With Any Luck

I haven’t written in this blog in nearly two months. In that time, I’ve started graduate school at RISD, narrowly avoided a disastrous car crash at my apartment, flown to the UK and back for a presentation at the London Design Festival, and learned how difficult — but also how essential — it is for me to prioritize my personal life above my work.

I’m on the Peter Pan Bus back to Providence from New York City, where I’ve spent the weekend at a conference for the Soros Fellowship for New Americans — the sponsor for my education at RISD. As might be expected, the other fellows are people of great accomplishment that have had to overcome great hardship at a young age. Some of them are refugees; others have been detained by the US government for undocumented status; yet others have had to assume sole responsibility for their families’ welfare upon the death of parent figures. These are the people that are likely to make serious headlines in the coming decades, and I am humbled by their stories and accomplishments.

Letterpress Typography at RISD

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Up to the Mountain

I don’t remember a lot about the early years of my life. Though I was born in the States, I spent my toddler years in Keelung, a port city situated about an hour outside Taipei. Though I was primarily cared for by my dad’s parents and siblings, the most concrete memories I’ve retained are of my mom’s mother, who I called “ma-ban” — meaning the grandmother who goes to work.

It was a pretty apt nickname. Though my grandmother was born into poverty, she was able to work her way out by sheer force of will. The woman had seven children, one of whom died in a freak bike accident in his teenage years. She raised them all while running an enormous multinational semiconductor business with my grandfather over the course of forty years. When I was growing up, she would tell a story about being the champion mountain climber in her grade school class though she was short and a girl. She explained that so much of a person’s success or failure depends on whether they can grit their teeth and find the courage to keep climbing when others have given up.

For reasons I will never know, I was her favorite. Apparently, I would always ask her to come and sleep next to me, only for her to find that I would sneak into the next room to watch TV once I thought she’d fallen asleep. We’d then watch TV together until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. About a month ago, my mom called to say that ma-ban had been hospitalized. Her liver cancer had relapsed and metastasized to her kidneys. The doctors gave her three months.

Visiting ma-ban and my parents in January

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Clutching

I’ve been meaning to write for weeks. So much has happened, and I don’t know where to start. I’ve been listening to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” on repeat. Inexplicably, the lyrics bring me to tears: “You got a fast car. I want a ticket to anywhere. Maybe we make a deal. Maybe together we can get somewhere. Any place is better. Starting from zero got nothing to lose. Maybe we’ll make something. But me myself I got nothing to prove.”

I leave London in a matter of weeks. In most ways, I’m excited to return to the US. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends, to starting grad school, to finally feeling at home. And yet, some part of me wonders what will become of the memories once I leave this place. Despite periods of loneliness and self-doubt — or perhaps because of them — I credit this year with teaching me to be more truthful with myself and less afraid of failure.

I think that it’s hard for many of us to admit that it’s natural to seek external validation. We want to be told that the things we value are as true for others as they are for ourselves. I have come to believe that I will likely always be bound — to some extent — by a need to be loved and understood. And yet, my experiences this year have helped me understand the worth of my own convictions, even as I subject them to constant scrutiny and questioning.

Edinburgh, site of the Fulbright End Cap conference. More photos here.

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