silva rerum

At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for

I must admit that I have had the great for­tune of hav­ing (some­times) keenly insight­ful par­ents who have, for the most part, encour­aged me to explore and refine my life goals inde­pend­ently. While, nat­ur­ally, they have offered advice at what they feel are crit­ical moments (where lack of inter­ven­tion would pub­licly brand them as ‘unfit par­ents,’ a label at which they would undoubtedly laugh), they have been mostly sup­port­ive and always attent­ive to my aspirations.

From a very early age, I had already begun to ima­gine that I would have to pick some­thing to do in life, that my life required some sort of tele­ology, some sort of pur­pose­ful exist­ence. That I exis­ted was not enough (though I rather joy­ously explored my exist­ence by nurs­ing my infant brother who only came into exist­ence after me), I knew that I needed to be some­thing, to do something.

My first inclin­a­tion was to become an artist; when I was five, I boldly declared (paint­brush, drip­ping red tem­pera paint onto the lino­leum floor, in hand) that I would be an artist. I paused to ascer­tain the effect of my impos­i­tion on the world of art. Assuredly, with what I now know was a chuckle, my teacher pat­ted me on the head and swiftly repaired to clean­ing the “art” I had left upon her spot­less floor. “Justin!” she must have ima­gined in her French accent, “you have soiled my floor!” When I brought home my artistic endeav­ours, my par­ents were good-​natured enough that they did not laugh at me in front of me at what was cer­tainly a form­at­ive moment, but rather, they silently chose not to dis­play my art on the refrigerator.

Given up hast­ily on art (for this! Art, I turn my back – there is a world else­where!), I busied myself upon the verd­ant field with the world’s most pop­u­lar pas­time, soc­cer. With my stubby legs, I hobbled about the field, kick­ing and bump­ing into oth­ers, unco­ordin­ated and haphaz­ard. Of course, prob­ab­il­ity was in my favour; out of the ump­teen games recesses I spent chas­ing after that elu­sive ball, I scored a few points. My efforts weren’t lost on my friends; while attend­ing the birth­day of my friend Leslie, I was ushered into a make­shift gypsy tent, cloaked in some per­fume smelling like rose­petals and cin­na­mon. His sis­ter, hav­ing recently pur­chased a book on Tarot and a deck of Tarot cards, fan­cied her­self a for­tune teller, a diviner of the future, and told for­tunes to all of us. I was destined, she relayed to me in a voice thick with affected solem­nity, to become a soc­cer player. My eth­ni­city not­with­stand­ing, I was excited and repaired to the field to play more soc­cer. Eventually, I grew tired of being han­di­capped with (what I assumed were abnor­mally) short legs and gave up on the sport alto­gether. That and because I was repeatedly scol­ded for return­ing home with grass stains on most of my clothes.

By now, I was a happy ele­ment­ary school stu­dent, excited to explore the world. I real­ised early on that I had had a pen­chant for writ­ing, a pre­dis­pos­i­tion for word play (how joy­ous that day when I was taught the word “allit­er­a­tion,” I fondly recall – the teacher had asked us for examples and I came up with “pink ‘’pot­amus,” some­thing I ima­gined was rather clever). I allowed myself to mimic my favour­ite authors in my writ­ing; these were the days before chil­dren were liable for copy­right infringe­ment. An incap­able illus­trator and a poor pen­man, I could at least spell with a 99% accur­acy rate and write in gram­mat­ic­ally cor­rect sen­tences. A writer, I thought, why not? I enjoy writ­ing. And there is such a pleth­ora of books out there, I could assuredly spend my life pub­lish­ing my own books. After I received some praise from my teach­ers for my cre­at­ive writ­ing, I was offered a ment­or­ship with Steven Galloway in cre­at­ive writ­ing. While he has assuredly for­got­ten about the little Asian boy who he was tasked with edu­cat­ing, I have never quite for­got­ten him. “How much do authors make?” “Oh I’d say writers make less than jan­it­ors.” He smiled sheep­ishly, prob­ably chuck­ling at his can­did­ness. I blanched at the thought. My dreams of being a world-​class writer had been hope­lessly smashed. I searched elsewhere.

Journalism! Yes, I would be a jet-​setting journ­al­ist, I thought to myself as a pre-​teen. What could be bet­ter? I am paid to tra­verse the world’s exotic loc­ales, doc­u­ment­ing human interest stor­ies, writ­ing about fam­ous people and meet­ing VIPs. I would be so soph­ist­ic­ated and savvy. My dad pro­tested. Again, my eth­ni­city not­with­stand­ing (for I had not yet seen FairChild tele­vi­sion and its all-​Asian cast; I had only seen Connie Chung on prime­time tele­vi­sion along­side non-​Asian report­ers), I ima­gined myself one day as a fam­ous journ­al­ist, one who could expose the truth and show human­ity unto itself. I even­tu­ally learned that journ­al­ists hardly ever get to be so glam­or­ous and few ever get big breaks. I hastened towards another career prospect.

Having at this point reached adoles­cence, I firmly set my mind upon becom­ing a law­yer; hav­ing verbally scrim­maged with my par­ents on many an occa­sion and (in my mind) won. Yes, I knew that this time, I had picked the right career path. And what could be more noble than law? I fan­cied myself some­thing of an amaz­ing rhet­or­ician, beat­ing down crim­in­als in court and win­ning the high approval of my peers. I real­ised that this would not work soon after my par­ents began send­ing me to my room for being argu­ment­at­ive. Arguing, I learned, never earned any­one any­thing good. Leave the law­yers to their con­flicts, I thought, I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut and per­haps I’ll stop being grounded.

I real­ised, by now, that eth­ni­city was indeed a factor, that I could attempt to lever­age my Asianness and Canadianness for a career in for­eign dip­lomacy. Having been pre­vi­ously enrolled in French immer­sion and Chinese school, I ima­gined myself step­ping out of my lim­ousine into warm sun­light, per­sonal assist­ant trail­ing me. I would walk down red car­pets into dig­nit­ar­ies’ homes and enjoy tea, cof­fee and bis­cuits as we chat­ted about ways in which our coun­tries could join in mutual solid­ar­ity. We would part on ami­able terms and I would go home, per­haps to pre­pare to watch the opera or to present at a ribbon-​cutting cere­mony. But the num­bers got in the way. How many coun­tries in the world require a Canadian-​born, English-​speaking, Asian for­eign dip­lo­mat? Certainly, I would never be deployed to Europe, Africa or South America and my know­ledge of Asian lan­guages was scanty at best and unin­tel­li­gible at worst. My French, after all, was far super­ior to my Cantonese. I gave upon this dream too.

At this point, I was tak­ing senior sci­ences at high school, a year behind my friends who were in the enriched sciences/​maths stream. Aha, I pro­claimed, I would become a doc­tor (the sen­tence that every Asian par­ent and grand­par­ent wants to hear). I enjoy sci­ence, I par­tic­u­larly love bio­logy and I want to do some­thing noble for the world. Yes, these were the days when want­ing was enough and the vocab­u­lary con­sist­ing of “grade point aver­age,” “MCAT” and “inter­views” hadn’t yet been developed. Doctor Yang, I thought, has a nice ring to it. And how glam­or­ous! “Out of the way! Doctor Yang needs to get to the oper­at­ing room stat,” the nurses would cry as I raced to save a dying man’s life. By the time first year ended, this dream was firmly shut out of my mind.

So here I stand. Upon the pre­cip­ice between the pile of dis­carded child­hood dreams and the great unknown. Now, I really should have a game­plan; I must have had some foresight as an infant, already plan­ning for the future. For once in my life, I’m not quite sure what I want to do for the rest of it (a daunt­ing thought) and I doubt I’m going to fig­ure it out in the next few months.