As I walk with a few friends along one of Beijing’s narrow alleys, I think to myself how this alley has been here before I was born. It’s been here before my parents were born, even before their parents were born, before my home country was even officially established, even before Shakespeare wrote his first play. This alley was here.
I look to my right and I see a doorway. Despite the sunny weather, no light makes it to the immediate walkway within. As is usual with these residential compounds, I imagine there’s a little maze to go through before finally making it to a little square yard—a shared space among four households, one on each side.
I imagine these houses occasionally meet up for picnics in their shared yard, maybe some tea, sticks of fried tofu, mutton, and spicy chicken wings. Surely, they’ve had their fair share of dramas, laughs, conflicts, and affections.
I snap a quick photo of this solemn facade and as I do so, no one enters or leaves, not even a passerby walks through the alley. It’s amazing to be able to find this level of silence right in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities.
There’s a little green chair out front, perhaps waiting for the sun to hide behind the walls across it. By then, it’ll be shady enough for someone to sit and enjoy the afternoon. Beside it stands a rusty bicycle, the same kind a-yi’s and shushu’s (aunties and uncles) often took to the nearby park. It patiently awaits its rider.
These assumptions are all just assumptions, of course. They’re only guesses. But I find great comfort in having only to guess.
I don’t know those who live in this little compound and they don’t know me. They don’t know where I’m from or where I’m going. They don’t know about the demons that haunt me before I fall asleep. No clue about my shame, my failures, my regrets, and the pressures—both external and self-inflicted—that weigh heavily on my shoulders. My anxieties and ambitions are all unknown to them.
They don’t know. And the fact is, they wouldn’t care if they did.
And there are billions more households like theirs. Billions more who don’t know. Billions more who just do not care. And thank goodness for that.
A couple of months ago, I came across a piece of poetry by William Carlos Williams in a collection of some of his best works.
II Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was springa farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantryof the year was
awake tingling
nearthe edge of the sea
concerned
with itselfsweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ waxunsignificantly
off the coast
there wasa splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
It’s quite bleak. But it’s beautiful, and it’s honest. I read it and feel a sense of comfort, the same comfort I feel when I walk through an unfamiliar alley in Beijing.
It is the comfort of being faceless—no one. And I wonder if this stems from a desire to be invisible, or a fear of being found out, or the realization of my smallness within the grand scheme.
I realize, this is a type of comfort that balances on a tightrope. If I’m not careful, it quickly turns into complacency or even despair; it is tempting to mistake smallness for worthlessness and insignificance.
But as I sit on this thought, it makes more sense for me to interpret this “smallness” as lightness and the unimaginable lack of pressure.
Many times, I would whisper to myself “Who cares?” when I feel them coming—the expectations, the overthinking, the noise.
The answer is never “everyone in the world.” It’s never the outrageous number of people we have in mind. And despite what we feel, it’s almost never the people we were worried about disappointing.
If we’re being honest, it’s usually just ourselves. Of course, a few friends and family also care in their own ways; however, their “care” doesn’t revolve solely around us, but also around their hopes, fears, and investments in us. And that doesn’t make it less real or sincere, it just makes it out of our hands.
Who cares?
If only someone would remind me, regularly and gently, that everyone is too busy with their own lives to constantly care, that I’m the only one who truly does. And maybe that’s the blessing. Maybe that’s enough.