Belonging

I know I’m not an ambitious person. I worked hard for things I want, not for exploring things I’ve never known. That’s a different thing than getting out of comfort zone, though. My mom once said the best job for me is to be a teacher, and the worst is a business man. “You don’t seem fit in the battle field of the real world, and I know you don’t like to fight.“ Well, I guess that is true. When I was a kid, she said, I could just sit in front of the desk and drew pictures or wrote something for all day, while other kids were playing outside. Don’t you feel lonely? Not really, I answered, and I did enjoy it.

There are probably three types of kids, roughly speaking. Some kids got a toy and play with it for, like, five minutes, and then want other toys. The second type would just receive what they have and go from there, while the last type would find a toy and play with it all the time. Obviously, I’m the last one. I think this personality is an important part of me. I know what I want most of the time, and to get what I want I would work hard and fight for it. But once I have it, I would settle down.

I’ve lived in my current apartment for one year and a month, and have no plan to move out until graduation. I realized that this is probably the longest apartment I’ve been living in the past a couple of years. I’ve lived in three different places in Boulder, but none of them for a full year. One thing I hated about it, besides moving, is the interruption of a sense of belonging. It is not a short period of time to establish the feelings for a place you live in: in the first a few months you were probably missing your last place and adjusting to the new place. With a new space of square, finding a precise position of furnitures is never easy, and a good layout makes you feel just “right“, like all the small components in an instrument. Then, once you found it, you start to build your life and feelings there. Even the roads, trees, birds, sunlights, and moonlights you see from the window, become a part of this process. Moving out during this time would be difficult; it’s like you became a close friend with a puppy, and then you have to leave him.

Last night there was a thunder storm. Listening to the rain outside and being surrounded by soft blanket makes me realize that I want to live here for the rest of my life. It has everything I need and everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything is soothing. But I can’t, because I’ll never want to live in Boulder after graduation; I want to get out of Boulder. This house is like a small shelter embracing me from outside world, and that’s the most wonderful thing ever.