Snippets & Sketches: Notes on being home

In her column “Snippets & Sketches,” Lily Zou reflects on what it means to live a beautiful life.

“I’m back!” I shout. My mom wraps me in a hug, my sister is right by her, all of us prancing from foot to foot with happiness. The longer I’ve been away, the more delightful the moment of homecoming is. I wolf down a home-cooked dinner, beaming at every face. My words tumble past each other in my eagerness.

The next morning, the house is subdued and I feel strange. I am at a loss of what to do without the pressure of a deadline. By force of habit, I am drawn to the routines of high school, even though they make no sense now.

In the following days, the strangeness is always there. This is because, ironically, everything is exactly the same. The furniture, each person’s routine, the backyard — unchanged since childhood. A powerful sensation of the past rises up through the pores of my house, and my mind whirls slightly. I could be ten, I could be sixteen, surely I am not nineteen?

It is remarkable how people and places affect the course of one’s thoughts. Since being at Stanford I felt I had grown far from my past mind. My life here is thrown on a bigger scale — I worry about my career and place in the world; I interact daily with people who had wildly different upbringings from my own; I glimpse the center of power and progress. But being home for two days has collapsed that distance. My thoughts settle easily into the grooves worn from high school.

That is why I feel strange. These two places hold separate selves, and there is no continuity between them. When I walk into my home, I slide into place with an almost audible click. The same occurs when I walk into my dorm after a break. There is Lily-at-home, with a particular set of mental patterns, routines and occupations; and there is Lily-at-school, with a different set. There is no continuity between them.

I do not think this is good. If, at home, I settle into a past state, all my growth has been for nought. Moreover, that ossifies my relationships with my family. I joke with my siblings as we did when we were little. It is delightful and wholesome, but if that is the only way I can talk with them — if I cannot talk about my present concerns and inquire after theirs — our relationship is stuck in a rut. That is how true communication dies.

My parents recognize that growing up means growing apart, and they have said as much. The fault is mine. The old patterns are so comfortable, and I miss the years so recently passed. But to lapse completely into them is to regress.

Stanford is a big and loud place. The rush of people, events and values leaves me dazzled. I am too busy surviving to process each day. Each impression, rather than being transmuted into part of my growing self, simply piles onto the mental backlog, a vague fog about my head. My self is unchanged and suspended. That is why my apparent growth so easily collapses — it is not rooted; it is no more than a confusion of ideas and anxieties that I passively absorbed.

What would be good is to have continuity of self, which is continuity of consciousness. Then I could grow and act naturally. At Stanford, I would remember who I am and be aware of myself throughout the day. When I have the time and space, I would think quietly about certain events, or people, or conversations that struck me, and slowly mold my tastes and principles from this material. That is what personal growth is. At home, I would be myself: far different from my sixteen-year-old self, perhaps not as mentally close to my parents and siblings, but all the more loving for it.

This is only possible by maintaining continuity of consciousness. If I am unconscious at school, all these wondrous scenes have no effect on me; if I am unconscious at home, I am suspended in the past; in either case I do not evolve.

How can I preserve continuity of consciousness? The answer, I think, is to be conscious. There is no further explanation; no detailed process. Certain activities, like journaling or going on walks, may or may not stimulate consciousness, but the essential thing is a purely mental shift, like switching on a light of awareness.

It helps if one can notice the quality of one’s mental state. Signs of consciousness include equanimity, frequent observations about life and an urge to write these thoughts down. Signs of unconsciousness include anxiety, mental tunnel vision and acting out of habit or guilt instead of genuine motivation. Being conscious, I’ve noticed, feels a lot like being happy.

This, then, is my resolution: to be continuously conscious, no matter where I am, so I can grow in a natural and rooted way.

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