A C H A P E L TA L K
by An Nguyen ’18 February 8, 2018
Objects
in Perpetual Motion “Listen, to live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I’ve only found sorrow.” —Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
A
s of this morning, I have lived through exactly 222 full moons, the 222nd of which happened to be a “super blue blood moon eclipse,” which (besides sounding awesome) is something that only happens every 150 years or so—a proper “once in a lifetime” occurrence. It seems rather fateful that this “once in a lifetime” event would coincide with the most notorious “once in a lifetime” event of all: my 18th birthday—the radical moment when I instantaneously went from being not quite an adult to a “not quite adult” adult. Apparently, society now deems me fit to do things like write a last will and testament, or pawn my possessions away, but I’ll let you in on a wonderful little secret: [whisper] I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. At all. Lateness is my default state of being; I can be unbearably awkward; I forget to put on my glasses way too often for someone whose world becomes blurry beyond the length of her arm; and, as the girls in Petroskey’s dorm know very well, I generally view sleep as a light suggestion rather than a requirement. I’m not quite sure how I’ve successfully made it to the age of 18. Perhaps it was luck or just plain enthusiasm, but along the way I have acquired a couple more words to this story of mine. This talk is essentially my three-part answer to the question: “What have you even been doing for the past 18 years, An?”
50
Groton School Quarterly
•
Spring 2018
Part I I’m not really sure how the majority of the people sitting in this Chapel perceive me, but I suspect that it is along the lines of, “Oh, it’s that short Asian girl that smiles a lot.” [pause] Well, you’re not wrong. I am certainly short, very much Asian, and I am incredibly, perhaps annoyingly, cheerful. I used to effortlessly express my emotions to the world … but only when I deemed them acceptable. My mother once told me, over a kitchen sink filled with suds and dishes, that I should only love with half a heart so that I could never lose everything. All the advice that a mother ever gives to her daughter is done with the utmost care, and 99% of the time it ought to be listened to, but in this one instance, I absorbed and clutched at her words too fiercely. I laughed with an utter abandon and lack of shame, I was unafraid of letting myself delight in the things I found most interesting, and I never hesitated in my joyfulness. But any feeling that was complicated to deal with did not exist in my emotional vocabulary. Sadness? Self-doubt? Fear of the future? Jealousy? [softly] Love? [pause] Yikes. I would hurl them away with as much force as my hands and mind could possibly muster. No one could condemn me for feeling happy, or cheerful, or content. But those other emotions? The rawer, rougher ones, with potential to wound? Those were dangerous and should be avoided AT ALL COSTS. I would tell myself: “An, you will be okay in the end!” without admitting the statement implied within: “An, you are not okay, not right now.” Thus, my ultimate defense for all my problems could be summed up in a single word: AVOIDANCE. I would procrastinate, ignore, dodge—everything and anything I could do to prevent direct confrontation. These days,