Tunnel Vision: The Impossibility of Permanence

Looking Back: At Taipei 101



She's back in Toronto.
HK>Vancouver>TO

In the course of the past two weeks this person has been at the Taipei, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vancouver and Toronto airports.
If the entire two months was taken into account that would include Seoul, San Fran, New York.

There are times at which I literally feel a sense of identity crisis.
This is most apparent when going through customs: a tricky little maze for those with multiple identities.

On my way to Vancouver from Hong Kong (two hour layover), the customs card was distributed out for passengers to fill out:

Name: Samantha
Plane No: CX 888
Address: (inserts Canadian home add)
Nationality: American (to match my American passport)

After half an hour of going through an extremely Canadian style customs line (aka super slow with a lot of people- sorry this is not a deliberate attempt to put down Canadians but really some of us have connecting flights who need to physically get their own luggage to haul across the other side of the airport to check in again.. bad design of an airport), I finally reached the customs agent. They look awfully more masculine now having been in Asia for so long. lolol

Agent: So... you're American?
Me: Yes.
Agent: What are you doing in Canada?
Me: To visit my family.. I've been traveling the past few months.
Agent: You wrote a Canadian address here.
Me: Yeah because my family lives here. BEEP! WRONG ANSWER
Agent: So are you Canadian?
Me: Yeah but my passport expired and I never bothered to renew it again since I was studying in the States. BEEP! WRONG ANSWER
Agent: So do you have proof of citizenship in Canada?
Me: Uh... does a driver's license work? BEEP! WRONG ANSWER
Agent. No. You have to go to the wait center to get a background check up.

Remind me next time to not declare my american citizenship and boast about my permanent home address in Toronto. -_- But really most people ask for your permanent address OR your temporary visiting address. The customs card said 'home address'... so I wrote my Canadian home one! ARGH
In my head, my HK, Canada, US identities are all interchangeable.. like Pokemon, but they're not in the real world. -_- Technically I could have avoided that background check up if I just changed my address which was pretty stupid: they had to search for my parents (asked me their birthdays to which I asked how the heck I would know their years. What I have the biggest beef was that I couldn't call out to ask them like last time) but couldn't find them in the system as Canadian citizens.
Home, for some people, isn't as straightforward as it seems..
The design of systems, particularly airports, need to understand this.

I need one cell phone. For the past couple of months, I've been carrying three cell phones with me: one for Hong Kong (doesnt work overseas), one for NY (no SIM card so if I wander outside of the States it's roaming) and one for Canada (but all the prepaid mins expired)
I realized how ridiculous it must have looked when I whipped out three cell phones to make one call in Vancouver.
T-T


Tunnel Vision

Tunnel Vision

On the ten hour leg of my journey I was listening to three songs I found on the Cathay Pacific R&B/Urban/Dance section for literally half the trip on a constant loop. I didn't watch any movies then. For some weird reason, I don't have a tolerance to do anything sitting on a plane for a prolonged period of time watching movie after movie. These days I just sit and sketch and listen to music on repeat:
Fabolous> It's My Time
Lady Gaga> Paparazzi
Akon> Be With You

I was listening to the first of the three songs, while drawing the picture above. I guess it was a reflection of the lyrics and in my own personal realizations that there's a lot of things I need to work out.

I need tunnel vision.
As in I need a goal, a target, a.. vision.

I want to understand letting go without fear. Mmm.. often what happens is that I make friends in whatever given city I'm located, we become really good/close in the next two years and then due to my hobo-like existence, I move and it just fades.

It fades because I'm always afraid that sentimentality is a one way street. If sensitivity to the world is a strength that I have, I also know that it can also be perceived as clingy and over emotional. Thus to compensate for these feelings, I make new friends to show that I've moved on.

And it works. It works so well that when I look at my Toronto friends, I wonder, if I should have tried harder. And yet it tires me to keep up with so many people: not that it becomes a chore, but I've tried it. I've sat in front of my computer talking to friends in Canada while life passed me by in New York. And while it was good, nothing could replace being physically near one another. It makes me wistful- wishing to be somewhere I obviously cannot be unless I sacrificed work/school.

A friend once said, "I met people who were like you, always traveling and never had problems.. why is it that you find it so hard to do?"
Some people don't mind flitting from one place to another making new friends wherever they go: to them, they are people you had a good time with and perhaps in the future, you will meet again. Nothing is subtracted from those relationships due to distance or time: just temporarily placed on hiatus.

But I'm tired. I'm tired of trying to build up histories with depth: I don't want to friend personalities, I want to have the confidence in knowing that they can read me because they understand without it being explicitly said. I don't want those facebook friends which are in such an abundance, but those quiet friendships that aren't so blaringly on the radar. I want to hear "I remember when you were.... and now...."
Upon discussing this with a friend (yay I've known you for...nine years!), I realized it took me eight years to get from that depression point to where I am now. I still remember that entry I wrote post-retreat, July 30 2006, some five years ago (wow that fast?), concerning the grief I felt with not being able to make friends at church.
Eight years.
And eight years later I can say I am definitely more socially ept (but still making mistakes) with a strong circle of church friends at a church I am really fond of.

And now I'm to drop all that for the sake of a calling to Hong Kong.
I can't help but grumbling slightly because of what established group of friends I have, and on top of that, a lot of smaller friendships I could see growing into something with more depth.
Ergh, but pressing on anyhow for the prize not found here..

From a personal... personal, uh, not sure what word to use: note, standpoint, outlook, perspective... it really hurts me when I cannot be a part of friendships. I'm scared to see people move on, to see that the friendship was a temporary means of satisfying that underlying fear of loneliness. A filler, a temporary solution, a fix.

Thus I need tunnel vision, particularly in the realm of friendships. I wonder if God gave me this lifestyle to understand the impossibility of permanence. To understand that there are no constants other than Him.

When it comes to the pursuit of a career with meaning, God spoke through me while discussing this with my oldest church friend (lolol). We are told 'dream big' yet God doesn't say that. Characters in the Bible didn't have dreams to fulfill them, God placed in them a dream and gave them the 'package' to execute it. Samson wasn't born with the desire to kill Philistines nor was David's dream to become a king nor was it Daniel's dream to become the second highest in rank under the realm of three kings passing. Yet God was the one who orchestrated it by giving them the necessary tools to execute.
Having a dream, I realized, is not enough. The dream must be realized in the mind of God for it to be even one of significance.

We often look at what skills we have to determine a dream yet we should find out what that dream is to develop those skills. You craft the thesis statement first before inserting the arguments right? In the same way, the dream must be manifested before anything else.
Not like John Lasseter was a pro comp animator, he just had the dream and the skills came after. lolol. Yes, everything revolves around Pixar. ;)

But yeah, in the end, all I wanted to express is that..
I hate missing people which is why I try to avoid many.
It hurts me more to leave people than to leave a place. The first two years of my studies in New York, every time I said goodbye at airport security, I would cry.
And I feel so... stupid for saying that, yet how many people in Toronto can understand the pain in the impossibility of permanence? Not many. I don't say this smugly, but most people don't really move. So to tell me, that I have an unhealthy fixation with people is unfair for friends don't come and go for them. They just stay.
You'd think by now, I'd be used to it. But it's not the action of missing that I'm not used to or familiar with, but the individuals themselves.

But is the only answer to just move on? To pretend those times weren't so meaningful, weren't so full of significance? Often the pursuit to become emotionally unattached is just a form of denial.

In the end, I just miss you.
But I can't stomach it to say it because it means you made an impact on me-you actually matter- and I let you in thus making me vulnerable and forcing me to be, well, less prideful (why is this sounding like something from one of my favourite films, Good Will Hunting?).

But this happens so often, I wonder if it even matters anymore. With time, it'll disappear and that will be dead to me. It sounds awful, but a lot of people I used to hold with much affection, don't really matter anymore.

And it seems like a sad sort of comfort.
Because, ultimately, I don't want to emotionally invest in something that the other party is not willing to give in return. It's just not healthy.

God, please give me peace in this area. It hurts to miss people.


Letter to friend: right figure was drawn about a month ago by him and I was looking for paper and found this to write/draw on a caricature of him. I call this clever/a good utilization of existing resources but still with some meaning to it.