Ode To The People That I Won’t Forget

”I live for the nights that I can’t remember, with the people that I won’t forget”, a famous fellow Canadian once said. Drake, you could not have voiced my feelings in any better way.

Last night, after a Business and Culture Seminar about Confucius and his legacy hosted by the Beijing International Society and held at the Residence of the Ambassador of New Zealand, I went for drinks in Sanlitun with some other young professionals I met at the lecture. When I asked Ross, a China Studies graduate from South London, how long had he been in Beijing, he said a year. “But in Beijing time”, he added, “one year is like five”.

Ross was right. In Beijing, we live at a unique pace that can only be understood by the people you are with. In Beijing, time is suspended in order to make you live, to make you grow, to make you experiment in a way that you could never do at home, wherever that home is to you. Since you are not part of a functional system anymore, with the personal references carved over the years in the place you departed, you need to redefine yourself and your role in a totally novel way without any expectations because no one here has ever met your previous self. You are no one’s daughter, no one’s sister, no one’s stubborn friend. To the contrary, without having asked for it, you are now part of a new system; a system where the equilibrium is generated by human beings shaped by different cultures, different languages and different paths, but whose journey led them to the same unknown at the same time for more or less the same raison d’être.

“And you, what is your story?” Justin asked me. And I shared. To an extent I would never think of at home, because, for the generic Western millennial who is a product of his environment, it would be awkward. In Beijing, all of a sudden, we realise how silly this tendency is to live life within the very self-conscious standards we (unfortunately) have. We discover that barriers to friendship and honesty are things that we create in our minds to protect ourselves when we are overwhelmed by our safe routine, because we tend to distrust people that have been around for so long but who we still don’t genuinely know. However, in Beijing, since each foreigner you meet is at first a new acquaintance, to dive in this life as an expatriate, you need to open the door a little more. At first, the plunge is petrifying. But soon enough, it becomes liberating.

Such freedom gives you wings. Such freedom builds your confidence. Such freedom entitles you with the openness to disclose your truth to strangers who all of a sudden are new friends. Because we are all human after all.

Of course, you have the choice. You can stay in your shell and focus on your work, with your mind constantly wandering somewhere near your hometown. You can visit all the monuments that you want and change your cover picture on Facebook to proudly display to your network how much you have traveled. But you will miss so much of the purpose of being here! Those insightful moments, those crazy stories, those bets, those tears and those laughs are once in a lifetime occasion that will make your time here way more meaningful than hundreds of ‘likes’ near the Forbidden City. So, of course, you have the choice. But think twice before choosing to lock yourself.

In Beijing, people will come. People will go. Already, as CRCC interns, we met folks during our first month here who left and suddenly, there was a void to fill in our group. Other interns came in and, already, it is weird to imagine that we will leave them behind. Jonathan, a friend I met two weeks ago at an event held by the British Chamber of Commerce, had to say goodbye last night to one of his workmates who found a job in Brussels. Jonathan has been here for two and a half years now. That means that you never get used to that feeling of loss when true friendship was built, even when you know that such volatility is an essential part of an expatriate’ life.

Nevertheless, no matter how ephemeral this parallel reality might be, how illusionary our life in Beijing might be, and how disconnected it might appear to those who stayed behind, it was worth it. Those young brilliant, adventurous and ambitious people from around the world had to cross my path for me to evolve into a more open-minded woman who is not afraid anymore of letting people find out who she is because she now feels confident enough of the golden soul they might discover by digging in. Those generous, hilarious and benevolent personalities had to be met to provide me with the safe space needed to share the blisses, the insecurities and the sorrows of my life with equals. Those passionate KTV nights, those candid questions about each of our cultures and those debates with the Italians on gelato versus ice cream had to happen because…well, just because.

Sometimes, happiness does not command any purpose.

The post Ode To The People That I Won’t Forget appeared first on CRCC Asia.