Two weeks ago, before my trip to Thailand ended, I decided to visit Chiang Rai, the most northern city in the country. Apart from the timid PM2.5 dusty air that had been threatening many parts of the country, the climate was oddly similar to the California Bay Area. One huge difference, apart from the lack of strip malls, was how slow people drive (I jokingly said to my wife that this could have been Silicon Valley decades ago, from what I heard from the old folks).
On the first day, we decided to drive our rental car all the way to the border town of Mae Sai, then onward to the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Burma, and Laos meet and can be seen just across the Khong River that separates us.
It was just a few days without employment for me, and my wife had been taking it very calmly. This was extraordinary considering I’d been the only source of income for us including our three-year-old in the ridiculously expensive Bay Area. But we both knew it was now or never — Being employed can feel like Stockholm’s Syndrome. You just keep going at it one day at a time and procrastinate. Sometimes, a little pain here and there consistently applied is better than something unpredictable.
But… life is about unpredictability. Even the origin of it had everything to do with instability. In a day, one is to face many unpredictable events. While driving to work, your car’s engine could blow or you could get into a road accident. At work, you could accidentally push a bad commit that had all your team thrown into chaos or find your belongings in a box in front of your office. At home, your children are the catalysts of unpredictability, and your partner could have had a bad day and threw a tantrum you didn’t deserve.
Or, tomorrow you might just stop existing.
I think as we both were gazing across the Khong River to the border of the other two lands, we knew that on our drive back to our hotel death was a possibility. When life yanks you off to a different path, you better take it. For it can just cease any minute.
I had talked about starting something on my own for as long as I can remember. Heck, I had drawn creature cards and cut paper models and sold them to friends when I was in Kindergarten. The context (country, parents, peers, etc.) had transformed me into a cog who tried to fit into certain predefined roles. I hadn’t been fully happy for a very long time, and I didn’t know why. Now I’m quite certain that it was because I simply wasn’t meant to fit into a role. Deep down, I had always felt nervous about myself ending in a somewhat stable, respectable role. Here’s one way my obituary could go:
Joe Chasinga, loving father, husband, and son. Effective and productive rockstar software engineer.
That isn’t what I want to be written about my life. I want to be known as someone who took his life all the way to the limit — just like what I physically did at the shore of the Khong River. It’s okay if I couldn’t cross it to the opposite side. At least I didn’t just curl up inside a comfortable blanket in the city hotel or just visited nearby tourist attractions. There was certainly a feeling of comfort in the midst of all the emotions as my wife and I stared at the far side of the River.
It was a feeling of relief. A relief that at last, life has really begun.
