Desire (I want to turn into you)
To control desire is to first cease any desires of controlling it.
As a kid, I have always been intense.
In kindergarten, during recess. I was set on colouring a picture of a cartoon dinosaur. My pencil colours were in those box-shaped pencil cases made of plastic that you can draw out stationeries from. We were handed a paper of cartoon animals to colour and hand in before school day was over. The other kids didn’t bother to do this during recess, as one would expect from kids. Why sacrifice limited outdoor playtime with friends to do something as trivial as colouring a cartoon animal? One can merely guess.
It turns out as a kid I also liked delayed gratification and strived for perfectionism. As long as I finish colouring this stupid dinosaur before recess ends, I get to have my break in peace.
Picture this: a little girl in a quintessential colourfully-decorated neighbourhood home-turned-kindergarten classroom, head bowed to her desk, hand gripping tight a green colour pencil moving hastily over a page. Some kids are outside on the lawn, some are running around in class, probably playing tag, or just for the sake of running because they can. Occasionally, the kids would bump into her arm, causing her to accidentally colour the dinosaur outside of its outlines. This happens several times. She grumbles in annoyance quietly each time.
On the third or fourth time, when she decides she has had enough of this behaviour which she finds extremely galling and childish, her eyes start to well up in tears. She doesn’t yell at them, nor even look the other kids’ way. Instead, her head remained bowed to her desk, brimming with annoyance and anger, until the well overflowed and tears fell onto the page.
A teacher, who was just coming out from the kitchen-canteen, saw this scene play out. She scolded the other kids to behave. Justice was served, but now the embarrassment from having a witness who saw what happened plagued her little heart.
Another instance: in primary school, a teacher had assigned homework for art class, the typical “draw a picture of yourself in a village in the countryside.” I ended up going for the basics: the sun wedged between two tall mountains, its rays projecting across the entire sky, and at the bottom of the drawing, a wooden hut with a person (representing myself) feeding chickens. It was due the next day but my masterpiece was only about less than halfway done.
I was struggling to get the chickens to look right.
I remember the panic rising up inside me like a tide, the fear of being the student who didn’t submit their homework on time. The fear of looking like an idiot.
In a state of anxiety, I barged in my parents’ room and confided in them. They tried their hardest to calm this neurotic child of theirs down. I remember my mother sitting down beside me, trying to help me draw the chickens. They just don’t look right. I wanted them to look just right.
I managed to get the drawing done in time of course, at the expense of my parents sacrificing a couple hours of sleep.
It's funny looking back at these memories now. Nobody told me to act so uptight, or care so much about homework. Truthfully, it was easier for me to care than not to. My parents never forced me to strive in academics, it just naturally came to me. They were still asian parents and guilty of perpetuating whatever connotations that come with being asian parents, don’t get me wrong. But they were never as berating to me about my studies as I was to myself. As it turned out, I never needed reprimanding.
I carried this unhealthy standard with me all throughout my life until it stopped being sustainable. It was never sustainable to begin with—made-up rules in my head that I adhere to religiously. As I grew older, these rules bled outside of academic purposes, now seeping into everyday life. I’m guilty of changing the rules often, depending on what I’ve picked up from people and my surroundings. They were in a perpetual state of change until they started to make sense less and less. The “gifted-kid burn-out” was inevitable. And true to the prophecy, it happened.
The pursuit of perfectionism does not exist, and the desire to control it is counterproductive. It’s something I have to remind myself over and over. The desire for perfection poisons ambition, and blanches you from specks of bravery of just doing it.
When thinking of ambition and desire, Timothée Chalamet’s recent SAG award speech comes to mind. His open and sincere admission of wanting to be one of the greats. To openly admit his desires for his pursuit of greatness is an act of bravery I think we all want to portray and strive for. It’s brave because admitting it means people can see if you try. Or worse, they would know if you fail.
People talk about learning from making mistakes all the time, but I can’t ever seem to learn from them. I guess it’s something I need to work on.