Live like we are dying

Friday 25th March 2011

Dear brother,

In 40 days I’ll be home.

To be frank, I’m a little scared. I am extremely excited, so much so that I am scared that I over expect things. So I’m trying to stay in that space where it is calm and re-assuring.

I have been doing a lot of reflection lately. Small town boy from seaside town, wishing to become an architect. An Idealistic, hopeless romantic teenager. A stranger in a foreign land, foreign school, adjusting foreign language. A bright young man who came to Philadelphia to learn about starting ventures. A fresh grad who is eager to fly and got trapped in a governmental mechanism of a Union. A team lead of a super large scale project where he works 75 hours week. A loving boyfriend. And now, a coming home son to his mother land Vietnam, as the next young Project Manager aspiring to change the world. And 5 years later, hopefully, a calm and tranquil monk in Tibet. I have come a long way… Can’t believe at one point of time in life I considered killing myself. I just want to quietly give myself a pat on my shoulder. “Good job, little Pace!”

So there is this rhetorical question that people always ask “If your life flashed before you, what do you wish you would have done?”. I would say, exactly everything I have done in my life. To love. To hurt. To aspire. To fail. To risk. To change. Because it is not easy, it is life.

Of course there would be so much more I could have done if we were rich and I have more allowances (and didn’t have to pay my own tuition fee loan). But hey, there will be a lot that I would have never done if life was comfortable. Hardship forced me to strive. Loneliness sometimes forced me to survive.

I am trying very hard to spend the remaining days here to meet up with all my friends here, all the people that have made positive impact in my life in the past 8 years. “Gotta tell them that you love them when you still have the chance to say”. Life is precious because of the people around you.

I know I am 26, but it feels like I’ve been living much longer than that :p Life, to me, is not a gradual process of duration, but a punctuated series of moments. And therefore, my life has been full, and wonderful (in a sort of twisted and damaged way, like un Film Noir Francaise).

So brother, I know you are a much more innocent boy than I was (and I am so very glad you are and I intend to do everything I can to let you stay that way); but life is a challenge, and growing up is not easy. I just hope you will live and enjoy every moment of life as they are. Don’t be afraid, because every failure, every challenge leads to something wonderful later on. I’d like to quote another song “Maybe the reason why all the doors are close is so you can open one that would lead you to the perfect road”.

And so brother, see you in Saigon J