I could hear my mom scoff as she tells me to go put some clothes on and this whole Canadian suntanning thing is not for us Vietnamese people. Growing up, she will chase us around the house to put on sunscreen, a hat, and a mask so we won’t get dark. There were times when I bought into the whole concept of fairer and brighter skin (The global market for skin lighteners was worth $8.6 billion last year, and is forecasted demand reaching $12.3 billion by 2027). I gave up that silly idea (because usually, it takes me 6 months indoors in the winter to go up one shade, and about an hour for me to turn crispy, like a spring roll, in the sun. 

It is apt that we spent the Summer Soltice – National Indigenous Peoples Day in the mountain, hiking, and appreciating the earth. It’s appropriate that I’m finishing “Brading Sweetgrass” (Please read t if you haven’t. It’s a series of short essays, a very easy but tremendously insightful book)

When I was young, it was all about “getting”. Getting out of poverty. Getting ahead. Getting scholarship. Getting the promotion. Getting that new job title. Getting a house, a car, a retirement plan. Achieving is baked into my DNA, to a point that I vibrate with anxiety whenever I am not achieving.

Dan asked me the other day, “What brings you joy?”

Which, as I get older, and as I try more often to reflect on my Buddhist roots, it’s the non-attachment things that bring me joy. Arts. Gardening. Coaching. Volunteering. Opening schorphandage. Ironically things that have very little or almost nothing to do with material things and getting.

So, as the sun sets behind the mountain, on the longest day of the year, as Indigenous people have always been here before us, I reacquaint myself with mother earth

And ask myself “How can I bring back to the earth what I am taking, and how can I get, and give, in an Honourable and Sustainable way?”

Ah, one more question for the collection of “My life has no answers, just better questions”

Sometimes I wonder what happened to fairy tales after they end. It’s not a novel thought by any means. Countless artists have imagined aging housewife Disney princesses, broke-ass and fat superheroes. It is a core concept of Buddhism. Our suffering doesn’t end as long as we still desire a fairy tale ending.

If you ask 15-year-old me, or any middle-class (poor) brown queer kid growing up in a developing country, my current life seems like the end of a fairy tale ending. He lives in a 2-story castle. He drives a Japanese carriage. He has an amazing role in leading others to deliver advancements in technology to the people. He is married to a Prince charming (or sometimes a Sleeping princess, depending on certain days). At almost 40, he has a bomb haircut and still looks decent in Speedo. It’s a pretty good life.

So why this nagging feeling of not living up to himself, of being joyless at work, and of being isolated in a world full of people?

There are lazy explanations.

– Maybe it’s social media. Seeing all these fabulous people, traveling the world, not having to work or navigate the corporate world complexity and politics. Seeing all these people that are beautiful, that have time to go to the gym, and see the world and write stories. 

– Maybe it’s the post-pandemic anxiety. The world is returning to normal, and I, somehow, miss the time we can be at home, work from home, bake cakes, make art, and not have to socialize with people. Yet, we zoom, connect, and talk to our friends. Isolation in a world full of people.

– Maybe I’m just incapable of being happy. Hardship is all I know and hardship is how I thrive, grow, and become amazing. I hang on to pain as if it means something as if it’s worth something.

Or maybe it’s deeper than that. I’ve been doing a bit of soul searching. It wasn’t the answer I found. It was a question.

Whose fairy tales is this?

It’s not even the case of “Be careful what you wish for”, it’s “Did I really wish for this?”. I grew up in a heteronormative environment in a poor nation in a poor family. So the house, the car, and the job make sense. The marriage, the child, and the desire for a fairy tale ending make sense. But is this for me?

I don’t have answers. I know it’s irresponsible to be leaving a fairy tale for an unknown. 

But then again, all my life, all the unknowns have led me to all the fairy tales I have ever had.

It started relatively early for me, since I was in my early twenties, that I wanted to become a stay-at-home monk when I get older. It’s an oxymoron, I know, as one does not set goals to be enlightened. But I set goal to everything 🙂 

Perhaps it’s not by accident that all depictions of heaven, nirvana, or anything that is holy and peaceful really, have a garden in them. The garden kinda brought me through the pandemic (among other amazing things in people), and it has been helping with my baseline level of stress and anxiety lately around my life. 

A lot of people here just go to the Garden center and buy already grown flowers and plants to beautify their yards and homes, which is great, but also very North American. People want quick fixes. People want beauty without the dirt and soil, bugs and bees, backache, and shoulder pain. And I get it (I do the same with other aspects of my life, like cleaning). But for me, the garden isn’t about the produce (we have a grocery store for that), isn’t about the end curb appeal (flowers do help my mood, though), but it’s about growing something, raising something, and caring about something. It’s about my absolute lack of control of the climate, the weather, and the waiting. It’s always the waiting that is the hardest.

When is the weather getting better?

When can this squash, this corn, this peas grow and latch onto their trellis?

When will it rain? When does it hail?

The waiting and the lack of control. It’s anxiety-inducing. The loneliness, it’s isolating and chaotic. Yet, in a garden, with all of that, with the waiting, without control, absolutely by myself, I feel calm. I and calm do not usually belong in a sentence. 

And here we are, with a garden full of Indigenous wisdom (thank you, the Three Sisters), full of local and native plants, full of hope that endangered bees have another source of food, and full of randomly weird pots and planters from the years I have lived here. 

And that is all there is. 

I think somewhere along the way of having a good job, a good house, and a great partner, I’ve lost a part of myself. 

It never used to bother me to travel alone, to have dinner out alone, to make my own food, then do my own dishes after. It never used to bother me to go shopping alone, to go walking in the park alone, and to do photography by myself. I think along the way of coming out, of finding my community, of falling in love, I’ve lost the resilience I had in my core to survive this world alone.

Somewhere along the way, I thought teamwork and partnership might be nice. Somewhere along the way, I get too used to asking for help. Somewhere along the way, I’ve come to expect someone else to do the dishes when I cook, or maybe when I just had a busy and an ‘off’ day at work. Somewhere along the way, I’ve come to look forward to breakfast on weekends being made for me. Somewhere along the way, I find comfort in the things I didn’t have to do, no, fight, for myself.

Growth and comfort do no co-exist. No. Growth doesn’t come from expecting others to help. You will need to ask, and you will need to be able to be graceful in rejections. 20-year-old me know that too well. That’s why it’s called self-help.

I think somewhere along the way in getting rid of my sadness when I’m alone, I’ve lost a part of my joy that I found being alone. 

In the spirit of Mental Health Month, and following the advice of the straight white corporate dude who advises us all to be “mindful”, time to get back to the center core of a Buddhist.

Sit down and be quiet.

 “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.” – Joy / Everything Everywhere All at once

If you haven’t seen this movie, please, go watch it in the theater. Then it will all make sense. Not just the quote. But life. Ok, maybe not that, but my melancholy will make a bit more sense to you. In general. Or not. In a nihilistic way, the everything bagel collapse within its own weight of everything-ness.

I was trying to figure out why I resonate so deeply with such an absurd and deeply silly movie. Maybe because it was a movie about an Asian American family struggling to accept their queer Asian child. Maybe it was a movie about how many “what-if” there are versions of us out there that we need to reconcile. Or maybe, just maybe, at the heart of it, is a movie about the nihilistic world we live in and our need to seek out our own joy and kindness to radically embrace it.

The only thing I can change about my world right now is how much I can change my expectation of it.

I was sick for about a week now. Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe it’s not Covid. Again maybe it’s Covid because half of Canadians now had it and we are all exhausted and our Premiere believed in banning municipalities to make their own rules about public safety, because, you know, Freedom, but also votes. 

And I realize, the world, just like everything bagels, will never change. And I can’t change it.

Americans will continue to vote for Republicans no matter how many more human rights they will take away. Putin will continue to evade Ukraine no matter how many sanctions (or clever jokes) the West made about him. Alberta will continue to defend, protect, and revere Oil and Gas no matter how manytech investments and tech success we have. Senior Execs will continue to want things done exactly the way they want no matter how progressive and embracing of diversity and inclusion they are. Partners and family and friends will continue their habits with their phones or their diet or their daily routine no matter how much they care about you, or how often you spelled out the roadmap of what you need to hold a little space in your darkness.

Nothing really matters, because there is nothing you can control. You can weave stories and tales. And you can retell the ups and downs and ponder as many what-ifs as you can, but life goes at its own pace, and every moment is a one-in-a-seven-billion chance to create divergence. 

And so, a crossroad, an answer that I knew (from Buddhism) – and one that is offered by the movie itself – Radical acceptance. Accepting life at its messiness, darkness, and joy, too. 

Rationally, that is. 

I wish depression and anxiety is as simple as a matter of rationality. Because as an Asian person with A+ blood type (Yes, even my blood is an over-achiever), I will master the fuck out of radical acceptance if it was rational.

What if I quit Software altogether. I need to call Blair. Ask him if he wants to start that off-grid farm together. Maybe help him build a Farm-to-table business. What if I stop building digital assets and blockchain and creating real life and real assets instead? Learn some real skill. Too late to be a doctor now. Maybe learn to start a vertical farm and invest.

I know it sounds insane to some of you. But I was so at peace.

I literally just came back from vacation 10 days ago, determined to learn to love my life and my work, and radically embrace my imperfections. And here I am, collapsing within my own weight of failed attempts like a burned everything bagel.

Maybe it’s Covid – the everything-bagel variance.

Even my Covid is more over-achieving than the normal people’s Covid.

Every good story is a trilogy 

I’m coming home, as the bubbly attendant at the gate is announcing, “If Calgary is home”, I couldn’t help but wonder, is it? Is it still?

The pandemic has been hard. Marriage has not been easy. Jobs changes have not been easy. Losing friends and not having time for the ones we still have not been easy. Life, in general, has been challenging. 

The worst part of all that is our inability to create new stories. Sheltering in place and not going out, not traveling, we missed the endless blue sky and the endless possibilities of meeting new characters and learning new stories from others. Sitting on the couch and doom scrolling through the newsfeed robs us of the awe of a community mural, the refraction of sunlight over tinted church windows. Being comfortable with the familiar narrative of Calgary and Alberta being a conservative, Oil & Gas beholden town stole our opportunity to be creative with our revitalization, to be truly ethical (not just ethical oil), to truly be the pioneer in innovation, progressive policies, and reconciliation. 

So, is Calgary still home? Can I continue to grow and learn and write new stories in Calgary?

The answers lie in the 2 elements of stories: the characters and the scenarios.

I keep saying, again and again, Dan is my home. Maybe I need to remember that. It doesn’t have to be Ottawa. It doesn’t have to be another place, another town, another country. As long as we are together, I am home. We can write stories together. I know it. We write amazing stories. We write stories with our contradictions. We write stories about our growth towards each other. We write stories about how we push and pull and challenge and are unrelenting in our pursuit of excellence. Maybe he got comfortable with the existing stories we have. Maybe I need new stories to be woven so often that it is exhausting and unrealistic. But we have more stories. I know we do. We have more stories for another 20 years. For another 40 years. For the rest of our lives. I know it. I have faith in it.

And all that is left, is the scenario. My life. My work. My friends. My activities. I have control of them (to a certain degree). And the things I don’t have control over, I am equipped in my ability to cope with them. I can write better stories. I can continue to write stories.

The next few chapters will still be about the joy and the sadness, the challenges and the triumphs, etc. Because at the end of True North, the character didn’t find happy ever after, he found an empty canvas where anything could happen. And it was a happy ending.

At the end of my last chapter, I found Dan. I found home. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t at all what I expected. And it was a happy ending.

Here to many more bumpy middles and horrible false starts, as I head into many more of life’s happy endings.

I don’t know if Calgary is still home. But as long as Dan is there, and as long as I can continue to write stories, Calgary is a setting for happy endings.

And that would be enough.

In Chicago, some old stories are revisited, reversed, and renewed.

I visited Chicago 16 years ago. I only had a brief 2 days here, there was a shooting, and I was only a very scared young foreign student to be traveling alone. Well, technically I got stuck at Chicago Ohare airport A LOT (Thanks, United), so there’s always that negative association, too. 

I’m visiting a good friend that I met in California who recently moved back, and he has completely renewed Chicago for me. For context (and it will be important to the subsequent stories), he’s black. It’s a little bit sad that our communities do not traditionally bond together in North America. My theory (unverified) is that America exports its racism so well through media, that Asians usually associate our black neighbors with negative stereotypes, and our black friends often think of Asians as model minority, stuck up, and, ironically, racist. Yet, with the pandemic, with movements like Black lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, we are stronger together now. More than that, more than strategy and oppression, we found ourselves appreciating each other’s culture, vibrancy, and love. The world needs more Blasian babies 

So I met the 28-year-old resident for a “date” (don’t freak out, I asked for permission, the guy knows I’m married, and we didn’t do anything). We spent four hours walking around Boston, through the parks, the bridges, the streets. The diffused sun behind us illuminated his teal jacket, as if a tasteful indie director is making a rom com with Zoey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt (I’m Zoey of course). We exchanged stories. We talked about coming out in a brown immigrant family. We contemplated death (he’s a doctor and I’m just…morbid). We talked about Bridgeton and Grey anatomy. We shared future aspirations and how we will change the world. We talked about Arts and alcohol. We hugged and said goodbye at a train station, promising to meet again in Canada. Except we won’t. Because a rom-com with Zoey and Joe set it Boston with one being married has zero chance of going anywhere. Also for my hubby who is reading this, I love you and no one can replace you. It’s just… One of these experiences that you thought to yourself that it must be from a movie. The last time I had this was with a guy from university and the circumstances we meet was very “how I met your mother”. And we never met again.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to ever date again. Dating is horrible (stay in school and stay married, kids). Exchanging stories as you are making new ones, in a new city, new setting, new world is so exciting. I think humans were built to tell and share stories.

I’m loving Boston. Well, not Boston. I’m loving the trip, with the backdrop of Boston. The libraries, the museums, the walks, the marketplace. It allows for new stories. 

I bought a smoothies for a black homeless man. And almost an hour later, a black homeless lady cursed me in mumbles because I didn’t have change for her. It didn’t bother me. It just made me incredibly sad. I love my BIPOC. Yet we live in a place where we are trained to hate each other, to compete, to climb this ladder of minority got the scraps of what capitalism allows us. It’s a story I wanted to alter, to change. It’s a story that reminds me of Philadelphia, how I learned to unlearn my racism and fall in love with my African American neighbors and their culture, their resilience, and their unrelenting love for life.

I got an unexpected call from my coworker in my last job. He was looking out for me and informing me of some news. This came as I am sitting in a crowded place at lunch full of old white people. It’s a reminder that I am now an old white person eating lobster at lunch on a Monday. Kidding. It’s a reminder that my Canadian people are kind. They are loving. They lookout for you even when you left them. It’s another story worth repeating. Canada’s weather is cold, but its people are so warm.

And here I am, with the stories I wrote and wove in my head, as the sunshine and warmth starts on a spring day in Boston. Some days, in my life, all I needed was to step out of my life and reminded me of the choices that I’ve made in my life.

Those choices made good stories