Stuck

Of all the lives I could live, why do I live this one? I walk past many faces, many bodies, idle and lanky, skinny and roly poly. I walk past many strangers who resemble actors, celebrities, ex-friends, and future paramours to dally with. Of all these blurry faces why do I live in this body and stare at this face when I peer into the mirror? I cannot have a transplant and I cannot change my race. A sex change is not imperative, but I would like to be white so I could share in the nepotistic freeride or be granted patriarchal and paternalistic power (Then again who wouldn't want to be white especially when C. Wright Mills pointed out the power elite is comprised of WASPs). If I could be reborn I would choose to be white. But this isn't really what I want because then I would negate all that consists of my life up to this very point; I would basically be spitting at all my friends and spitting in my parents' face for giving birth to me. Heidegger's thrownness applies here because I have no clue how I was even brought here except for the sheer fact that I came out of my mom's stomach. Otherwise I am thrown into this world without an aforementioned choice of whether I could be white or black or yellow or a guy or a girl. This was out of my control and instead biologically determined once I shirked my head from my mom's stomach. There are many moments like tonight that I am grateful to be me, but there is uncertainty stretched before me. It is paved and I am certain that there will be uncertainty ahead. Remember when I complained that life could not be better because I am free from drama? Maybe the drama is lying dormant, waiting to be tapped into life. I hope not. I don't need any surprises. But then again I am so hyperaware that hardly anything can surprise me anymore. Of all the lives why do I live this one? I am stuck, trapped in this one.

Existential questions like this one was prompted by someone I don't remember off the top of my head who. If I could be anyone... but if anyone could be anyone else then wouldn't we all be switching bodies whenever we feel like it? The question is not about who we want to become, but how to make the most of who we are currently because we are stuck like this. Yes people change, but they change in different degrees: most people don't go 180 in terms of personality in a matter of a single month or two; people change because they have a will and they found a way. But most of what makes us who we are are set, are figured out already since childhood so it's hard to correct some stubborn traits we all carry. I know that I can't abandon the dogmatic tendencies whenever I "one-up" my friends or strangers in a quasi-intellectual conversation. Patricia apparently found me dogmatic and showy; she saw that I was masquerading in hipster pretense: trying to be intellectual and snobby when I did not qualify as of yet. This I-know-it-all attitude probably descends from my father; I take after his know-all quasi-omnipotence attitude, his rash ability to possess hold of any conversation and turn it around to shine the spotlight on himself. I probably picked up his quality of being the one who has the last say. My Mom would always call him unreasonable for having the last say, in Chinese, she would say "doo gee gong moi kui" which means you even said it all yourself. She would also quip "toon boo nee ai thyyy" which means you're larger than everything else huh? My Dad likes to emerge from conversations victorious as long as his points are made clear and overemphasized above the rest of the din. He rarely listens. Maybe I rarely listen because my Dad rarely listens. Perhaps he is unpleasantly throwing around his age and with age comes supposed wisdom. Maybe he has no one to show off his wisdom to and he feels that his family (me and mother) do not ask him for enough advice, so he feels the need to assert his power and his values over both me and mom. This could be so.