Dear invisible world
For a long time, she flew only when she thought no one else was watching
Dear World,
One of my earliest memories was walking along a chaotic street market in Mexico with my dad. We watched a man perform Creep by Radiohead live.
Back in our little life in Canada, my dad played the same song, his favourite, in our car on my way to figure skating practice.
My 4-year-old self started to grasp something: “the world seems so vast, but actually, I think there’s quite a lot of similarities.”
In your vast possibility, World, you made me want to notice more.
Dear Mum,
You showed me that to love is to allow. I gave you infinite reasons to intervene, and yet, you let me flourish on my own. You loved me through all my phases. You let me boundlessly explore. You never told me I had a bad idea. You built me a whole scavenger hunt for my 11th birthday because you knew I loved puzzles. You never expected me to fit a mould, a colour scheme, a path, a timeline, a narrative or a personality. You unconditionally encouraged my deepest joys.
You trusted me when I was 15 and spent every last bit of my savings on a flight to Vancouver, so I could explore my country (without telling you). You called my school saying I was sick every time I wanted to take a side quest (two week internship in San Diego, AI conferences, gene editing bacteria in our basement, etc). I have no idea why you let me run an experiment on my pee when I got my first UTI. You never ever stopped me when I started doing something unusual. Mama, you make me feel loved and not weird (even though at 22 years old I like playing games like guessing the top 5 countries that export Non-Retail Artificial Staple Fibers Yarn).
You gave me the confidence to follow my heart, chase the world, open threads and believe that anything is possible. You could have told me that going to the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was a horrible idea, and instead, you told me you trusted me. I know how much fear you kept to yourself to not stop my wishes.
You meet me where I am at with zero expectations. It is almost certainly your fault that I follow my own heart and hypotheses rather than spoken and unspoken rules.
While some (most) of my ideas may seem to you like a squadron of flying pigs, you always held that in. Thank you for nurturing the art of the possible.
Dear Grandma,
I’ve only known you to be an optimist. I loved hearing your recent plan to celebrate you 82nd birthday. You will take a taxi to downtown Novi Sad, Serbia and order exactly the ice cream you want. You are not concerned about who, if anyone, will join you.
I appreciate your example. Happy early birthday <3
Dear $18 swim in Lake Zurich,
I think this is what perfect feels like. Mountains, more water than I could ever explore, total surrender to this beautiful world.
After an incredible summer in Asia, I had a layover in Switzerland on my way back to Canada, I had no idea what I would do in 5 months once I graduated. But if I didn’t figure it out, I figured I could return to swimming in a lake in the mountains, somewhere.
I quietly promised myself that I would worry less.
Dear little me,
My only advice for you is to keep dreaming bravely.
Dear little engineered performance polymers company I am googling,
I am grateful you exist. You reinforce fuel cells, give wires high-temperature and flame retardant insulation, connect circuits and provide feedstock to 3D printers.
You quietly stitch the modern world together, molecule by molecule, so seamlessly that most of us never even notice you’re there.
Your manufacturing plant in the middle of Ohio is 3% of humanity’s supply of a particular grade of thermoset plastic, holding together planes, pacemakers and power grids.
It’s an honour to get to know you. Unironically it’s an honour to think through some bolt-on M&A strategy for you.
Dear little me again,
BTW plot twist you’re a chemicals investment banker in New York City.
You start to notice companies no one has ever heard of, everywhere. On faucets, warehouses, tires, bottles, buildings and easels.
You’ve signed an NDA to learn about a company that paints a majority of the world’s cars. Also, a company that supplies a critical ingredient to almost all sunscreen formulators. You’re under the hood on a leading cow supplement producer. Despite never using a car lubricant, you can speak to the entire value chain from base oil to internal combustion engine greaser. You can no longer look at a building without thinking about which cement waterproofing mechanism they used.
The world feels like a hidden museum of unnamed companies, each object a quiet exhibit of human ingenuity. Even a simple plastic bag feels like a thesis on ethylene crackers and byproducts. Every object is a portal to a global supply chain and the central science, Chemistry.
Dear Canada,
How lucky I am to call you home. Home is the world’s most multicultural city (Toronto), home has better Laotian food than you could even find in Laos, home invented the world’s safest nuclear reactor, home has the statistically best place to observe the Northern Lights, home has a subtle accent, home has great chips.
Montreal was the first business trip I took in my big girl job. A sealant company based in Vancouver is the first one I ever profiled as a banker. All roads lead to home.
Dear dad / my bad grade 4 English mark,
Thank you for buying me a notebook so I could (mandatorily) journal the entire summer of 2012.
Luckily, I’ve kept on writing and journalling.
Dear September 2018 night sky in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario,
Thank you for sparking pure curiosity. What is this world beyond my home? Do the stars shine the same everywhere? Can I see for myself? How does this all work?
Dear 17-year-old me,
There were likely more organized ways to move to the United States, maybe having more than CAD$400 in your bank, for example? But who am I to talk. 9 months ago, when I moved to New York City, I had USD$400 and a new credit card to last until my first paycheque. There is something freeing about bare beginnings. There is something empowering about entering a new phase of life with no regrets and adventures you wouldn’t exchange for all the money in the world.
Dear hospital in Uganda where I didn’t die,
Thank you for making me realize how precious life is. Thank you to my mentor’s friend’s daughter’s cousin for accompanying me in the hospital, bringing me food and smiles. Thank you to the secret thermoplastics in syringes, isopropyl alcohol’s sterilization and the glues binding life-saving equipment.
Dear periodic table,
You gave me an endless blueprint to explore the invisible world.
And,
Dear invisible world,
Thank you for letting me be your student, caretaker, daughter, banker (lol?) and friend.
You are infinite and mysterious. I can lose myself in your fascination. But I come to find peace and meaning in being a very little teeny nano part of this whole thing.
slay
slay