Nothing in particular has been a root cause of this stagnation, I don't think. Rather, it's been the collection of little unhappinesses which have come together to form one big unhappiness, the way a drop of water on your skin could is unthinkingly brushed away but a downpour of rain soaks. Living through a pandemic, living through 2020, is not merely enervating in the physical sense — it is emotionally tiring, too. It feels so hard to retain your identity in regular life (writer, artist, athlete, whatever) when the world around you feels nonsensical, feels saturated with bullshit, feels as if it will implode at any moment. Not one thing is off balance, but almost everything.
I am especially disheartened by America. Hong Kong, for all the turmoil it's endured in the last few years, feels like an urban idyll compared to the country in which I attended boarding school, the country where I am supposed to be now. The States, for all its proclaimed progressivism, appears to me like the wreckage of some unspoken disaster. We're on the precipice of an election that feels like picking between taking a shot of sour milk or a shot of cyanide, and on the table now are the rights of BIPOC, of the queer community, of women, of all the people whom the system marginalizes and tries to stymie in life. Divisiveness rules society. I don't remember what America at peace feels like, at least certainly not a modern America.
My only connection to America for now is online. Yet I feel a little disgusted every time I pick up my phone and scroll through social media — I'm sick of it. I'm sick of seeing Instagram infographics, snapshots of cruel injustices prettified within clean, minimalist squares because that's the only way my generation will reliably pay attention to anything. I silently curse my friends in America who think it's okay to party in this current climate. I despise (right-wing) politicians for the way they've subverted the foundations of American politics and made the country a laughing stock for the rest of the world. A certain anxiety always creeps up on me whenever I click on those icons at the top of my Instagram homepage; I brace myself for something awful just one tap away.
Can we rewind? Or can we skip ahead? This is the scary part, and I don't want to watch it.
In my free time I think a lot about pre-pandemic life. How far away it seems. I miss the unforgettable smell (stench?) of the Choate dining hall, the way the pizza's and soup's odors would linger on your clothes as you hiked down from Hill House to your next class. I fall asleep sometimes thinking about my oil diffuser, and the wondrous smell of artificial lemongrass and tangerine I would run through my room at night. And I almost always return to the watercolor blues and crimsons of the Italian sunset, that magical evening we had gelato by the Piazza Navona. I was inhospitably reminded of this memory during my online Art Humanities lecture on Bernini, in which the Fountain of the Four Rivers was discussed tangentially by strangers through Zoom windows. Part of me still thinks that, at any moment, I can break the fourth wall of my life, and that my surroundings will fall apart to reveal a director, a camera, someone yelling cut!, reminding me that the chaos that's ensued this year is all part of some elaborate, dystopian fiction.
I realize this all comes off as dismissive of my life in Hong Kong. No, not at all — that's not what I'm trying to say. I absolutely love Hong Kong; everyone who knows me knows that. My sadness now has nothing to do with where I am, but rather, what I am — and what everyone else is — living through. Existing through 2020 is something of a collective trauma. To have adjusted to this doppelgänger reality, we have all been forced to give up who we were in our past lives. We are supposed to carry on as "normal" when everything around us is as abnormal as can be. And there lies a social need to continue carving out routine for ourselves in this horrific parallel life, while none of us can hardly appreciate the meaning of the bigger picture still being painted into existence. Whatever you want to call it — a phase, a fever dream, a catastrophe — this chapter of our lives will send aftershocks well into the future.
These days I've split my time between family, online school, going out with friends, and mindless time-wasting on the Internet: League of Legends, YouTube, etc. Like I said, I have not been productive at all, at least not on the personal front. No writing, no creating, not even too much reading. Yet I don't buy in to the phrase people throw around — "it's okay to feel unmotivated," or something like that — because, at least for me, not writing is synonymous with not being. Writing gives me meaning, so not writing essentially means I'm living a meaningless life. I would be a hollow shell, mechanically carrying out motions. That acceptance of complacency robs me of my personhood. It is dangerous; I do not buy it.
Rather, I have forged a loophole for myself. Instead of feeling dejected, I see myself right now as living through something of an interim. What I am living now is not life, at least not my life, but the life of someone identical to me with one exception; he finds joy not where I find joy, but in another place: indulgence. These days I spend my time on purely hedonistic pursuits. I am not the type to go out too much; but he is. I am not the kind of person who wastes time on Netflix; but he is. I worried a lot about everything in high school; but he tries not to. I never considered myself too much of an epicurean, but people change, don't they?
I had high hopes for 2020. After I got in to Columbia, I began to subconsciously place all my hopes on it. It was there, in that most perfect school for me, I was to find myself, to make myself vulnerable, to do all the sorts of ridiculous, cliched things young people do when they move to New York. While I did enjoy Choate for many reasons, I was aching for a change, for a place I didn't feel suffocated by competition and toxicity, by deadlines and rules. In my freshman year, I was going to do all the things Joan Didion must have done when she first left Sacramento: step off a train at Grand Central (or for me, plane at JFK); make friends with everyone I meet; attend rooftop parties and drink cheap alcohol; wander around the Guggenheim and Central Park on Saturdays; speculate in whispers to my roommates about the people I thought I made meaningful eye contact with on the path that day; taste freedom — real freedom — in that delightful, fabled little thing called youth. All these hopes, of course, have sadly not been realized. I doubt they ever will be, at this point.
Like I said, though, I can't complain about Hong Kong. In many ways being back here — and for such an extended length of time — has been revelatory in its own way. It goes without saying that this place is always deeply linked to my heart, but my experience is qualified by much, much more than the parties, the multitude of cafes and restaurants, the hikes through Little Hawaii or Wong Nai Chung. It's very much about my sense of belonging. Hong Kong has, for quite a few years, existed in me as the place I would return to temporarily (though still lovingly, of course). But now, it feels much more permanent. Over the last few months, I've reconnected with old friends, grown closer with people I thought were acquaintances, and made solid friendships with people who were complete strangers not two months ago. My Cantonese has improved considerably — and consequently, so have my interactions with just about everyone (minus my English-speaking friends, of course). And I feel so grateful for the extra time I never thought I'd get to spend with my family, whom I see far too little of. These opportunities sustain me.
In many ways, living here now feels like a return to the days I still attended German Swiss — a homecoming, almost, to the times where Hong Kong was the only place I really knew, and far away from home meant the New Territories, not Wallingford. Although now, having attended school in America for a while, I would describe my existence in Hong Kong as more of an observer than of a participant — certainly not my choice, but it is a necessary sacrifice for anyone who leaves their home for so long.
I crave the day when this year has long faded as a distant memory. I cannot wait until our current existence feels the way a nightmare feels by lunchtime — a nebulous impression of some unreal, distant disaster we no longer need to care for. Imagine it: a life without masks, without worrying about distancing ourselves, without any of the inhibitions we are shackled with today. A place where we don't wake up to the reality of living through an awful moment in human history, so normalized to us by now because we've numbed ourselves to the irrationalities of our existences. A time where the world is at peace.
Such a life feels vaguely out of reach. But I try to remember it, to hold onto it. That fading memory of pre-pandemic reality, that feeling of opportunity and agency and freedom — that is the fiction I hold onto these days in order to carry on.
