Geri

“To Be or Not To Be”

My father is setting down his bowl of rice and chopsticks on the table, shaking his head. “Ah lui, why don’t you want to go to law school? You have the grades for it. What else are you going to do with an English degree?”

“Nah, it’s not for me – I don’t think I can make it through law school. I’m too dumb for it. I just got lucky with the grades. A fluke,” I say.

“Aiyah, don’t force her to do what she doesn’t want. Look at her, so mong. If she becomes a lawyer, she will have to hire a separate one for herself in case her client sues her for negligence.” My mother is laughing. I know she is saying this only because she is on my side and wanting me to pursue whatever I set my mind on. But still.

“What do you mean? I can totally go to law school if I want to and I can become a lawyer if everyone else can do it too. Practically everyone who can’t do STEM goes to law school nowadays. You just have to pay.” As soon as I let those words out, I am regretting them. I sound like a giant asshole. I am going to pay for them sooner or later. There’s surveillance from above. I need to fix this. “You know what, you’re right. I can’t do it,” I laugh. “I would probably accidentally tell the judge that my client, the defendant, is guilty.”

Excessive pride has long been frowned upon in the history of mankind, or at least within the Christian tradition. The most famous story is perhaps that of Lucifer, the angel who fell because he didn’t want to be second-best and rebelled against God. O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams that bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere; till pride and worse ambition threw me down, warring in Heav’n against Heav’ns matchless King! Ah wherefore? He deserved no such return from me, whom he created what I was. While the myth was never explicitly mentioned in the Bible, Milton’s epic certainly popularised this anecdote I have come to believe the myth as a part of my own history.

When I was in high school, I encountered one of my favourite poets: John Keats. When I found out he wrote on his epitaph: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water, the only thing I thought about in the weeks that followed was a desperate man trying to carve his name onto something that wouldn’t let him. An offering rejected by the divine. No, your name and your little poems aren’t good enough to be immortalised. But there is a line from one of his poems that I love: On the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink. Every time I read this, the world around me dims. I see myself standing on a precipice. Below me are monstrous waves and Charybdis, swallowing every compliment I’ve ever received, every achievement, every failure, every criticism – everything – into oblivion. It was like a Friedrich painting, but darker.

I used to think I was good at writing. The people around me told me so. All because I used words like “grandiloquent” and “antipathy” in the short stories I wrote when I was in fourth grade. I thought I was going to be a world-renowned author. I am twenty now, and I’ve read Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton. Fitzgerald, O’Neill, and Williams. I realise I could never invent a line that would be associated with me forever – I only know clichés and what’s been written before. I will never have a phrase that I can call my own; no “was this the face that launched a thousand ships” or “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” I was good at something for a time, but not anymore. If I ever feel myself becoming overconfident in my abilities, I chide myself. My gifts and talents are not my own – they are given to me by a being far superior and greater than the universe itself. They could just as easily be taken away.

I grew up reading the Bible. While I may not be able to recite it like a Christian scholar, there are details that stick with me – no memorisation. The older I get, for instance, the more fixated I become on this one verse: “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Though I was never actively taught by anyone to be humble, the idea that we are just specks of dust in the vastness of the cosmos is enough to remind me of the virtue of humility when facing heavy, earthly problems. So what if I wasn’t the smartest or nicest or prettiest or funniest person? Or that everyone seems to have a “thing” that makes them memorable except me. My friend Rachel is loud, vulgar, and unfiltered, but these qualities somehow make her more interesting rather than obnoxious. I, on the other hand, try to maintain decorum yet no one remembers the person who plays by the rules. When I imagine myself as the accumulation of tiny little dust particles floating in the universe none of it matters. Is this what peace feels like?

When you don’t have expectations for yourself, people stop having expectations for you too.

“I’d be happy with anything that you do as long as you can take care of yourself and you don’t bring harm to yourself or others,” my mother tells me as she strokes my hair. “It’s very important to know your level in life…there’s no point in forcing yourself to do something that you are just not good at. It brings unhappiness.” I’m not arguing with her. There is truth in what she said. Others can underestimate, but trying to surpass others’ standards becomes easier when none of them anticipated anything from you in the first place.

Maybe it’s in my head, or maybe it’s real, but every time I think I’ve done an amazing job and expect to do well, the universe humbles me by giving me exactly the opposite of what I’d expected. Complete, utter failure. It is as if we were engaged in a childish game of Opposite Day.

“I think I did pretty well in there,” I say. “I didn’t screw up my scales and my sight-reading was good too. It’s the second time I’m doing this, so I’ll totally pass, right? No one fails their piano exam twice.”

“For sure, there’s no way you won’t pass this time. If you know what I mean,” the Universe winks. A letter from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music arrives at my house a few weeks later. I tear open the envelope, almost ripping the certificate in half. My eyes scan to the bottom of the piece of paper: 98 marks. FAIL.

“But you said there was no way I wouldn’t pass!” I exclaim.

“I thought you knew what I meant,” the Universe protests. “It was so obvious.” So I misinterpreted the situation this time. Surely, this is a one-time thing?

“I think that interview went pretty well, right? They all smiled at me when I left.”

“I think you did really well in that interview,” replies the Universe.

“Do you think I’ll get an offer?”

“Sure, of course, why not? If you know what I mean,” the Universe grins. A few days later, an email from my dream university creeps its way into my inbox. The subject: DECISION. Thank you for your application and expressing interest. After careful consideration, we have concluded we cannot proceed with your candidacy. 

“But you said I’d get in!” I cry out.

“Child, this is the millionth time we’ve been through this,” the Universe says. “If you still can’t figure this game out, then you’re more stupid than I thought you were.”

By now, this has happened to me plenty of times I know it’s probably better to live without expectations than with; to live simply than not; to live as if a ghost in passing.

To be or not to be a ghost though. That is a question. There are days when I wake up and I am not satisfied. I don’t mean in the sense that I’m not grateful for the things I already have. How many people get to say they’d grown up in a loving family; have travelled around the world; or didn’t have to worry about when the next rent is due? How many people have the opportunities that I have had? There is a part of me, still, that wants to be known and admired. I don’t want to be underestimated. I don’t want to be an insignificant speck of dust in the universe whose name will never come up in people’s conversations, even if it is only about something as pointless as what? – someone remembering they bumped into me on the street. I want to be visible, not like the gay motes that people the sunbeams.

Sometimes, I catch myself giving opinions when it was probably best to keep my mouth shut. A friend once asked me what I thought about Brexit. I have no affiliation with the place whatsoever.

“Maybe it’s ridiculous how difficult it is for Britain to leave the European Union. What happened to state sovereignty?” Did I necessarily believe in what I said? Perhaps not. I said it because I knew it was not my friend’s opinion. I wanted her to be shocked. We didn’t speak for a while. I never told her I only wanted to play Devil’s advocate.

I still get annoyed when people assume that I must be mediocre or not very bright. When that happens, as it did five days ago when a friend refused to believe in what I said until I showed him evidence from a scientific journal, a voice next to me whispers, “They’re looking down on you because you downplayed yourself. You need to make yourself seem more important to make them take you seriously.” Like that other time a friend’s parents invited me to dinner. The topic of me attending different schools for study abroad came up.

“Your college experience must be very interesting. You have been to all these different schools – Cambridge, Yale, UCLA…” said one of them.

“I just got very lucky…it’s definitely been an eye-opening experience.” I replied.

“Was the application process not competitive at all?” Because you managed to get into these schools for study abroad but not for their official undergraduate programmes. I smile but my fists are clenching. Tell them, cry out the voice. Tell them how well you did in these classes and how much time you spent on studying whilst all your friends were partying.

I read John Keats in high school. I also read Neil Gaiman. “Better reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” I learned this line for the first time not in Paradise Lost, but in a graphic novel called The Sandman. Instead of a familiar evil tyrant that I was expecting, the Devil here goes to Hell but decides to abandon it to relax on a beach in Australia and watch the sunset. The point? Subvert your metanarrative. Why is it that the Devil has to stay in Hell for eternity when he can just leave? No one – not even God – forced him to stay. Why is it that I have to become a doctor, or lawyer, or an engineer to prove my intelligence as an Asian? And what if I choose to study English, and then decide to pursue something else instead – like politics? There is no one to stop me, other than my fear of not succeeding. Isn’t it easier to prove yourself in areas where no one else like you has triumphed before?

People continue to assume all sorts of things about me when the only clue they have to what kind of person I am is my degree. Is she dumb? Is she so selfish that she doesn’t care about earning money for her family? Is her family so privileged that they didn’t care that she chose a useless degree? I can see their faces, warped with slight unveiled disdain.

So this is how I find myself about to graduate with an English degree. Whether this was the best choice is yet to be seen. It is probably the most liberating decision I’ve made so far.

A desire to set the facts straight and to prove myself bubbles up inside my chest. I choose it because I like it.

It is as if I’ve tucked onto an invisible string in the universe and the trajectory for the both of us has been altered. A ripple that becomes a perpetual vibration.

Then I close my eyes. I am little particles of dust floating in this wide world. Just like this, everything evaporates into nothingness.

More from Creative Nonfiction & Fiction: Read A Woman’s Woes by Geri