i don't know

Thu, 09/03/2015 - 06:07 -- Lalahop

“I don’t know.”

That’s my answer to every important question I’ve ever heard.

“Don’t you know what you want to be?

What you want to do?

What you like,

What you hate – what you love

Who you are?”

 

I don’t know.

 

“How can you be driven then?”

A friend once casually asked me.

I don’t know, thinking silently.

Why?

Why do I spend my time with books

When I could put my hands up in the air

Hand up in the air!

Or YOLO for all I care?

Why do I go to tutoring for extra lessons

When it’s costly and takes my life away.

Tick-tock, one hour a day

Seven hours a week

Twenty-eight hours a month

Seven hundred and twenty-eight hours a year

Tock-tick, tock-tick, tock-tick…

 

I don’t know

 

People don’t accept my answer;

They attribute my achievements to the slant of my eyes.

 

“Asian Persuasion!” They say.

 

As if the way I see could logically explain my deeds or define me as an individual.

 

I reply: “Asian Domination!!!”         

 

Because,

I don’t mind.

Because I embrace the light golden shade

Of which I bear in my soul.

 

So what if I don’t know

I’m only sixteen for Christ’s sake!

Every time I hear people my age

Speaking of grandiose ambitions:

“Ending hunger, saving the poor, making a change, curing cancer…,

and establishing World Peace.”

I admire them and sit in awe, but wonder –

How many of them will actually make it?

 

I don’t know.

I really don’t know.

 

But I do know:

Life is a beach – the kind that’s

Fickle but Soothing,

Drowning but Sunny,

Unforgiving, but Purposeful.

And I, filled with the desire to KNOW, will walk,

No, to jog.

No – to run in this beach with the wind in my hair.

Even if I don’t know where I’m going,

I’ll run.

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community

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