby, when it is precisely what I abandon all of my hobbies in order to allocate time for?
Since the beginning of university, I have struggled with making time for my hobbies. This is not an experience paticular to me, but rather a shared pain point among numerous other students. For a specific subset of us, typically in pursuit of some field that is conventionally considered to be practical, postsecondary education is an investment into our future more than it is anything else. And possibly because of this, school exists somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum from hobby.
Flashback to high school graduation ceremony: while receiving awards in recognition for my academic achievement, I all of a sudden felt out of place. At the time I was only attempting to stay afloat, never really striving after anything other than to run away from an insatiable fear of failure. Was this something to be celebrated? But standing under the spotlight and before the applause, I must have appeared like someone who was capable of whatever she put her mind to.
Ironically, if you were to ask me what I desired at the time, my exact answer would have been I wanted to feel capable (exact, because I had written that in my journal). Because if power is defined as the ability to affect change, I felt quite powerless at the time — overwhelmed by the insurmountable weight of the most trivial things. In the year to come I set aside my identity as a student and attempted to rekindle any vestige of fire left within me. More than anything I felt disoriented during the gap year, drifting without being anchored to a familiar identity and worrying that it had all been a waste of time. Somehow the process of solidifying a sense of self was simultaneously one where my sense of self felt the most amorphous. The prelude to university nevertheless revived my wilting anticipation for what was to come. Optimism pulsed gently within me as I awaited to embark upon a new chapter, to be finally given a clearer sense of purpose and identity.
The first year passed in somewhat of a frenzy. The line of distinction between life and school-work blurred into nonexistence as I navigated through remote learning. As the terms gradually progressed, something that once sparked eagerness and curiosity in me became reduced to something I’m simply obliged to. More often than not, guilt arised whenever I attempted to engage in my pastimes or anything that’s supposedly unproductive, as though having my time filled by something other than what I am obliged to is an extravagance that I cannot afford.
My pain point could be summarized as such: the conflicted tension between the desire to engage in some ostensibly unproductive activity and the sense of guilt that holds me back from doing so. This ache is almost comfortable, really. I do not need to decide what it is that I actually want for myself but merely to proceed with what I think I ought to do, propelled by a familar and insatiable fear of failure. Growing up, I have been taught that there is virtue in deferring of one’s true desires in order to fulfill what is required. And there is ostenscibly merit in my hesitancy to engage in activities for the sake of enjoyment. But what about agency? What about the courage it takes to show up for something that specifically matter to me? What about the honour given to the identification and pursuit of one’s actual desires? Because how can I explain that the things that mean the most to me are simultaneously what paralyze me? I would much rather admire from a distance, awestruck by its beauty and fragility instead of drawing near. It feels easier to engage in what I do not really enjoy as long as I am validated by a sense of instruction. I cannot help but wonder if this is precisely why I was — and perhaps still am — haunted by a sense of incapacity.
In the words of actor Ethan Hawke, “if you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you, and it expands.” I have a lifetime of becoming ahead of me, unfolding along the process of showing up sincerely to what holds meaning to me. The unrequited passions occassionally burst within me like diffractions of light, longing to be poured out into a fitting vessel. I’m reminded of my longing to discover and expand, reminded of how I must make space for the vestige of fire awaiting to re-ignite within me, because this act is as essential as oxygen.
Now, quite a well, I’m re-pondering upon the fragments of wisdom in my mom’s words and understanding more of what she might have meant. I recall standing star-eyed inside the campus buildings, daydreaming about the upcoming immersion in intellectual stimulation. At the end of the day, this is something that I have chosen to engage in out of choice. A sense of agency looks like leaning in with curiosity, sincerely showing up to this continual process of discovery of the world both around and within me. Even at times when it gets hard to recall, this intention is awaiting to be rekindled.
Conversely, while academics remains an important portion of my responsibility and being a student a large part of who I am, it is not the entirety of my identity. Even as it becomes inevitably more difficult to engage in hobbies at times of conflicting obligations, any sense of guilt is unneccessary. My task is to hold space for everything else that feels meaningful to me, with my academic responsibilities as a single element out of the entire array. I only want to show up sincerely to everything that I value, incrementally expanding and becoming as the warmth of it all nourishes me.
Hence gradually, I am letting go of the need to anxiously and constantly prove myself into existence. Perhaps in a rhythm along the lines of Mary Oliver: to just let the soft animal of my body love what it loves without needing to walk on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert. To love what I do and not merely abide to a predetermined motion. To engage in what is unproductive but nevertheless worthwhile. Maybe at the end of the day the most important task is to show up sincerely to all the confusions and delights that unfold along everything I encounter, ever so willing to expand and become. And ever so gradually, I am learning just to be.