You Still Shine in Other People's Hearts

Life Update

Hi! How has everyone been lately? If it is a Blue Monday, maybe reading my letter will help a little.

After I shared in the previous post that I had found a job, I did not receive notice until last week that I would start work on 5/25. That is the day before my birthday, which feels like a fitting moment for a new beginning.

But wow, it really made me wait for a long time. From the interview to the first day of work, it took one month and one week. It reminds me of looking for an apartment in Tokyo, where you have to start talking two or three months in advance. I only started one month before, so there were not many choices. It is very different from my experience in Taiwan. In Taiwan, landlords and employers usually want things to happen as soon as possible. You only start looking for a place two weeks before moving, and jobs will ask if you can start the next week.

Before I keep complaining, let me come back to the time I spent waiting to start work.

In theory, it should have been very relaxed. After all, I had already found a job, and the time before starting was basically a vacation. But I still took on too many things I thought I "should" do. Every day, I planned to practice system design, study Japanese, and write.

Planning is one thing, though. Most of the time I slept until I woke up naturally, then felt like that was not great, then opened a manga app or a streaming platform to watch anime, or went downstairs to chat with people in the share house. Funny enough, the housemates I am closer to are all moving out by the end of May, right around the same time I start work.

There were a few days when I managed to get into a good state, but most of the time I was just drifting around like that. I think the hardest thing for me is still recognizing the self I am in right now: right now I want to "relax," or right now I should "work." I also need to be clearer about what actually feels better for the current version of me. During my working holiday in Australia, I realized that not being able to touch my phone or computer, and having simple physical labor that left blank space in my mind, made me more at ease. Recently, my phone has been glued to me, and I keep finding things or opening apps to fill myself up. So I have decided to leave more blank space in my life. Maybe then I can spend time with myself more peacefully.

That is the life update. What I actually wanted to share today is an old essay, written on 2022/08/26. A while ago, after watching The Return, I thought of this years-old essay related to stars. Reading it again after almost four years feels a little embarrassing, but I still like it very much, so I decided to share it anyway. If I keep leaving it there, I will probably only feel even more embarrassed and even less willing to publish it.

The Essay Begins

It has been three years since I graduated from university, and I feel as if I have slowly been disappearing.

Leaving school and entering society is like swimming from a small pond into the sea. The familiar boundaries vanish. The world stretches out before me, extending all the way to a horizon whose end I cannot see.

The space became larger, but the distance between people grew farther. In university, it was very easy to know how others were doing. Even if you did not want to know, news would still find its way to you. But in society, which is boundless and impossible to define, it is only natural to lose touch with people.

In the three years since I stepped into society, I forgot the self who once had confidence. I forgot the self who once held firmly to things. I forgot the self who did not think in terms of pros and cons. I forgot... almost all of myself.

Until recently, when I went to a party hosted by a friend.

I was actually quite surprised when she invited me. She was also quite surprised that I was willing to attend. And I became even more surprised because of her surprise.

When did I become someone who was not good at parties?

Thinking about it carefully, I realized that I no longer had a clear idea of myself. What kind of person am I? What do I look like in other people's eyes now? At this point, even a simple self-introduction might take me a while to think through.

As I sank into that self-reflection, I saw N. N and I both graduated from C University. He was also rather well-known, so I recognized him immediately, and I guessed he probably knew who I was too. We had just never had a chance to actually interact.

The friend hosting the party studied at T University, so almost everyone there was from T University. N looked a little lost, just like me. We both seemed out of place at this party. Watching him pace back and forth in front of the snack bar, I thought I knew what he was doing: when things are awkward, you eat.

"Hi, are you N?" I asked while picking up some snacks.

He turned toward me. The awkward look on his face became surprise, and then a huge smile.

"P? I know you! You were super famous at school!" N said to me, looking delighted.

"No way, you were the famous one! And I have been seeing you in S's stories a lot lately!" I answered politely, a little startled by his enthusiasm.

"No, no, no. You really were super famous. At C University, who did not know you?" N said, his eyes shining.

He seemed to genuinely think I was famous. Was I really that famous before? Memories from my life at C University slowly began to surface.

In my memory, I saw someone dressed flamboyantly. He wore a patchwork vintage jacket, a baseball cap turned backward, and walked with a strange sense of rhythm. He had a smile on his face and made gestures that no one could quite explain. That was the old me.

"I remember you came to choreograph for us, right?" N's question pulled me back to reality.

"Ah, right, the diplomacy department's ball?" Blurry memories began rising up. I stood in front of three pairs of men and women, trying to teach a group with no foundation a glamorous opening dance within two months. For me at the time, that was quite a challenge.

But compared with the choreography itself, what I remembered more was the feeling of standing confidently in front of people. I also remembered how hard I tried to communicate my love for dance and my ideas about it, hoping they would learn more than just one routine.

"How did you all end up finding me back then?" I started wanting to know more about the details.

"We did not really know anyone from the dance club at the time, but we knew you. You were just too famous back then, so we decided to ask you. Later we also felt that asking you was such a good decision! The response was great!" N said. The light in his eyes grew even warmer, almost too bright for me to look back at, but that warmth also began to melt away the knots that had formed in me over the past few years. My heart started to feel warm.

Just then, my friends from T University arrived, so I introduced N to them. I said N was very famous at my school, and N immediately told them that I was a legendary figure at C University. He went on praising me extravagantly to my friends for a while, and only then did I finally see what I looked like in his heart. After university, he had never interacted with me again. More precisely, we had never really interacted at all. We only knew of each other. His understanding of me was still frozen in those years, and through him, the present me saw myself again, traveling back to speak with my past self.

Only then did I realize that even if the current me is like this, the traces of the effort I once made still remain in other people's hearts.

It feels like observing the universe. When we observe the universe, the stars we see now may already be dead by the time their light reaches our eyes.

A star may never know where its light has reached in the vast universe, but years and years after its death, that warm light can still continue to shine on some corner of the cosmos. Some planet may still be benefiting from it.

N was like a space telescope that belonged only to me. Through him, I saw the light my past self once gave off.

At four in the morning, I got into a taxi home. In the reflection of the car window, I saw my own image. The person looking back at me seemed to have a glimmer of light deep in his eyes.

Closing

Reading it again still feels a little embarrassing, almost like I am bragging about myself. But this morning, while talking to my uncle, I showed him the fried instant noodles I made. He said they looked delicious, and I instinctively wanted to say, "No, not really." Once again, I realized that I am not good at accepting compliments. So this essay can also be one more step outward, one more attempt to accept positive views of myself, even if they are from four years ago, and even if they are about a version of me from even earlier.

Compared with entering society from campus, as I mentioned at the beginning, going from Taiwan to Australia and then Japan now makes me feel like I have truly swum into the sea. That horizon, it turns out, extends even farther.

By contrast, my circle of friends has become smaller, but every person who remains is closer.

I cannot go back to the past and become my own ghost like in Interstellar, but my past self can become a light for the future. It can even become someone else's light first, then shine back onto me.

Now that I have come to Japan and realized a major goal that had tied my hands and feet for the past few years, I will keep shining through writing or other forms of creation.

Finally, how did the chatty opening feel? I am becoming more and more aware that what I am writing is a newsletter, not just an article, so I want the beginning and ending to feel more like a letter that arrives in your inbox.

Thank you to the friends from the old Crazy Writing Club who read this back then, and to min, YA-Xuan, and Han-Yuan for reading the draft and giving feedback now.