Home, Sweet Home

So after a 16-hour flight, I have made it back to America, more specifically back to my mom's couch in the un-airconditioned apartment. What is a 31-year old doing sleeping on the couch in the "prime" of his career anyway? Thinking of investment ideas I suppose, or just wrestling with his jetlag or some other demons.

I have spent a lot of time recently reading about religion, which I guess isn't surprising given the crossroads that I am at in my life. I must say that the more time that I spend thinking about tough life issues, the more confident and comfortable I am in my aetheism. Everything just makes so much more sense without a God. Is that counter-intuitive? I'll say it again though, everything just has so much more clarity. I view the cultural phenomona of religion as an unwanted by-product of other more important social (evolutionary) advantages, and nothing more. Certainly it acts as no panacea as advertised. And the truly ironic thing, is that I feel that religion more often than not simply gets in the way of being a good person and doing the right thing, by applying indiscriminate, and usually arbitrary rules to any such decision. I honestly just don't get it, and feel that at this point in my life, I am going to shut the book on this question and move on to grow in different ways. Pretty stupid I suppose to put this down on paper, as the only person around who might read it, is the one who would least want to hear it, but that's what you do when you are tired and your judgement is off.

In flying back today to New York, I sort of realized that while it is great to be with my family and talk to my friends here in the States, my experiment in foreign living at the age of 20 coupled with my dissatisfaction growing up in NYC has effectively displaced, nay, globalized me, and that my home now lies elsewhere. If anything, I no longer have and possibly never really ever had a single concept of home. I am a home-whore when it comes down to it. Wherever I go frankly feels a bit like home - NYC, Boston, Chatham, Taipei, Hong Kong, KL, Singapore, Vilnius, Beijing to name a few places. I cannot decide if this is a profound realization, or just some new-age type drivel, but perhaps my answer is that I do always need to be moving, to always be changing and to always be adapting. In thinking about my next step, I keep trying to ask myself, OK, what next, what is my next 5-year or 10-year plan, what am I willing to commit myself to? But in truth, I think I am trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I don't think that my definition of happiness works like that - I appreciate new experiences and new sensations too much. I am deathly scared of routine and complacency. Those concepts scare me to my bone. And it is more from this fear that I believe I routinely blow up whatever comfortable existence I am able to forge for myself, like pushing a giant reset button on a video game console in which you have pre-selected too many cheat codes so the game becomes too darn easy.

I am however getting excited about the prospect of a new life and a new career. I get the feeling that this time around in Hong Kong, things will be very different, and hopefully the pieces in my life will finally start to come together a little bit more, just like the "Winnie the Pooh" jigsaw puzzles of my youth. I have faith, in myself to be clear, that the details will all work themselves on out. INSEAD would have been a fun time, but I think my life demands something else.

Signing out,

CJ