“I don’t know.”

That’s my answer to every important question I’ve ever heard.

“Don’t you know what you want to be?

What you want to do?

What you like,

What you hate – what you love

Who you are?”

 

I don’t know.

 

“How can you be driven then?”

A friend once casually asked me.

I don’t know, thinking silently.

Why?

Why do I spend my time with books

When I could put my hands up in the air

Hand up in the air!

Or YOLO for all I care?

Why do I go to tutoring for extra lessons

When it’s costly and takes my life away.

Tick-tock, one hour a day

Seven hours a week

Twenty-eight hours a month

Seven hundred and twenty-eight hours a year

Tock-tick, tock-tick, tock-tick…

 

I don’t know

 

People don’t accept my answer;

They attribute my achievements to the slant of my eyes.

 

“Asian Persuasion!” They say.

 

As if the way I see could logically explain my deeds or define me as an individual.

 

I reply: “Asian Domination!!!”         

 

Because,

I don’t mind.

Because I embrace the light golden shade

Of which I bear in my soul.

 

So what if I don’t know

I’m only sixteen for Christ’s sake!

Every time I hear people my age

Speaking of grandiose ambitions:

“Ending hunger, saving the poor, making a change, curing cancer…,

and establishing World Peace.”

I admire them and sit in awe, but wonder –

How many of them will actually make it?

 

I don’t know.

I really don’t know.

 

But I do know:

Life is a beach – the kind that’s

Fickle but Soothing,

Drowning but Sunny,

Unforgiving, but Purposeful.

And I, filled with the desire to KNOW, will walk,

No, to jog.

No – to run in this beach with the wind in my hair.

Even if I don’t know where I’m going,

I’ll run.