December 31, 2021 #journal
2021 has gone as fast as it came.
It hurts to realize I can’t confidently remember whether covid took some loved ones in this year or last year; it all feels like one very long year.
Amoung everything Chinese has been my latest escape; the most recent tower on top of a tower, but one with a bridge to cross over language barriers.
It really has felt like stepping into a new world, just as I hoped. Although this world can’t be called “better” than mine, it is still another world where the problem are new to me instead of old, and some old ones can only wait for me to step back in their reach.
15 months in studying #Mandarin, as of yesterday -the third last night of the year I found my joy in Shufa calligraphy.... While at first I thought I haven’t done as much writing or painting [recently], it might be because writing and painting have become one in my daily life in Shufa, so in another way I am both writing and painting more than ever.
In spite of a lot of sadness, I also feel the year has ended on a good note reading proverbs almost every day.... This #journal entry has sounded a little sad and a little more somber than I originally planned.... But I think that came form realizing it is December 31.
This year age has felt a little more scary than other years, but it has been something to realize it is almost squarely my year of 1996 that blazed the trail of making memes to cope with anxieties of ageing.
(We are the first ones to be using the Internet to make it one giant shared experience that way, and using memes and humour to cope with it as a global collective... though not everyone has access to Internet).
This year I have also concluded that we may in fact be the saddest generation to ever exist. And I don’t mean “that’s sad” as in we are failures, but perhaps the generation that feels the most sad in spite of average circumstances. To feel so sad and so empty, regardless of whether or not or basic physical needs are ok.
The next generation sees us as overly depressive, the last generation sees us as overly sensitive... I have been thinking this for a while but even the generation after us has spoken, it’s not just us thinking it.
Something about that makes me feel ok though. That all the sad is not only me alone, and instead of feeling cheated I feel almost privileged to be one of the people, out of all the people up to now, to shoulder this. We all learn different perspectives; being able to know what characterizes mine so much is almost comforting.
This is not to say that people from other generations have any less legitimate sadness, not one bit.
But it is true that just like any other factor, if we could plot sad was there should be one least and one most sad generation out of them all.
Not necessarily facing the most serious external troubles, that would be another generation. But just the most sad as an independent variable? Yeah, that just might be us.
I often wonder how my ancestors lived, and how the future generation may be. I imagine my own ancestors thinking about the same things when they were alive, thinking about me before I even existed. I wonder what similarities and differences there are.
If I have children or adopt, I hope down the line nobody else is more sad than me though. I hope this is it, that it doesn’t get more sad than this. This isn’t as bad as it could be, but it doesn’t need to be worse. I hope I can learn enough to make it worthwhile, and pass that along enough so that there is no need for someone to be even sadder.
But if that happens, what I would tell them is that one of the most important hints I have learned is to let happiness coexist with sadness; to refine the skill of being both happy and sad at the same time.
While I feel hopeless in a situation I feel hope with God, while feeling pain from a wound one can still taste what is sweet, while feeling the turbulence of chaos finding a tree of life in keeping calm and quiet myself.
It’s ok to feel both.
Tonight I have felt anxiety, but felt warmth watching a Drama with my mom, curiosity talking with a friend over FaceTime, and joy playing around with strokes and characters and made up flower designs on the water paper. The good and the bad the happy and sad, as ephemeral as it all is the Eternal One is there alongside it, searching hearts for what is good, to make sure the good ultimately lasts.
I’m going to go back to [study] Chinese, but there is still so much else to be grateful for, including a beautiful future.
(In case you were wondering, the drama is the mainland Chinese drama ‘You are my Hero’)
My calligraphy style is more Japanese than Chinese, in a popular style sense. Just like my regular painting and writing style (and hair) it’s a little more turbulent.
I admire people who can replicate strokes so perfectly again and again in a beautiful way within a space; they perfect the “book law” in an artful way.
Mine is almost all art and less law, but learning the strike order for each radical is still helping me memorize more, and allowing the artistic flair if anything is helping keep it instinctive, though it is less legible.
That is ok though. This is the style of my life and I have accepted it; it's coexistence of wild and lawful.
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There is some sitting with anxiety involved here, in just publishing a journal entry like this one a blog when usually these actual, long entries stay quiet. Not gonna lie I might end up deleting this, but at the moment I think it might be worth keeping, to contribute to some record of the mental state of millenials right now other than what is in memes.
