Where Am I?
I am currently going through a transition phase in my life. Originally, I wanted to write about that transition, but then I realised that I wasn’t ready for it yet. Perhaps the best way to describe my current state is that I am neither here nor there, stuck in a liminal space much like the backrooms of internet urban legend, a samey corridor devoid of character, confusing and unnerving at the same time.
I have a poor sense of direction. Maybe it is the way my city was built with poor urban planning that causes me to become disoriented after making a few turns. When I’m not in the driver’s seat, I often find myself lost in thought or listening to the music playing on the car speakers, the journey from departure to destination a disjointed blur of urban life. Within the confines of a car, there is really no “transition”: my body hardly moves as it is transported to wherever I need to be. To use a videogame analogy, it almost feels like fast travel whereby your character gets teleported from Point A to Point B, except the loading screen (i.e. car window) is the scenery along the way.
In his 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, author Robert M. Pirsig wrote of his experience riding a motorcycle across America:
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
When I was a teenager, my dad forbade me from riding a motorcycle due to obvious safety risks. I never bothered to get on one anyway. Instead, I rode a bicycle recreationally, cycling on heavily forested trails that cut through some fruit plantations. For that short period of time, I would be close to nature, breathing in the fresh air and listening to the rushing river accompanied by the screeches of unseen cicadas high above the treetops. Even though I didn’t quite enjoy cycling uphill for most of the trail, I always looked forward to the rush of gliding downhill on the way home. I guess this is as close as I will get to understanding what Pirsig meant: being present in the moment as I experience my surroundings directly.
Life transitions feel more like car rides than motorcycle or bicycle rides. Just like on a long roadtrip, if you spend too much time on a transition, you find yourself inevitably asking, “Are we there yet?” No one can guarantee how the future will turn out. This uncertainty makes the wait during these transitions all the more agonising. It reminds me of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of us were stuck at home waiting for it to be all over. I remember being far away from home, cooped up in the room I rented at the time while I attended online classes for my final semester of university. Every day, I was waiting for any bit of good news to bring me out of my malaise. Honestly, if it weren’t for a couple of welcoming communities I found on Discord, I would have been infinitely lonelier.
“Change is the only constant,” so goes the mantra of our modern world. Some people thrive in times of change, others struggle to adapt. In my current transition phase, I am trying to push for change, but change does not seem to happen to me. I’m not stagnant, but it does feel like I am drifting aimlessly, pushed along by the waves of chance. It is a feeling that is all too familiar to me. Forces beyond my control force me into uncharted territory, but unlike my younger years where I clung onto whatever debris for dear life, I have now built a boat that will see me through the unknown.
Could we ever be masters of our own destiny? Countless times throughout history, humans have defied almost insurmountable odds stacked against them. Civilisations rise, fall and rise again. As much as we look to the past and marvel at our ancestors’ triumphs, we should look to the present and strive to shape a better future. Despite all the dysfunction that is happening in the world right now, I would like to think that I am living in the best time in human history. And I don’t want to waste any moment of it.
I don’t know how long this transition will last. But I will definitely write about it when it’s over. Until then, I will persevere and weather the storm. Maybe then will I truly know where I currently am in life.