Singularity

My middle and early high school years have been a culmination of experiences full of contrasting back-and-forth. Mondays through Fridays are typically spent with my traditional Chinese mother in a wealthy neighborhood, while weekends are spent with my caucasian father in a comfortable apartment behind Costco. Every individual interaction with my parents highlights even more fascinating differences between their ideals, priorities, and general outlooks on life, and being raised by them has created an environment where I gain insight into both sides of a subject matter. Ultimately, I don't see myself as inheriting a set of traits from either of my parents, but instead as an amalgamation of mixed experiences that floats somewhere in-between, a creature (a fond nickname courtesy of my dad) that has drawn threads of personality from outside sources and evolved from pieces of the world as a lingering imprint of individuality.

As someone with a relatively successful familial background, it's inevitable that an emphasis on education will be ingrained into all of my actions, though I try not to make academic validation my motivation. During the coronavirus quarantine, I pursued a variety of interests and wormed my way into online communities of artists and writers, where their influence heavily swayed me towards the allure of artistic creation and unique interests. Coming back from quarantine, I was once again thrust into the world of academics and extracurriculars, where I received good grades, convinced my teachers that I was an outstanding student, and participated in many afterschool activities. Throughout it all, however, I continually built upon the taste for creation that had been seeded during the lockdown, the period of time where the internet raised me. I drew, I wrote, and I developed a neat little thing called "style."

My mother frequently listened to Christian and classical music and my father would play neo-classical pop rock in the car. Their eldest daughter decided not to pursue any of these perfectly acceptable genres, and instead settled for progressive metal and alternative/industrial rock, a fine contrast to the intelligent Asian persona I had developed at school. The eventual outcome of my different taste in music, clothing, and interests was a new appreciation for contrast. One of my closest friends possesses a mind that I adore. She listens to both Frank Sinatra and Slipknot, the former of which is 1940s romantic music and the latter is heavy metal. Both genres of music, though vastly different, are integral to her character and they make up a piece of her personality that contributes to her being as a whole. I like to think of these differences as range, as having a wide breadth of preferences that make up an identity full of character and human essence, a blend of unique events that builds and builds on itself until a distinctive self emerges.

The realization I've had is that people don't fit into organized sections that separate what they are interested in and who they are at a fundamental, intrinsic level. They can't be defined. People are infinite, gravitating back and forth between the forces in their lives and continually changing, emerging, evolving. Minds overlap, pieces are shared across varying levels of the human ladder, and a figurative network ties every individual to every other individual. The truly fascinating characters, consequently, are usually those with a variety of different perspectives, often with contrasting experiences, not confined within one section of the human network. They expand along the threads of connection to brush against the interests, experiences, minds, and souls of everyone they interact with, picking up new shreds of being as they breathe through life. They contribute to a growing adoration for the diversity of human life, the refusal to adhere to strict outlines, and my conviction that the most beautiful minds I know are sometimes the most contradicting.