The Decision: Return of the Dream

I had thought that it was over. I had thought my youth was over. I had thought that I was past the point of my life where I could still face the unknown, embrace new challenges, and make new friends. I surprised myself. I’ve always surprised myself. I didn’t leap into the unknown anymore. I didn’t drink anymore. My body was my temple now. I learned what it meant to love and to compromise. I grew content with my job. I grew content with my life. I grew comfortable with getting married and making babies in my thirties. I grew old. I grew mature. Every day was the next day for the rest of my life. I was wrong.

Because when the right temptation came, I realized that I was willing to give it all up. The job I was so good at and the colleagues I respected. The relationship with a woman I loved and domestic bliss. The city that was home and the streets I knew. My so-called maturity. My life.

The decision came easily at first, then harder, much too hard. The monkey reaches for a glistening new fruit, only to realize he must relinquish all that it’s already holding. Maybe let go of the branch he’s standing on as well, to take a leap forward into the air. Shanghai was somewhere that I’ve always wanted to return, after tasting it nearly ten years ago now. A decade later, it finally wants me there. I would have a place in the city that has haunted my dreams like only one other. But I’ve almost become an entirely different person, unable to recapture any of the romance on my short sejours back. I’ve had two different hairstyles, a heart broken and pieced together too many times, and a cynical voice in my head that speaks louder than any other.

But the light has not gone out. With the right bait, I was hooked. To be fair, I was in a highly susceptible state. Perhaps it’s only my hindsight that romanticizes my life and creates a grand narrative for me to piece together. A run-in with an old roommate that I hadn’t seen in a while. Conversations with a friend about chaos and the importance of termites and cockroaches. Signing up for a physical ordeal in a bid to recapture my youth. Reading some old essays and a short story. A misplaced fight. A well-placed reunion. Nostalgia whispered and I listened. It whispered loudly, and it said what I wanted to hear. It’s a dangerous thing, romanticism, and especially cruel when it gets in the way of romance.

I’m sorry baby. I’m really sorry. I loved you, I love you, and I think I will love you. But this is something I must do. I know I talked about same book different page, not you but me, I talked about levels of commitment, and I talked about you deserving better, but what it really was ego. It is nothing but selfishness on my part, and perhaps that’s a good enough reason for us not to be together. I cannot live the rest of my life knowing that I could have gone to Shanghai, and at the same time, I know that I could not have lived the rest of my life knowing that I forced you to come with me. I’ve had a long two weeks to think it over, and my mind was set when I told you. I’m sorry I didn’t give you an opportunity to change my mind. But I was afraid you would.

I’ve interpreted a lot of my friends’ breakups over the last bit as ego as well, a need for validation, a desire to make their mark. But now that I’m doing the same, I realize that it is not the case at all. It’s not a need to prove anything to others, but to myself. And in a way, it’s the act of moving in and of itself that is all the proof one needs. It’s not easy to forgo what we’ve tamed and turned familiar for the wild and the novel in old age. When you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times. But despite that, you take risks. In some ways, it’s almost more youthful as you get older.

And so yes, despite lamenting about the loss of my nerve and spirit over the last few years, I have found them again. And with this discovery, I am moving to Shanghai. It will be good for my career. I will be able to effectively learn Chinese again. It will be fun. I will be spending meaningful amounts of time with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It will make my parents happy. I will be able to connect more with my roots. It will be good for my writing.

It is said that it takes many reasons to justify a bad decision, and only one to justify a good one. And there is a good one. There is the one reason that I need to go. And that is because I have always wanted to. Because the version of me with bright eyes, a bushy tail, and a terrible haircut still lives inside me, and it would make him happy knowing that I went. Look at us, I’ll say, we made it. I’ve written about making high school Chris happy. College-Chris isn’t so different from high school Chris. And both of them would want me to make this decision.

It’s important to remember that this is who I’m doing this for. Because there will inevitably be tough moments in my new city, my new job, my new life. Though I fully believe I can acclimatize, and expand my double consciousness, becoming more Chinese and contextualizing the Asian-American and Canadian aspects of my identity, it will be hard. Culture shock. Fear. Frustration. Above all, loneliness. And when they occur and I ask myself why I’m doing this, what could have possibly compelled me to leave the comfort and warmth of everything that I know for a moonshot that may blow up in my face, forcing me to come crawling back home with my tail between my legs, I will have an answer. I’m doing this for me. For us.