Thirty seconds in the squeaky elevator of Young library, the jolt in my stomach as the elevator comes to a panting, wheezing stop. Fifty steps past the Arabic section, thirty steps past unoccupied cubicles. A piece of yellow gum that’s older than me stuck on the age-torn notice on my desk, graffiti praising the Romans and denouncing the Greeks, and roofs of UCLA halls outside of fifth floor musty windows.
why am i here? that’s an easy one. i needed a quiet place to study and write.
Two anxious lines of cars on Sunset Boulevard, a cacophony of voices in the belly of Parking Lot 7. Steps of stairs towards the sun, an infinity of hills towards Rieber. Ants on the pavement following a trail of spilt coke, ants on the hill waiting for their bruin cards, and ants in the city working, drinking, partying, sleeping.
why am i here? that’s a little harder. education, the city, the people, the opportunities, pick any of those and there will be truth.
But why am I here? That’s the hardest question.
My mom told me I caught pneumonia just a few weeks after I was born. In the quarantine center with five other babies, coughing, crying, and struggling to breathe (I assume), I probably would have pondered, “Why am I here?” if I had been capable of conscious thought. And as a baby who had never gotten a kite tangled in someone else’s backyard, or devoured a pint of vanilla ice cream in 34 degrees Celsius weather (93 in Fahrenheit), or stayed up late to finish a Harry Potter marathon with family, I would have come to the conclusion that we’re all here to suffer.
If you believe in Buddhism (or at least the Taiwanese version of it), you’d say I’m here because I was not good enough in my previous life to go to heaven but also not bad enough to end up an animal, or in hell. Maybe I was a con artist who scammed millionaires to donate to charity, maybe I was a butcher who took care of orphans in my town, but either way, I’m supposedly here to pay for my past sins and be repaid for my acts of kindness.
If you like conspiracy theories, you might say we live in a computer simulation, so are any of us actually here? You might also say, “Because I’m not there,” or even pretend not to speak English to avoid answering the question altogether. Or, you might write twenty-seven lines that answer the question as much as evade it, choosing not to indent so you can even get away with leaving a couple of lines blank.
In all fairness, I don’t know. Why am I here, lagging fifteen hours behind my family on the other side of the blue monstrosity they call the Pacific, speaking English when it feels like having my right airpod in my left ear? Why am I here when there are earthquakes and tsunamis and forest fires and a billion other scary things? I don’t know.
So for now, I will stick to something I know how to answer. Why am I here by this sketchy roundabout when I should have arrived at the Bruin bear already? Because google maps and my phone’s location accuracy failed me once again.