Today is December 14. One year ago today, I took a much-anticipated 20hr flight across oceans and crossed SFO’s immigration as an alien legally permitted to work in the US.
I am obsessive about anniversaries. They are my way of being grateful and honoring turning points in my life. I honor the day I first stepped into San Francisco, the day I have gotten my visa approved, the day I first worked at Medium, etc. We can go over entire weeks, months, years and not remembering the work our former selves have done to get us here so far. It is not about being prideful about achievements, it is reminding myself that things I have now did not come easy and I should never take them for granted.
It is extremely easy to get used to precious things and forget what made them precious in the first place, to stop wanting to savor these moments. I could walk up and down the streets of the Mission blindly, going from point A to point B, without observing the tremendous life that once captured my heart so deeply. It is so much part of my daily routine to walk through the doors of the Medium office everyday that it could very simply become another generic door, but there are still plenty of moments when I walk through those doors and sigh deeply.
Each sigh represents a rapid virtual zipline of the dots in my life which have to be connected in order for me to walk through those doors. The people I had to meet, the favors I had to beg for, the grace of people I had to depend on, the serendipity that had to take place, the blind faith I needed to have, the reconditioning my mind had to undergo, the hearts I had to break.
There were so many factors that had to take place at the right time, right location, right sequence, in order for me to have my seemingly mundane routine today.
But the reason I keep wanting to honor and remember these events is not to repeatedly relive my best moments, it is to keenly remind myself that I have to pay it forward because I am carrying the debt of all those people who had it in their grace to make this possible for me, and also to be a living example – life can go on extremely unexpected trajectories.
And this makes me recall a story Amir Khella wrote about Buckminister Fuller’s epiphany:
If one attends to the problems of humanity and commits oneself to solving them, the universe will care for that person the same way it cares for a flower or a bird.
It doesn’t matter if you call me a hippie or whatsoever, this is a deep-rooted belief I have been carrying around for a good number of years. There was a certain point in my mid-twenties when I became so frustrated that I decided to consciously stop trying to do what society expects me to. I stopped consciously trying to pursue material security, I stopped trying to do things for recognition. I use the word, ‘try’ because I have been through periods where I swing back into survival mode and forget the essence of how I really want to live. But the key is, I swing out of it and try really hard again.
I decided that I wanted to be the change I want and if I committed myself to doing so, things would take care of itself, that events would unfold the way it should in order to enable me to do my work.
And what is my work? To me, my work is essentially not just design and I have no interest to be a better designer per se. To me, design is a means to the end. The end for me is a sustainable livable world. The means for me is not only design, but it encompasses storytelling, authentic connections, sharing, exchanging ideas, writing, broadcasting, being the best I can be and want to be, not only professionally, but simply as a human being.
This is what I have to say after living more than half a decade of this experiment – I am grateful to my former self for taking this leap of faith. This is the single best long-term investment I have ever made, not by worrying about my retirement, not by taking strategic career moves, not by trying to meet expectations of people who love me – but by being the most authentic, empathetic self I can be, with the single-minded intention to do whatever I can in my capacity to make this a more livable world.
This has made me learn that the best investments made in my life is the ones I take a long-term view of, I am not afraid to end up at the wrong destination because if I consistently do everything I can in my journey to do the work I aspire to, does the destination even matter? I have long reconciled within myself, even if one day I end up hungry, cold and penniless, but throughout my life I have been doing my best to contribute to a better world, I would gladly be hungry, cold and penniless.
Where I am today did not come by because I planned. To a large extent I am where I am because I put my belief that this world can be better, and that my contribution will matter, above everything else. The best choices I have made was made with my gut and love, not with my brain and logic.
I take one step forward and two steps backwards. Rinse and repeat. Something happens and I seem to make a quantum leap. But in the core of my heart I know, these quantum leaps are a consequence of the small baby steps I take, sometimes forward, plenty of times backwards, but what truly matters is – I try to take these steps regardless.
I can say I have had the best year of my life since December 14 2012 – I reunited with my team at simplehoney after one year of being apart, I came back to the city I loved after not being able to return in that same year, I had my tiny heart broken when simplehoney had to end, had the same tiny heart carefully mended when I started work at Medium, and I am now doing the most fulfilling work of my life so far because now I can help make people tell their incredible stories, I am having the most consistent sleep and energy levels of my entire life, I have made and fostered amazing connections with people, I have learned and grown so much both personally and professional, I am surrounded by brilliance everyday at work.
These days I can have a terrible day by typical standards, someone will come by and ask me, “how’s it going?” I answer, “great!” – not because I am a hypocrite, but because having had the life I have had in the past year, there is honestly nothing more I can ask for.
That being said, I know this is the tip of the iceberg, not because I think I am capable of so much more, but because I desire to experience and contribute to this world, so much more.