5^2=25.
That was all 10 years ago. The point is, it's a new experience for me, having this memory base that is both so detailed and from so long ago. It's the first time I feel like I could teach a history lesson based off I personal experience. And as a generation now enters high school without memories of 9/11, our experiences are only going to seem more historical from hereon out.
I like that equation, there's an odd symmetry about it. It's also my current age and a good one. I feel as if I'm still young, young enough to tell my age to both college students and mid professionals and not alienate either.
Recently is the first time I've felt old. Oddly it was the NBA draft that made me feel old. An ESPN Classic was run on the draft ten years ago, 2003. As the special went over the Lebron Darko Carmelo Bosh Wade draft order, I remembered everything vividly. I remembered watching Lebron at St Vincent St Mary's in ESPN's first ever televised hs basketball game, then following the regular season with interest as the Cavaliers and Nuggets tanked it out. I remember watching Darko Milicic highlights, reading an ESPN the mag special about him on my flight to France, about how he did 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups every night and I started doing more on that very trip. I remember watching Wade lead Marquette to the final 4, watching the confident quick point guard who could dunk in traffic pick up a rare tournament triple double. I remember knowing nothing about Bosh because his Georgia Tech team sucked. And of course I remember freshmen Carmelo, Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara winning the title.
25 seems much different than 24. It seems an age relatable to both college kids and 30 year old professionals, neither too young to have adult conversations nor too old to discuss switching majors. It seems to hold more responsibility - it seems less an age where it is socially acceptable to go explore yourself and go backpacking. It's an age where many people graduate law school, or go to business school, or get their first promotion. Sure there are no set life paths and life is not a race, but life does have a progression, unpredictable though it may be. I have found that as I've aged, priorities, values and responsibilities have all evolved, and thus my whole decision making basis.
When I turned 25 the first thing my mom told me was that she got married at 25. This wasn't news to me, but it was still a jarring fact to internalize. I'm not getting married at 25. I don't think my mom's experiences in the late 70's is a benchmark for me, but part of the challenge I find now is having any benchmark or measuring stick. I'm at a place in my life where I don't quite see too many people in similar situations, with much of my peer group older than me, and so I'm entering uncharted waters largely unsure of where I am, where I can be, where I'm going and where I can go. It's been a great thrill so far, but I am hoping the path becomes clearer as I venture further.
One of my mindsets when I moved to Hong Kong two years ago was to learn more about the world. I didn't know what that would exactly mean, but I figured it would involve a lot of traveling. I wanted to understand why taxi drivers in DC were often very well educated Africans, why young people get radicalized, how the people away from cities and technology see the world. I don't think I'm close to answering those questions, but I've learned so much more about the world just from absorbing what's around me and being curious. What would have surprised the me that came here two years ago would be how much my perspective has changed. I was very ideal and very proud when I got here, and there's no doubt that in the past 24 months I've become a lot more jaded and had many humbling and sobering (ironically) experiences. I had a conversation with a mirror when I had dinner with my friend who had just graduated Georgetown. I saw in her the exact same attitude and demeanor and optimism for breaking the bounds of society that I had held when I took my diploma without a real good idea of what I would do with it. We have been given so much, are so talented and willing to work so hard - what could possibly go wrong?
Nothing has gone wrong, in the grand scheme. There's just a lot less guarantees, and a lot more time required for real change to occur than I understood two years ago. Or perhaps I understood and just chose to believe it'd be different for me. I remember my mom telling me when I started at Arup that I should expect to stay there for at least two years. My feeling at the time was "don't be too sure" because man two years was a long time. Well it's been two years and I'm still here with no plans to leave. In an industry where buildings routinely take 5-10 years to go from concept to occupancy, 2 years isn't really very long.
I've seen people get more excited by hope and the call for change, rather than change itself. I work in environmental sustainability, an industry or buzzword that came about entirely to address longterm problems. A direct consequence of this is that the impact of good work isn't easy to conceptualize in a human time frame. It's hard to get excited about the well-maintained operation of a building or a society that gradually reduces its reliance on fossil fuels. The metrics of success have either not been well-defined or not well measured. Thus it's the rollouts of sexy new plans, schemes for a new technological rollouts, setting of ambitious carbon reduction figures that get the attention rather than the completed actions that are invisibly not hurting the environment (as much). Two years has shown me how easy it is to talk about the great things we want to achieve, and how promises can be empty even if there is conviction in them when they are made. This doesn't apply just to the environment. Think about the scenes from Tahrir Square in Cairo from January-February 2011. The mass demonstrations and popular uprising against Mubarak inspired so many all over, and the dramatic tears of joy shed over Mubarak's resignation was a generational moment of raw emotion associated with societal-altering events on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you had told those ecstatic Egyptians how little things would change and how they'd be right back at it with their next president, I'm not sure if their celebration would instantly deflate. A parallel exists in the United States. So much effort was exerted getting Barack Obama - "Change You Can Believe in" - elected in the President. His victory was equally emotional. Far less emotion has been spent on helping Obama accomplish all that change. We are so much more excited for hope, for the prospect of potential change in the future, than for the victories in a real world which does not clearly define victories. Yes We Can elect Barack Obama, but no we can't eliminate poverty, failures in the educational system, violence, racism, pollution, injustice and disease.
But this blog post shouldn't be a giant typhoon over our collective parade. I think I've made my point that my cynicism has grown since entering the work force. Fundamentally though, I don't think I've changed. I haven't wavered from wanting to make a difference in this world. I believe we can prevent catastrophic global climate change. In fact I don't think there's a choice. In a lesson I learned writing crossword puzzles in college, you have to believe there's a solution in order to find it. And to get this solution, it's going to take understanding a lot of very different but interconnected processes.
So back to understanding how the world works. I really feel that here I've come a long way. I think a lot more now about the lives that we lead and what makes them possible. I think about all the items around me and how they got there, from concept design to the materials behind them to the manufacturing to the shipping. I come from a decidedly not blue collar town, and here in the city of finance I still notice how much the world is driven by working class industry. I see how the factory workers that make leather in Vietnam, T-shirts in Bangladesh and just about everything in Guangdong are pushing the world economy. Through a combination of traveling, observing stories and great podcasting journalism, I understand much better how people are moving from village life, the backbone to their whole lifestyle for generations, to cities. The trip to Burma the spring of this year was great for me as I saw people with less wealth and more measurable problems than I'd ever seen before. I gained an image to reference when I next hear about rice paddies or remote Southeast Asian villages. A growing understanding of this world helps to complement the world of first world cities with which I'm already quite familiar.
Hong Kong is one such first world city, and it's a busy one at that. If it were a superhero, it's kryptonite would be its busyness, disguised as productivity and success. It's a city where everyone spends their short commutes engrossed in their smartphones, an unfortunate consequence of the incredible underground 3G coverage. I am fully aware that this infrastructure is double edged. It enables productivity and communication, but it takes away from the reflective time and makes days go by faster and less meaningfully, and even while I'm aware of this, I find myself trapped by the ease of it all. I play it off as me being extra productive, reading CNN or doing social tasks so that I can be more productive at the office or at home. But I'm not sure if these tasks are really freeing up my day, plus half the time I'm playing CandyCrush. Between a demanding job, a social life, an obsessive athletic hobby, family and a dozen books on my reading list, I'm struggling to figure out how to best organize my day to learn more about the world.
Perhaps I can spin that into the greatest blessing about being 25. I'm at an age where I've actually done some stuff and learned some stuff, but I'm far from being done. My habits are still evolving, my life views well-based but open to change. I have the excitement of not knowing what I'll be able to do, but I've eliminated the fear that I'll completely fall flat on my face on my own.
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