Story

I just finished the One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka and it’s got me fucked up. If you want to try sabotaging any conventional sense of new year motivation, try reading a Japanese farmer’s diatribe about why everything that’s wrong with the world is rooted in human’s desire for progress. Fukuoka is among the influential Asians of the world that I’m kind of peeved that it took me so long to come across. Although I hadn’t heard his name or philosophies mentioned in the Asian and Asian American circles I’m around, he’s one of the instigators of permaculture, and a central source of inspiration for the likes of Michael Pollan.

Some quotes that resounded with me:

“If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature’s productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.” (104)

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” (119)

“Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed; it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul. Nature as grasped by philosophical knowledge is a theory created out of human speculation, a ghost with a soul, but no structure.” (125)

“Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture. True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.” (138)

I’m still trying to grasp what it means to strive for human perfection while at the same time not be driven by productivity. These two concepts are abstract and probably impossible in their truest forms, and they’re definitely not one and the same – even though from a distance they can seem to be. Again, the mantra of doing less and being more is echoing in my head. 

If we’re honest about what’s keeping the world from reaching its fullest potential, it’s not a lack of productivity. We don’t even have to go that far-out and abstract. Across the board, the biggest challenges to nations, societies, communities, and relationships aren’t due to an overwhelming sense of inertia. And especially when it comes to the individual – measuring one’s value based on one’s output is itself an act of devaluation. Life is more than production. We are more than products.

But in this day and age, to be still is to be stagnant. The myth of productivity is hidden in plain sight – it’s clear that war, inequity, starvation, and pollution won’t be solved by simply getting more stuff done (on the contrary, so much trouble is caused by the lust for forward movement). Yet while it’s clear that productivity isn’t the answer for the world, each of us have been raised to believe that it’s the answer for us. And those of us who hope to contribute to progress must make a “mark,” which is done by working very very hard. Problematically, productivity then becomes equivalent to purpose – I am what I do, and therefore doing as much as I can is a moral obligation. Here, rest is sinful, and we are pressed to feel guilty for taking pleasure. And in such a world, the Beyoncés, Elons, and Baracks are praised as saints, as the shining examples of those who use their 24 hours each day basking in the holy grail of accomplishment. 

Those who escape being tools for their company or their nation may instead feel like one for their family, art, community, or spirit. Productivity is the constant addressing of our shoulds, and I’ve gotten so trained in this that even on days when there’s nothing I really should do, I’ll make it a task to sit down and assign myself more tasks. Otherwise, what am I here for? This is when I again need to examine if I’m equating productivity with purpose. 

At the end of each year, at my family’s home on vacation, I usually reach a breaking point. After several days not going through my routine of responsibilities, I start just looking for shit to do. I declutter the house that’s not even my own. I start tending to social media accounts I never ever think about (hello, annual LinkedIn maintenance). I know I’ve really reached the bottom of the barrel when I find myself on iTunes’ “Best Productivity Apps of the Year.” I’ll throw hours down the hole downloading, registering, testing, and discarding dozens of apps to improve my efficiency in the worlds of email, to-do lists, routine managers, and anything else you can think of making twelve of the same app for. I think of this practice as time invested for mechanisms that will help me move throughout the next year in lightning speed. Instead, it’s a hamster wheel. 

There’s the story of the germaphobe who cleaned his house spotless, and when he was done he didn’t have anything else to clean, so he started cleaning his detergent bottles. That’s not really a story, it’s just an analogy to unsuccessfully get to the point I’m trying to make.

So I spent all of this past December imagining myself sleeping early for New Year’s Eve, getting up at 6 the next morning, doing my meditation and stretches like a sensei, and then entering 2018 with the vigor of an ox. Instead, I vegged out in front of Netflix, went to bed at 2, woke up at 10, and spent the rest of the morning feeling guilty for not making the most of my day. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, after coming out of my mild session of self-loathing, I recognized that the problem isn’t that I went to bed and woke up late. It’s not the fact that by noon I hadn’t crossed anything off my to-do list. It’s that I placed so much expectation on how this morning would represent my entire life, and by extension that my very slow, rather peaceful and ideal morning was in fact an implication that I was going to spend the rest of my life being a lazy ass. But if it took all that for me to finally (or once again?) put into words that presence is action, then simply showing up for this kind of reflection is a bigger accomplishment than any task I could conquer today.

Doing less and being more – I resolve to make that a priority this year. 

Over the holidays, at some point between eating my third helping of leche flan, and my late-night gorging of a cookie-pie-a-la-mode, I recognized that I need to reconsider my relationship with indulgence. It’s not like I ball out of control, or exist anywhere within the realm of gluttony. At least I don’t think I do. Honestly, it’s hard to judge as an American amidst the culture of vices, of “treat yo self” because “you deserve it.” In D.C., a ridiculously expensive city occupied by people with hella disposable income earned by very stressful living has set the scene for any and every moment to call for excess.

It’s Sunday!
Treat yo self to brunch with bottomless mimosas. 

It’s been a hard day at work!
Time to veg out in front of Netflix for three hours.  

It’s your coffee break!
You deserve a latte with whipped cream, and you might as well get that chocolate cake lollipop, too. You gotta splurge a little every now and then. 

Every now and then?

The fact that any occasion can be a special occasion – that three days out of the week can technically count as the weekend, that hump day calls for a mid-week treat, and the rest of the days are apt with excuses to let go too – is actually an incredible opportunity to be constantly grateful. There’s always a reason to toast. But more often than not, we skip the toast and go straight for the shot. Instead of actually experiencing these instances as true moments of appreciation, we’ve created protocols for an expensive and unhealthy status-quo of overconsumption. 

In trying to exercise restraint, I’ve learned that using the rest of society as a reference might be worse than simply looking within myself. In fact, one of my worst enablers is my confidence that whatever I’m pigging out on is healthier than the daily breakfast donuts of the folks on the bus, or less expensive than everyone else’s daily Frappuccino. Nothing’s too much as long as it’s not that much. There’s always someone who eats more sugar, spends more on gadgets, drinks more alcohol, or engages in decadent activity that makes your own actions seem “modest.” And while I know that I generally eat healthier and more cost-effectively than most people around me, I must constantly remind myself that everything is relative, and the relativity I live in is one that includes unicorn cronuts. Such delicacies seem easy enough to keep at an arm’s length, it’s in the middle of a long and stressful Tuesday in the office.

So my aspirations for this coming year can be summed up in the manta, “consume less, appreciate more.” To me, this means noticing every time a voice in my head tempts me to indulge in something simply because I deserve it. I’m realizing that the logic of consuming something simply because you deserve it is a twisted call to action based on a sense of self worth that could instead be channeled toward something positive. Instead of constantly convincing myself that “I deserve it,” I need to be asking myself, “does it deserve me?” To imagine my brain, my body, my attention as an exclusive space means that some things – however delicious or delightful – may not be good enough to be welcomed into the incredible existence I’m building for myself. What then remains are the true indulgences – the rare moments that can be anticipated, savored, and reflected upon with deep appreciation. A curated experience, one truly fit for this life. 

We’ve all heard that our biggest regrets don’t come from the risks we take, but the risks we didn’t. I’ve lived by that as a code, and it’s one of the reasons why for as long as I can remember I’ve obsessively collected experiences, places, and people to be a part of my life. I take on my days like a vacuum cleaner to a shaggy rug, like the world is my oyster platter and it’s happy hour on someone else’s tab. Being this way is exhilarating and exhausting. It plays out in big ways, like my temptation to jump at most opportunities to go to a new part of the world, or to dive into new projects simply out of sheer wonder of the subject. It also manifests in small ways – at restaurants, I always want to order last so I can pit the delicious dishes against each other in my brain, finally order one under pressure, and almost surely change my decision as soon as I hear it come out my lips. Despite coming off like a stereotypical gemini, my thirst for trying new things has generally played to my favor. I’m super happy being who I am, where I am.

But every decision has its cost-benefit. When I take a risk, packed into it is the assumed consequences of foregoing what else could have been. I moved to New York with iLL-Lit in ‘09, only after massive amounts of soul-searching about whether I really wanted to live so far from my family and friends. We took a big risk. We were met with shitty landlords, rats in our basement, being perpetually broke, stolen computers with music we had worked our asses off on, and plenty of wondering if this was in fact a risk we shouldn’t have taken. When Dahlak and Nico moved back to California, I was again faced with a tough decision — do I follow suit and continue dedicating my full time to the band like I had for so many years, or do I move to Beijing with Lovely, and live out that dream of residing overseas like I’d been contemplating for so long? 

Choosing the latter has set me into an unreal life (not like touring the country with a funk band wearing giant Lego heads wasn’t). I’ve met people I’ve never imagined meeting, gone to places I never thought I’d be, and embarked on projects on a scale that I never fathomed before. But in the frequent moments when I contemplate my couldawouldashouldas, they show themselves not so much in missed leaps I didn’t take – the kind that are idolized in those TED talks about seizing moments and maximizing potential – instead, they’re in the paths I left behind when I switched tracks toward newer pastures. 

Obsessing over whether you really made the right life decisions can be a full-time job, but it’s a completely irrational mental exercise. I say this because the solutions demanded by regret can only be achieved with the stuff of science fiction. How can I be sure that I truly spent my years barking up the wrong tree, other than to employ some psychic power to catch a glimpse at an imagined alternative reality? If then, I do find things to regret, do I fix that by hopping in my nonexistent time machine? And if I do manage to go back in time, when I get there do I magically clone myself so I can seize all the missed opportunities while still making sure I salvage the lived experiences I’m content with? And then what? I return to the present moment and just bask in all the money I’ve made or recognition I’ve garnered or success I’ve achieved, I guess. 

But that’s the thing about commitment – you lock yourself in, even if briefly, to the track you’ve chosen. Some people fear commitment because the thought of the indefinite can be frightening. But I think what really brings us unease are all the other things that could happen but won’t. The flaw here is that we think holding off on commitment means that all the possibilities are at our fingertips, but that’s where they remain – at our fingertips and never within grasp. By refusing to commit, we think we’re seizing every moment, when in reality we’re grabbing at everything but taking hold of nothing. 

My chronic indecisiveness means that I’m perpetually aware of the slew of missed opportunities that I’ll never know. But instead of ruminating on that, I’m trying to remind myself to appreciate the fact that such a wealth of possibilities is available to me in the first place. It’s an unearned privilege that not all have. Honoring the privilege of choice means fully embracing what life has provided, even there’s a chance it might not be the absolute best hypothetical outcome offered by the multiverse. 

If I’m fortunate enough, I’ll be seeing many phrases in my life ahead that I will one day reflect on, wonder about, reappraise. There will be risks I’m on the verge of taking before deciding not to, and I’ll take chances that I’ll wish I hadn’t. I’ll keep working at my job wondering what life could be if I was doing something else, and when I finally do leave, I’ll wonder if I walked away from the career of a lifetime. I’ll continue traveling, longing to see and live in places I’ll never step foot in. And when the fateful times come when my loved ones leave this earth, I’ll wish I hadn’t ever moved or traveled at all. I’ll wish I stayed in the house I grew up in and spent everyday holding them close, never distracting myself from professional accolades or public recognition or internet attention. I’ll look at those who lived slow, seemingly unadventurous and uneventful lives, and wonder if I couldashouldawoulda followed that path. And then I’ll do what we always do regardless of how our existences transpire – I’ll live with it. 

This year, amidst traveling through Hawaiʻi and producing ʻAe Kai, shooting landscapes throughout New Mexico for Bombshelltoe, and generally forming a more acute awareness of my surroundings, I’ve seen the buddings of a new interest in agriculture. My own process in getting here seems very natural, but building a career in all things digital can make it appear to be counter-intuitive or even random. And so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when I expressed my interested in working on more projects in this realm at work, I was warned that some – particularly scientists at the Smithsonian – might dismiss me or even find my pursuit problematic. “You don’t want them thinking you’re just pursuing a pet project,” I was told.

“Pet project” is a term to describe a means to no end, a story with no plot. In my head, I imagine someone grooming a mossy rock obliviously while the world around them crumbles. In our world that’s increasingly about productivity, maximizing time, and focus – a pet project is the surrogate for time and energy wasted.

I’ve been bouncing this term and dilemma in my head for the past few days, and here’s the thing – I can’t think of anything that I do seriously that didn’t start off as a pet project. Everything I’ve become good at, and even become known as an “expert” in, began as a wandering journey of curiosity, an interest in trying my hand in something that I had absolutely no experience or background in. I still remember being that senior in high school, being enchanted by the spoken word of Saul Williams, and clumsily piecing together the first few lines to perform at an open mic I had absolutely no qualification for being in. This was while I was receiving my college acceptance results, while anyone could have popped their head into my life to berate me for writing amateur poems instead of preparing myself for my future career as an engineering student. Actually, some did.

Not long after, newly politicized and still figuring out my own interpretation of my identity, I found myself behind megaphones at anti-war rallies, fighting my own self-doubt about fitting into the label of an “activist,” while college republicans shouted at me that I had no idea what I was talking about. This was also during the time when I was making flyers and posters on Microsoft Word, building websites on Geocities, and trying to drown out the imagined judgement of all the professional graphic designers who would probably look at my work as chicken scratch.

And when I found myself at the Smithsonian, after somehow becoming a curator (a term I had to Google when I applied for it), I shouldered past blaring bouts of imposter syndrome while reading the most elementary of texts about museum practice and contemporary art.

Anything in this this world that has been conceived of is attached to a person or community that has been deemed an “expert,” and expertise can build up like plaque, barring newcomers who approach with curiosity and questions. Those who spend their years and careers earning their titles gnash their teeth and click their tongues, dismiss newfound-yet-unfounded passions as “pet projects” to downgrade what can be potential threats to the ivory towers that they’ve built.

But anyone who has ever had a pet knows that there are few things in life that one nurtures with more care. Few of us who have dogs are experts in canine biology (that’s probably not even the right term) but we do know how to love our pets in ways that are unique, profound, genuine, and even full of expertise. We tend to them with an intimacy that no pound or shelter could ever express, no matter how highly-regarded they are in their field. It’s with this sense of ownership and agency that we should all know our right to pursue our pet projects. Pet projects may be, in fact, the purest and humblest entry point towards being our best selves.

I’m spending the month of December to recall those who entered my life this year in profound and inspiring ways. One person a day. One would think, with all the posting we do, functions we go to, business cards we hand out and “friends” we add on Facebook that this would be an easy task. I consider myself lucky for getting to do my work in such an open space, where in some circumstances people are even excited to meet me, and also where I have access to minds and souls more brilliant than I had ever fathomed. But last night, jotting down names in my notebook, I came to a stop at around 15. This includes artists I’ve collaborated and curated with, people I’ve met in my travels, and those who entered my world in the way that they do as life unfolds. I thought there would be so many more, yet at the same time I’m surprised there aren’t less. It’s not like I’ve actively implemented a “no more friends” policy in my life the way that some people do when they feel overwhelmed by their social circle. At the same time, it’s not like I was actively searching. I’ve definitely met more than 15 people this year, way more. My list – personal and without particular standards for qualification – is simply comprised of those who “struck a chord” with me, whatever the hell that means. Sometimes it’s a single day well-spent, or a piece of information exchanged that unlocked a connection, or a moment of inspiration that now plays a vital role in my everyday life. And then there are the countless people I’ve long known but finally connected deeply with, and those I met recently and know I want to cultivate something deeper with.

I don’t consider myself incredibly extroverted, and over the years my guard has come up (especially here in D.C.). But within the intro/extro binary, I know that I’m the latter – I gain my energy around people (albeit certain kinds of people), I wilt when I go long without human contact, and most of my most cherished memories involve at least one other person. But I’m also far from being the social butterfly. I’m terrible at small-talk, mentally wince at memories of my awkward encounters, and like to generally leave social gatherings late. If the typical extrovert is equated with the “Type A” personality, I’d consider myself Type-Z – my social interactions are calculated and intentional, I hang in the back until I feel fully able to be my full self to another. As we close this year and enter the next, I’m doing this exercise to appreciate my new friends as more than just a collection to add to my social network. I’m hoping to value them the way that I long to be valued, perhaps the way we all long to be, as the world gets smaller, more connected, and more urgent.

My high school was so woke in the 90’s, it already offered Asian American Studies classes. I didn’t take them, because I figured the essence of my own being meant I already knew what I needed to know about my own identity. So it wasn’t until my freshman year at UC Davis that I took an Asian American History class, only because all my required courses for my computer science major were filled up. My professor was Bill Ong Hing, and within the first lecture I was hooked. By the end of that year I had entered the world of community organizing, and I eventually graduated with an Asian American Studies minor. Throughout my whole college career, I had no idea what I was going to do with these ethnic studies courses, or the library of books I had collected. It was 15 years ago when I picked up Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart for that first class that changed my life, and I feel so honored to share that moment of inspiration with the world now.

It feels amazing to come full circle with my work at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, by presenting this film adaptation of Bulosan’s book, directed by Frank Chi and featuring Hasan Minhaj, Ivy Quicho and Junot Díaz. America is in the Heart was one of my first encounters with an American history that actually included experiences I could identify with. I’m so proud of this project and I hope it introduces a whole new generation to this masterpiece.

Writing here has been such an internal tug-of-war between ego and insecurity, responsibility and guilt. What I do know is that when I don’t write, I go to bed feeling like I’m missing something. I’ve made a habit feeling this way for the years that I haven’t been regularly writing in any form (besides writing emails, which is about as silly as counting podcasts as “reading”). It’s not that I got tired of writing, or discouraged. Actually, it’s my writing that started it all – that go me teaching, traveling, politically motivated, and the reason I know most of the people who have become central to my life. The reason I stopped writing is because the life that writing gifted me got filled with so much. So writing here has been a part of my process of returning to that which makes all else possible – my writing, my family, my soul.

Whenever we try to get back into something that we used to be great at, we’re sure to hear someone utter, “it’s like riding a bike!” It’s like riding a bike is as much of a cop-out as saying that anything that’s unfamiliar tastes like chicken. So for the record, frog doesn’t taste like chicken, and writing isn’t like riding a bike. The expression comes from the fact that, if you ever knew how to ride a bike before, then even after years of not riding, your muscle-memory will kick back into hear as soon as you hop on the seat and put your fingers on the handlebars. Maybe that’s true. But what they don’t tell you is that your bike-riding skills will be equal or less than what they were when you last rode a bike, which is probably in the third grade. And back then, riding anything was thrilling, because we were still a lifetime away from driving a car. In the third grade, we didn’t have anywhere to go, so we rode for leisure, and in our invincible bodies we popped wheelies and rode down stairways with such finesse that if someone asked if we were great at riding bikes we’d say “the best!”

The problem with looking at returning to writing like returning to biking is that, like biking, the writing doesn’t age well unattended. It’s not wine (to add another poorly-placed analogy). And while I’ve spent a fair share of my life formulating phrases and sentence structures in my head, there’s something about the birthing process of splaying them out for yourself and others to see that simply can’t happen internally. I could pull the same tricks out of my hat as I did back in college, but for that I’d have to ignore the fact that I’m no longer impressed by quickly-paced multi-syllabic rhymeschemes (and neither is the rest of the world). The emotions that were raw in me back then have either been consumed or expired. Writing like my 19-year-old self would feel as inappropriate as dressing like my 19-year-old self, and while one could argue that the problem lies in the fact that my young self wasn’t writing or dressing timelessly, I’d argue back that it’s that bold short-sightedness that made my work resonate with my peers and others back then.

So now I’m laying all this out, as my mid-thirties-self, feeling pretty cruddy about it all now, but also intrigued by what this will be to me when I return to it years later. The goal for now is simply to leave something for me to return to in the first place.

This is the third time I’ve tried to reach enlightenment. The first must’ve been at some point when I was carving a space for myself in the Bay. I had just returned from college, and was reacquainting myself to that elevated Cali life. I was newly politicized, was decked out in earth tones, and may have event rocked a headwrap. I was frequenting the kinds of dimly-lit spaces where frankincense incense burned slow. I met a girl with thick, rebellious hair, who religiously used Dr. Bronners on everything and who said she could feel my energy. This was a time of lucid dreams, of atoms moving in the kind of visible manner you only really get if you’ve ever attempted astral projection. But then she broke it off, the colors turned to gray and I carried on.

The second time, I mentioned not too long ago. A woman named Sun held my hands and told me to imagine roots coming out of my feet and a beam shooting out of the top of my head. No matter that we were on the 7th floor of a hotel room in Minneapolis, or that I had a flight to catch soon and this was how I decided to try to stay up. I listened to her voice, a voice that spoke of past lives who were conspiring together to lead me through this life. I was living in New York, beginning my first relationship in five years, toiling with all the existential things that some of us describe as Saturn’s return (obvz, you can’t take the Bay out of the boy). I woke up with tears streaming down my cheeks and everything vibrating. I continued this meditation for a solid few months. But then I left New York. I lost my routine in the move.

So now, I feel pretty wack for returning to meditation during the age when #mindfulness is scattered throughout Whole Foods. I came back to meditation via an app, and now I do my 20-30 minutes with a timer on. It’s very pragmatic, logistical, and it works. It’s been almost two years that I’ve been on this path, and although this might be seen as my actual “successful” bout with meditation, when I close my eyes and let my mind go, it often gets rattled with a larger question of why I’m here in the first place. Why is meditation now a treatment instead of a moment? What am I putting pressure on myself to stay grounded in? What am I attempting to rebalance each and every morning? So much of meditation is described as “looking inward,” but I believe what made the past sessions powerful was my ability to transcend my own self, to look outward. Despite my meditation streaks and newfound ability to sit still for half an hour, a big part of me is still longing for the kind of openness and curiosity I approached my meditations with when I was younger, when life was less stable and when my spirit had more at stake. I have so much more privilege in life now than I did 5 or 10 years back, but is privilege a fair trade for soulfulness?