road less travelled

"To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake—even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death—that little by little we start to come alive. 

It was not a conclusion that I came to in time. It was a conclusion from beyond time that came to me. God knows I have never been any good at following the road it pointed me to, but at least, by grace, I glimpsed the road and saw that it is the only one worth traveling." 

— Frederick Buechner, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺. 

Three years on from the day I thought I'd uprooted myself and went on the adventure of my life, I find myself staring back at the soil that once contained those roots. There are some imprints still, but it has visibly changed. Things are familiar yet strange; what I left behind isn't what I left behind anymore.

It is another adventure, I suppose, albeit not as apparent as the one that I'd embarked on in a foreign land. Re-entering already begets a certain sense of foreignness both within and without, having to water down my 30-plus-year-old hardened sense of id and allowing myself to learn from another culture and discover the invisible blinkers around my eyes. The stories on the ground and the struggles in the air became contrasts that provided clarity, conviction, and confession. That one year in the States while trapped in the throes of a pandemic which walked up cradled in its arms political unrest, social instability, threatened safety, and various natural disasters to my literal doorstep (of which I moved three times and couch surfed twice)—that—as a sheltered Singaporean—was perhaps the most extreme experience I've ever had to live through, and I exaggerate not. 

It is difficult to explain what took place within my body. 

Here's a summarised version of events around me in 2020 (and this is not even including doing my doctoral studies, running ministry, and dealing with students having issues living together): 

Having a full police armed squad in your backyard with their guns cocked and helicopter circling above with spotlight trained at a window reported to have a terrorist behind its panes in a building just 20 metres away from your bedroom. Having a protest walk down the street next to you, and attending one to stand in solidarity with voices that have been silenced for too long, with the real fear of an extremist running in to disrupt the cause. Having a police helicopter fly overhead and drone incessantly for hours during the first few months of a pandemic, calling over the loud hailer for groups to disperse. Having police cars racing up and down your neighbourhood almost every other day, or knowing that just a couple of streets away, a shooting had just taken place (and constantly having to figure out whether what I just heard were gunshots or illegal fireworks). News on three different channels simultaneously talking about the same thing but for wholly different agendas, and more news of all kinds all over makes you constantly question what is truth?. Seeing a movie poster in your neighbourhood that features someone who looks like you defaced with a spray, an artful reminder that racism does not see difference in your colour (I'm not even going to mention what was happening in politics). Avoiding going out for a run on your own because this cuts too close to self in what is supposed to be a pretty cool and safe(r) neighbourhood, in a pretty cool and safe(r) city. Packing up clothes for a week with my roommate and escaping to a neighbouring city, asking for favours to escape the licking flames of one of the worst forest fires to ever hit the county, even if we couldn't escape the smog that filtered the sun crimson. Feeling your bed frame and house shake intensely (while still smoggy outside). Making the conscious decision to drastically stop meeting up with dear friends and heading outside to eat for months, because Covid-19: and then suddenly finding myself facing the possibility that I may never see most of them again, and without a proper goodbye.

I'm back, in Singapore, my homeland, in this dystopian utopia, carrying in my body the realities of the fear, the anger, the worry, the pain, the tiniest of relief and joys that came with the shelter of friends and kind strangers and Providence. Yet all of that is now physically far away from me. I saunter around in an estate with people who mostly look like me and live like me. I wonder how to navigate the things I disliked about my culture only to catch its ugly head rearing in me. I travel from A to B and back to A in comfort, and begin to grumble when I find myself being inconvenienced. I'm fearless, even if my wallet peeps out of an unzipped front pocket while I walk into my un-gated community at 2 am. Yet the moment I hear helicopters fly overhead in this country where selective hiddenness is a virtue, I'm taken back to 2020—even if those helicopters consider themselves merely growling their proud presence.

And to think that these realities I went through are a mere fraction of the realities of the world most of the world really live in. Our personal struggles are real; but our egoes are as inflated for the space we actually occupy in this world. As many out there need reconciliation and restoration through abasement and sacrifice as the Cross would show us, yet our comfort continues to take precedence. It's a fine line between self-indulgence and self-care. There is more than a hint of survivor's guilt, now that I've chosen to remain in the warmth of these still(er) waters. And at the same time, I am rootless and restless in all my humanity, as I return to a space now disenfranchised by the scoundrel of a virus. This may be home, but it's not the home that I'd left.

In these swirling times, glimpses of the past, the now, and the future are hazy, hazier, and haziest. For now, this is what it means to live, even if full of fear and trembling. Although I do have to admit: This short but pressure-cooked time away from time has given me an unprecedented experience with God, of God. And these realities that I carry in my body bear themselves as inextinguishable tongues of fire that give me just enough visibility for one step forward. 

They remind me that this road, while dim, is indeed the only one worth travelling. And if little by little is all I can manage, then, Lord, let it be.