I can still remember my first time on an airplane: it was the first flight in my permanent journey from Hong Kong to the U.S., with a connecting flight in Tokyo. I recall being super excited, not knowing that this would change my life forever. Like a typical ecstatic child flying on a plane for the first time, I couldn’t stop looking out the side window. Having sat in the middle seat, all that I could see from the window was the ethereal white light reflected from the (not-so) stratospheric clouds. And I can still see it today in my mind, as clearly as I did when I was 7 in 2003.
Fast forward to 2016’s spring break: Here I am, traveling with my mother to visit my sister’s family in northern Illinois. This is the first time I’ve been on an airplane since the summer before high school senior year, so I have definitely changed a lot as a person (I’m a grown-up now! Yay!...?). Sitting in a window seat this time, the first thing I realized when I sat down was the size of the window—it was much smaller than the window that I remembered from my first flight! Sure, the two planes are most certainly different models with different window sizes, but it sure triggered a sentimental, nostalgic part in me. It brought my childhood and that life-defining plane ride back and put it in comparison with my life in the present.
Wow, 13 years have passed, yet they have felt like nothing. What would have happened if I didn’t come to the U.S.? Would I have gone to an average high school in Hong Kong, gotten mediocre exam scores and enrolled in a community college? (Let it be known that the public education in Hong Kong is far more challenging than in the U.S.) No one would know—unless the recent scientific theory of multiverse is true; then, I guess I would have to cryogenically preserve myself until science finds a way to communicate among different universes so that I can ask the other cryogenically-preserved Andy about his life in Hong Kong.
As much as I want to find out about my other life in the other universe, I could not be more grateful toward the one that I have in this universe at this very moment. I have parents who work hard to support me and my endeavors. I study at a historic, prestigious university with a top-tier education. I am excited about following my passions in my career. I have a loving relationship with my significant other (who is simply the best). I am surrounded by dear friends who are as ambitious and determined as I am about the future. I have learned to let go so that I wouldn’t be blinded by superfluous things in life and could truly learn from past experiences, both good and bad. And you know what? I would never trade my life in this universe for any other lives because this life is who I am.
