A Bamboo's Life

Guys, I've been praying recently. There's something in me that is really needing to connect with a higher source... for more insight into myself, into life, and into what the right thing to do is. Sometimes I feel pulled in many directions at one time- by the demands of society, requests of friends, things I wanna do, things I feel are expected of me to be or do. I feel like after a while of that you can lose yourself if not anchored to a core identity or purpose. I am discovering more of what it means to be on a spiritual journey... one that I've been on this whole time... I've been wondering about the source of things - how I act, how I think, who I've become up to this date. Where is this all coming from? I've been hard to reach recently, I understand that. It's just that I'm taking some time to gain clarity of my mind and my heart. Trying to remove the toxins from my environment, my world, be it distractions, additions or people. Sometimes it's hard to identify those things when we don't take any time to sit and consider the contents of our lives.  I talked to God yesterday and my prayer was that he would remove the impurities from my life. The things that are blocking me from my true purpose and my higher self... the experience in this life I know I've come to have. I feel like there is a lot in my way right now - by the nature of my choices, environments and attachments. Something like running in the mud, knowing I was made to fly. At the end of the day, I had to come to realize the truth in the idea that we cannot do this on our own. Taking away everything superficial and the mask we put on each day in the world, we are truly vulnerable and fragile. What control do we really have in this world? And when I reached this juncture, I realized I had to turn back to God, or a higher source of power, if you will. I am realizing that I need to cultivate a clearer relationship with this power for guidance, clarity and revelation... and how much this relationship is under threat in our everyday modern existence.  It's weird y'all, I just woke up one day recently and saw the world completely differently. The things I used to crave - my needs- need for validation, material things, lifestyles, attention... everything outside myself... started to seem stale. Nothing was able to satisfy me. And thus begun this path I am taking now.  In my prayer the other day, when I asked, things began to shift. Almost immediately, things began to change. I could feel it, the decisions starting to look different, the people starting to look different, the breaking of the status quo. I felt like the moment I was able to admit this desire out loud to myself and to the universe, the world around me began to change. It is quite an uncomfortable time during this shift, as many things - patterns, relationships, and attachments - must completely break down in order to make room for new things. but I am ready to take this path for myself. I need to change and to evolve. I need to climb the next and higher path on this mountain we call life.   

Right now I’m sitting in my new studio, looking out at the Atlanta skyline on a beautiful fall night. I just got the keys last week and have been slowly getting the place together. During the day, the light is absolutely stunning, and each day I try to race down here around 7pm just so I can sit and watch the set out of these windows. Today, as I was carting the last of my canvases into the space, it kind of dawned on me that I never really took the time to sit and just think about how far I’d come and just how I found myself right here - realizing wow, I really am living a life that at one point 6 years ago only existed in my head. I realized I’ve kept myself so busy that I haven’t really taken time to just sit and appreciate this and in a way, appreciate myself for choosing to climb up this mountain I’m on. Since moving back to Atlanta in 2020, I learned how to tattoo, had gallery shows in Atlanta, put on an art and music festival, opened 2 shops, initiated the revival of the Atlanta Chinatown, developed an art market concept that takes place monthly at both Ponce City Market and Chinatown, completed multiple murals around the city, have my art in multiple restaurants, cafes and business offices, been on the news multiple times, got published in the newspapers, and have been on billboards. I’ve taught hundreds of people in the Atlanta area and outside how to create their own Asian art, and have brought my art class experience to businesses, corporations and governments. I set out to make a name for myself in Atlanta and beyond as as an artist, as a way to prove to myself that there was a way to create and design your own life and own way of moving through this experience we call life… and after all this time I did just that. This experience, however it looks online, came with many costs, failures, heartbreaks, sacrifices… all mixed in there.. but produced the most invaluable lessons I could have ever asked for…and in turn provided experiences and countless teaching moments that have built into how I see the world. Where I Been Where I Been What’s crazy is that the last blog post I did was exactly a year ago yesterday. My god, I feel like the last year in itself was one lifetime in itself. I look back on what I was writing (you can scroll down and read it) and realized I was going through some sort of spiritual death or crisis. In a way, I felt like I had to go through some time to really find the truth in my spiritual experience, and to separate it from my religious experience… and sometimes to do that you have to completely blow everything up to see what remains. And I got that point, where I just had to jump off a complete unknown deep end… allowing everything… to begin to understand the truth on a deeper level… a truth I could feel that I built and experienced myself. I am still unpacking a lot of this myself, but I do feel that I am gaining clarity on what exactly is true about the world, and what is just designed and presented by man to advance hidden agendas. For a while I felt a massive distrust for all people… I guess something they don’t tell you about starting a business or becoming an owner, or becoming someone bigger in this world, is how lonely it can be sometimes. After a certain point, I was having a hard time trusting the people around me… wondering if their motives were to just get an opportunity from me, or to somehow gain something from me. I had a hard time connecting with people because I could never feel like I could be myself around people… that I had uphold some sort of image to maintain a narrative. I felt like there was people around me all the time, but I didn’t know if I could ever be myself. In a way, I felt like I didn’t know myself. I guess to sum it all up, I had to face a decision about whether or not I would continue to be open and giving, despite having discovered that there a lot of people in the world that take advantage of these kind of situations. I had to make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to bear that sort of weight in order to stand for something different in this world and to be something different than the status quo. I had to decide if I was gonna go “fuck everyone and everything” or “embrace everyone and everything.” These are the situations that keep me up at night really… whether to forgive or to say well "fuck u forever then.” Same World, Different Views For me, it became all about what perspective I wanted to see this world from… something each of us must decide and act on. Everyday, billions of us rise with the sun and live another day, billions of different perspectives and experiences. My big question became… well how much do I have a say in this? And that’s what really dawned on me today as I sat here in this space… something I’d dreamed of years earlier… that I always had a say. Through my decisions, my mindset, and my steps… all led here. There was always a reason. I think once I realized that I had a choice in the matter, I wanted start making different decisions. I have a dream of how I want to go through this lifetime - what I would like to experience and be a part of - and now knowing that it is all in my power to achieve… then I better walk wisely. 6 years ago I saw myself with a skyline view loft apartment downtown Atlanta GA, and here I sit in it in 3D. What more is possible? but more importantly, are you willing to take the necessary steps to allow it? For me, my necessary steps as of now are: take care of the physical vessel (the body), rise earlier, and organize and prepare my physical world as a reflection of the spiritual - clarifying my physical spaces to clarify the mental spaces. More than ever am I realizing that the outside (life’s expression) is a direct reflection of the inside. This is what they mean by “so within and so without.” So, I have work to do on the inside, and the outside only has to follow. Wish me luck.

What if every aspect of my life has become a performance, now unable to identify with the reality of things or the things that truly matter, sitting off somewhere out of site. I’ve never felt to truly understand the journey that I was on, or where it was leading… yet always understand my answer to the call to the unknown - a yes. I’ve always wanted to find out… to find myself out there outside of the confines of convention. The fear of becoming normal. But sometimes I feel like I’ve gone too far… flew so high and out of site I couldn’t find my way back home… or even remember what that feeling felt like - to live at a home… in communion with others. I made the mistake of looking backwards… over the things that never worked… the things I thought would never affect me again… things stuffed in the closet… all now continuing to appear. I just never wanted to live the same twice, only to find myself nowhere to spend these days. A lot of unhappiness comes from being stuck in the past. Always wondering about the what ifs, how you could have done things differently, wondering if you made the right choices along the way. I look around and ask if we do know each other at all, and looking back on my life did I ever give you the chance to?

I have begun to find that the antidote to much of my suffering is the willingness to admit to myself more and more each day that I am the problem. I began to understand that blaming anyone or anything for the state of my own life was ultimately to surrender my very own freedom to that which lies outside of my control. I realized that in every situation in my life, the very own single common denominator was this: that I was there. In the beginning, it is a bitter pill… but after swallowing, it birthed the very essence of what it means to hope…which is, in my definition, the opportunity to participate in my own life, and the power to further explore the intimate relationship that I ultimately have with my own desttiny. This is by no means self-condemnation, but quite the contrary, a high love and a great service to the self. I can only heal so far as I can begin to accept that I have a choice in every situation, circumstance, and moment… and if life is comprised of these 3 things… then I might have a choice in my life - freedom. Suddenly, we have forgone the idea of a savior - be it a God, a relationship, or simply something or someone to blame -as we realize are not helpless after all. It’s just that so many of us will spend our whole lives, searching the ends of the Earth for someone or something who might have the answers when that very person greets you in the mirror each morning.

Our beliefs are never more clearly expressed than through our decisions. Until we put our convictions into actions, we may question whether it is a real conviction in the first place. Making a different decision in life, breaking the cycles whether large or small, is proving to be one of the most difficult tasks we can ever hope to attempt. Even changing something small, like a eating habit or a netflix habit, sometimes feels like an insurmountable mountain to climb. But these small moments, when we do have the opporunity to change the rudder, correcting the course of our ship even 1 or 2 degrees, means an entirely different outcome in the long run. I’m working a lot right now probably too fucking much but this has been my life for about 5 years. What I enjoy about this process though is that I can feel my mentality and understanding increasing in depth and resilience as I continue to deal with problems that arise when trying to conduct business and trying to work with and communicate with people. Starting a business has been this very enlightening love/hate relationship… because while it is an amazing opportunity to be an owner, you also have to address all the problems as the owner, or the final decision maker. Sometimes in a daydream I wish I could just not have to make certain decisions, but at the end of the day, I do. I’m realizing that one of the most helpful things to staying sane in this world is finding the option to let things be. Let things happen, let things come and go, let people do, let people think, let people go. I know that my default is feeling the need to control circumstances and people to fit exactly what I’m envisioning the ideal situation to be… but this was making me so unhappy… so then I discovered the magical option - to let it go. I have been making attempts to better myself, to clean out my mind. to change some habits that are getting in the. way of my true =desires. Sometimes you find yourself in a place where your mind is so filled with all this bullshit that you realize you don’t know how you truly feel about anything… It’s like realizing that you were coaxed along into another person’s world, or will, and before you know you it you are living as a piece of furniture or as a battery in someone else’s dream. Change is all but an idea until a different choice is made. That’s why decisions hold so much power - that this is the moment your conviction has materialized, and that it is actually compelling you to live differently. From one perspective, you could look at your decisions and arrive swiftly at the truth of what is at the core of who you are, since nothing is more revealing of your true desires other than the choices that are made inevitably from them.

It seems trite to use the metaphor of the caterpillar, cocoon and butterfly… but the more I think about this process the more it amazes me. That the caterpillar, entering this mythical darkness… a death, to transform into a completely new form. The cocoon has been used as a symbol over and over again as the dark and lonely place of death and transformation. The caterpillar enters it alone and transforms alone in its secluded pod… away from the influences of the outside world. You don’t realize how much you are influenced until you fight to find a quiet place in your mind. To discover your own point of view is to climb the proverbial heights and walk the unpaved paths within the mind. It is very possible to go through much of our lives completely and totally influenced, led along, by the happenings of the world around us - communities, friends, family… though all an integral part of our lives, offer a constant stream of input, opinions, and social expectations. For whatever reason I needed to hide in the cocoon for some time… to allow my self to ask myself questions, to think of my true answers. I started to realize that there are no ultimate teachers, and no one who holds the ultimate answer. There is no one single way, but more so that the “truth” or the “way” is reflected and inherent in everything around us - everything we experience and perceive. What and who are we looking to to tell us how all of this works? What can any of these celebrities, channels, e-books and influencers tell you that you could not begin to understand if you were willing to undergo the process of self-discovery - the cocoon. I am enjoying the silence- and the clarity that comes with solitude and reflection. To be able to understand oneself amidst a larger context than “my life” has proved to be the antidote to many of life’s daily sufferings.

If we were to zoom out on history as far back as we could we would see that the same problems have plagued our existance since the beginning. The idea of war and of the survival of the fittest has been a part of our experience throughout all recorded history. In today’s society you feel a pressure to protest things. To raise your voice and repost the Instagram stories. But I just can’t help but think of all of history and how there have been protest after protest after protest, opposing sides acting as the fuel for their enemies cause and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder if it is our very participation in these matters in a way continues to fuel the problem… Just like in an argument amongst individuals. A bitter pill I’ve had to swallow is realizing that when there is a drama happening in front of me, it is only because I continued to return the volley over the net… each turn growing with more and more force and hostility between me and my so called enemy. I find it an interesting stance that Mother Theresa took, to never participate in anti-war rallies, and only peace rallies, as she believed it was only helpful to participate in a positive message (creating) versus a negative one (tearing down). Negative actions tends to have a spiraling affect, until quite literally we are willing to end life in order to hold on to our point of view. In my recent years in Atlanta I saw situations turn from minor slights, to habored hatred, to ending life… all to be right in the end… and to hold on to our need to feel right. Nowadays I hear people complain all day about the state of this world and about the evil of the “other" - the men, the women, the democrats, the republicans, the president and elon… i don’t even know anymore. just whatever the algorithm daily instructs my conviction to be. The depth of what is happening to us cannot be understated, that we are further being disconnected from a genuine sense of responsibility over our real lives and the immediate world we live in… made to feel completely helpless against the circumstance of the “world” that is presented to us each day through our routine channels. Nowadays everyone presumes to knows everything, including the sum of an individual based on their instagram profile. It has become frightfully superficial. One of the greatest lies that I believe has been the cause of such demise of societies over and over and over again is this idea that our enemy lies in anyone else except ourselves. It is only when we, on the individual level, begin to exemplify, in action, positive alternatives the very things we hate in this world, will we then begin to take steps towards a true healing. To break the cycle and open up new possibilities for the future other than the continued destruction of life. I been asking myself recently. “what will you create?”

I guess I just started to ask myself if I wanted to continue to live the same day over and over again. Recently I have been having a lot of moments where I’ll find myself in the same environment, same situation, same dilemma, maybe just the characters changed. The same feelings over and over again, and deeper than that the question: “is this where im supposed to be?” Recently, I’ve been feeling like my life has been on some sort of loop - the same everyday… though the characters and the content may change… pretty much the same. Patterns of thinking, habits, choices… repeating and repeating. And I’ve felt recently this urge to break out, to break something in the pattern…. to find different paths to different places. There are things I have always struggled with procrastinating - dishes, cleaning the apartment, getting the oil changed. In a way when it comes to certain things I’ll always tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ve been asking myself, well what if “tomorrow” ever comes? since I continue to kick the can down the road. Is it possible in life, when we speak of reality and not how we wish reality to be, that we can delay things for so long that our “tomorrows” can easily and ever so subtly become “nevers.” As time flies by, it continues to reveal this truth, as we begin to realize that time continues to pass regardless of our decision or indecision. I felt like I woke up one day and began to ask myself, seriously, if I would like to continue to repeat yesterday… over and over and over again… or might I find, on the other side of decisive change, a whole new reality for myself…a reality I might like to repeat more and more. It is alarming how easily it is to fall asleep in this world…. to be swept along in the great current of the concerns and patterns of contemporary life. And what do you do when you begin to realize that you’ve been saying “tomorrow” for so long that the opportunity loses patience. Tonight I didn’t race to a bar after work and instead I decided instead to write this. I felt in a way, that I had finally lived that day enough times.

Today I took a hike. I took a trail down by the Chattahoochee river and I went as far as the trail would take me down. Further and further I descended into the wood, where the path eventually ended beneath the shade of a beautiful tree by the riverside. In this quiet moment I sat to take a rest. In the water at my feet I noticed a moth drowning in the water. The current had forced the moth to be stuck in the water against a tree branch. I bent down and gently gathered the moth upon my finger and brought it to a dry treebranch. As if to gasp for life itself, the moth opened her wings. Its color a soft ivory with a single pin trip of bronze down the wings. Its entire fur body the same color of ivory, and its eyes the most subtle shade of red. Her wings may have been an angel’s, made of the most delicate and divine fabric, desperately trying to catch flight once more. I watched for many moments to come as she fought to spread her wings. Her wings would shake violently at each attempt. I could see them vibrating and shaking, as if she were giving her entire being to allow them to function again. I sat and watched as she continued her attempts to fly, her velvet wings shaking against the spring winds. I was sure, because I had saved her from her fate, that soon the sun would dry her drowned wings and she would fly away free once again. But in the end, after many moments of struggle… I watched, helpless, as she eventually jumped back into the river where she drowned and died. After this happened today (it really did happen) I sat on the riverbank and wept. I sat there and shed about 1000 tears on the Chattahoochee. It wasn’t just for the moth, but for everything - all the truth, pain and beauty that this moth represented. The nature of life itself, of us - as fragile, drowning moths. A few months ago I set out to do an entire series of blogs about Christianity. I had planned all these stories and topics that I wanted to write about - some serious and some more about the blatant ironies of modern-day organized religion (of any sort) from my own experiences as a Christian and Christian Artist. But as I continued down the path, one that originally I thought was going to be full of great stories, interesting topics, and conversation - I suddenly realized something… that I no longer had anything to say. I felt like we could have gone on and on about the stories - the weird pastor stories, the subtle racism, the mission trips, all this stuff… but in the end I began to feel like it was becoming a futile conversation. In the end, I realized the thing that I could never reconcile about the “God” that was presented to me was that no matter what I ever did - pray more, sing more songs, correct my life, do this, do that… flap my broken wings… it was never enough to satisfy who this “God” was. Despite the rhetoric behind this God being forgiving and unconditionally loving, I still never felt like I could actually please Him. So after carrying the cross for so long of my life… bearing the weight of unworthiness, shame, and an entire web of man-made and hypocritical expectations to an abstract and always-moving destination…the haunting question began to rise within my own soul: If God has already carried the cross for me…why then, am I still carrying this thing around? And just like today, no amount of my intervention or best wishes could have ever saved the moth from her fate in the river. Is it also the same with God and us? That God may take us out of the waters and onto the dry branch, but in the end he cannot make us fly. Will we find that after all the clamor of our religions, ideologies and dogmas….that there is actually no one coming to save us? and that we are all simply moths upon the branch, being given the choice of the skies above or waters below.

The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught. In life, there are many daily challenges, distractions, problems, hang-ups… that are trying to catch us. Our spirit, our resolve, our hope… challenged daily by the nature of life itself. Over the last 4 years in Atlanta, I’ve built a whole world for myself through art, business, and gathering the community under the umbrella of the arts. I started as a tattoo apprentice and swam through many challenges along the way - setbacks, failed business ventures, haters, and backwards corporations. I didn’t do everything perfect along the way, but I can say that I never gave up on myself no matter what. I kept swimming to my next destination, whether that was my next tattoo, painting, or task that just needed to be done. Just kept swimming. I opened my store “Blooms Emporium” in June of 2023, and I began to go through the process of learning about business, sales and branding. I don’t like to talk about failures or just the general obstacles that are constantly needing to be overcome in business, but I know everything that I’ve had to overcome to get the business off the ground and to the place that it is now… I know because I was there… early mornings, late nights, constant work… everyday to keep it going and to continue growing. Running the business allowed me to travel to Europe to study and experience renaissance artworks, as well as Taiwan to reconnect with my cultural roots and to find inspiration from my homeland for the next chapter in my life as a visual artist and designer. Everything that has happened has led me to this point now, ready to bring something new to the world through all of these amazing and insightful experiences. Is It The Fish or the Pond? They say that a goldfish will grow in relation to the size of the environment it is in. It is the same with Koi fish. The main question I’ve been exploring in my life recently has been this exact question: Is it the fish or the pond? What is the glass ceiling? Can it be broken? Is my life the size that it is because that’s what it is? or is it because of the environment I have agreed to inhabit? What are the true boundaries of my life? and what would happen if I did everything within my power to find myself in the biggest pond imaginable in my life? This is the question I am setting out to answer in my show, “Big Fish.” I am taking all of the experiences I’ve had this year and just jamming them into this collection of paintings. I can’t say too much at the moment about this show other than I cannot wait for the world to see it (and I can’t wait to see what happens myself). I will be showing a completely new collection of works as well as a new collection of custom apparel that me and my team have been working on. The show will take place at Gallery Anderson Smith in Atlanta, GA and the opening reception will be on the evening of September 27th, 2024. There will be a VIP & Collector exclusive opening from 7-8pm, and the public reception will be from 8pm-11pm with a fashion show at 9pm. To anyone who has purchased an original piece of artwork from me: you will be receiving an email invitation as well as a physical ticket for the VIP reception. Please be on the lookout! The public RSVP will then be sent to anyone who is subscribed to my email list, so please be on the lookout. Dynasty RISES In December of 2023, I opened my tattoo and art studio concept, “DYNASTY.” I had invested over $10,000, all the money that I had made from my Pokemon art show into opening this space. Unfortunately, the space that I moved into did not work out and I had to shut my concept down and move residencies after about a month of getting everything set up. This was probably my first great career heartbreak… but I just had to wipe my hands clean and move forward. I felt at that time I was supposed to just focus on Blooms Emporium, so I put the DYNASTY idea away in a box for a later time. But, as time as gone on, I am so excited to announce that I have a second chance to create the DYNASTY that I’ve always wanted. The space I have moved into is perfect! It’s secluded all of my itself with ample room for tattooing, painting, production and so much more. I’ve been spending the last week moving into the new space and getting everything together, and even did my first tattoo in there just the other night. I am very excited about this space and to share this space with the world… so again, be on the lookout woooooo. CHINATOWN MARKET 2024 I don’t know really how this happened but over the last 3/4 I’ve been telling everyone that our Atlanta Chinatown needs a breath of fresh air. After all this time and a bunch of random conversations and experiences over the years I have been given the opportunity to curate a market that will highlight artists, vendors and musicians in the Atlanta AAPI community. The idea is called “Chinatown Market” and the whole purpose of the event is to give a space for artists and entrepreneurs in Atlanta to shine and also to bring attention and awareness to the Chinatown foodcourt, which I myself and my family have been going to since I was a young boy. My intent is to use my platform and my ability to gather creatives and artists to help generate business and forward motion for every party involved. Me and my team have just finished up the curation and branding for the event, and we’re set to announce everything next week. The market will take place on Saturday, August 24th from 12-4pm. Expect an Eventbrite here in the next few days. BUT YEAH…. But yeah but yeah… a lot is going on but it feels like not that much is going on. I realize now entering this new season of my life how much I’ve grown and how much stronger the last 4 years has made me. Constant work, constant improvement… one little thing at a time… then you look up and realize, wow, this is great. I am stepping into the purpose of my life, the reason for my existence… walking my path and continuing to discover that’s really going on here in this crazy thing we call “life.” Thank you for reading and supporting all of these little adventures I’m going on. Hope to see many of you at any of these great times coming… peace. Andrew

So I’ve been having a lot of trouble writing recently. It used to be that I never really proofread or deleted anything, I would just write a lot of my honest thoughts and post them on the internet. A lot of people have asked me over the years how I deal with feeling so vulnerable in front of a lot of unknown people reading about what you think. And you know what, over the years I never really thought about it because I really literally never really thought twice about it. It’s just I figured, if I really believe something why not express it and see what happens, right? And over those same years, I feel like these writings have really reached people or at least presented people with something that’s at least honest and not a complete fabrication like a lot of this place that we now inhabit called the “internet.” And I realized recently that I had lost some of that vulnerability. I guess I started to fear and care about what others thought. You know if you watch celebrity interviews a lot of them talk about how they can have hundreds of positive comments but they will be totally focused on the single negative comment that someone made… most likely on a phone somewhere in suburban America. I always thought that to be interesting because you’d think they’re established, rich and famous… why would they care about these random negative comments? I began to realize for myself that as everything grew in my life, my career and my business, I started to fear that I would not say the right words or not appease a certain portion of my “audience.” I was struggling with writing my blog because I found myself writing and deleting and writing and deleting again just to try to say the “perfect” thing as to not be misunderstood by anybody… But at the same time I felt my voice weakening. I couldn’t write like I used to anymore. There was always someone in the back of my head… that wasn’t me. But yeah y'all, I’m done with all that. I figured that I can’t say the right thing all the time in the exact right way… but I can try to articulate my thoughts to the world. and I’m wanting to reach y'all out there who do feel like me and have all these thoughts and questions running through your head. I want to talk about LIFE. My life, your life, our life… the experience of going through LIFE itself. This insane journey of “growing.” I’ve just been through something. I have so much to say with my life. I’m going to work to find my voice and my message. I’m turning off the comments.- I’m sorry y'all anonymous stalkers/weirdos just did too much I don’t want to think about y'all right now. I’m just hoping whoever reads and sees whatever I’m about to write and do in the next season of my life can feel me - what pushed me onto this path, the wind of my life & my destiny. We will never agree on everything, but maybe if we create with enough conviction we may have a chance of getting to know each other after all.

So what if there was nothing left out there? Nothing left to gain…retrieving the potential energy of every moment. How much of our energy is spent on the past, which does not exist, or worrying about the future, which we can’t predict or control anywhere. I guess this is what they call “focus.” Realizing a direction to go in life and just making the choice to go no matter what… the experience of finding yourself and ultimately learning to trust and know yourself.