I'm a sucker for a retrospective, so let's take this from the top.
On 2nd November, I took a six-hour flight to Perth to watch Hozier in concert. On 8th November, I saw a quokka in person for the first time. On the first hours of my 28th birthday, I find myself huddled next to a packed suitcase as I contemplate my place in the world.
I'm prone to romantics, it's true. That must be why the soft light of my bedside lamp seems to warm my soul, and the steady hum of the mini fridge in the background reminds me of the quiet thrum of my heart. I feel, as always, my mind threaten to untether itself at any moment, but I am grounded by my sister's sleeping presence a few feet away. I want so badly to carve this moment into my bones, underneath my fragile skin so that I can remember what silence feels like when I no longer have it.
I will spend most of my birthday in the airspace between Australia and Malaysia, after which I will land back into a world stuck on fast-forward. I have three meetings lined up this week, followed by an entire event to organise, and at least five more meetings waiting for me after I'm done with steps one and two. I know I will feel tired, but I take comfort in the fact that the exhaustion will exist in my body, not in my soul.
I feel like a vastly different person from who I was last year, although I don't know if I look all that different from the outside. I am still a flesh vessel fueled by sugar-infused caffeine, and I still play an egregious amount of Overwatch 2. But I am also less obsessed with who I want to be, and more obsessed with who I am today.
Last year for my birthday, I wrote about the idea of greatness as a concept larger than myself. I still think about it often; that pervasive, self-important longing to achieve a greatness that outlasts you. It is not the type of thought you can stop having once you start having it. But this year, as I roamed the windy streets of Perth, I thought about the tiny pockets of the universe we each control within ourselves.
There’s this moment in the middle of the Hozier concert when he disappears from the stage for a few minutes. Hushed whispers ripple through the crowd as people turn to one another, fingers pointing to the time on their phones in confusion, an awkward spattering of applause attempting to fill the sudden void. When he re-emerges on a tiny platform in the centre of the stadium, the subsequent cheers can be heard from a mile away.
He tenderly plucks out the starting riff to Cherry Wine, one of the first songs he ever released, then something absolutely magical happens. It is a moment that feels like a moment as you’re experiencing it. Tiny dots of light form a field of stars among the audience, swaying gently along to the song we all know by heart. For three minutes, it feels like the entire world slows to a graceful halt.
What’s magical about this isn’t the fact that it happens, because I can tell you that every concert tries to recreate this moment and succeeds most of the time. What’s magical is that each person that turns on their flashlight has decided to be a part of something bigger. Without even knowing each other, dozens of people have come together to create a piece of collective art without expecting anything in return. It is the beauty of humankind in its most distilled state.
As our bodies continue to make the slow circle around the galaxy, I find myself surrendering more of my personhood to the vast unpredictability of our universe. That way, I get to enjoy the improbability of the rain pouring outside my window even though we’re on the cusp of summer. I get to laugh at the improbability of my running shoes falling apart on the final day of my trip. And I get to marvel at the improbability of turning 28 years old and sitting at row 28 on my plane ride home.
See you back in Malaysia.
