Time from the Hindsight is a Stretchy Thing

some meditations from college

Something about periods of rapid growth distorts time beyond recognition. In the fog of memory, a year of challenges stretches while moments of stagnancy blink by. 

High school was a challenge, some of the most agitating years attempting to grasp at my identity, most times completely letting the current of expectations wash through me. I was largely dissatisfied. Not with aspirational dissatisfaction, but rather stagnant acceptance. The dissatisfaction that easily escapes one’s notice until awoken by some shattering in one’s core. So while pinned to what I should be, four years of memories muddle into one another, not with the vibrancy of change, but the unassuming sludge of static. 

I learned to enjoy the slow-living dalliance that is living in Italy¹ these past two years, but I grew the most in Hong Kong. In 2021, I ended my sophomore year in a flurry, homesick and exhausted. I’d finished packing up my room — fake leaves peeled off the cork board, a hand-me-down paint-for-numbers that kept me company, and an empty windowsill after giving away the household basil plant. We were all living in the dorms in Tseung Kwan O, an area largely contradictory with Hong Kong’s reputation — quiet and peaceful, mostly inhabited by more elderly residents. In a place with little space for oneself, TKO had become my safe haven. But by August, I was quite literally one of the last students to move out for summer, and I was burned out, aching to leave. 

Yet, when I visited this April, everything was shiny again. The city’s sidewalks seemed to breathe again; without the oppressing humidity of summer, wonder flourished. In particular, glimpses of my life in TKO surged forward, some gravity of the mind buoying up sentimental images of pink pomelo skies and buildings that kiss the sun. Stepping into TKO mall this time, now as a guest, melted hours wandering in the city into years. Hearing the MTR announcements to watch out for the closing doors — first in Cantonese, then Mandarin, then English — teleported me, the faint smell of cigarette smoke and dampness dragging me back farther in time than my body was prepared for. The nostalgia that hit me upon return to Hong Kong was immeasurably greater than the frame of reality. 

How does one year float away so carelessly when the memory is inexplicably heavier? How does my time in Hong Kong feel disproportionately distant, the impression of myself — jarringly younger? Returning was realizing I've spent not decades, only a singular turn of one (e.g., my 20th birthday) perching, journaling, hiding on the massive tide breakers at the TKO waterfront. Returning was a testimony of growth that swung between wistful longing and stinging tenderness. 

All introspection is done in hindsight; growing pains feel like a distant ache until one twists around and probes at a wound that is fresher than expected, remembrance bursting from the skin. So when a catalog of life-defining events happen back-to-back, the present experience passes in flashes; memory of such periods, on the other hand, stretches. Density of quality time spent, in hindsight, begets the perceived quantity of it.

Given this, maybe there is something to be said about the fruits of seeking discomfort, but that isn’t quite the takeaway. Not only is constant change and variety not for everyone, at times it isn’t for anyone. Despite my restlessness, the erratic rhythm that came with moving, changing, adapting often overwhelmed me. The parts of travel that caught me offbeat rarely came from the externalities, but rather the internal cogs shifting to accommodate them. 

I trip over myself thinking about the way I’m dressing, the formal-friendliness ratio for stranger interactions, or how much being Asian Stands Out Here — and maybe part of this is attributed to an overwrought and unnecessary level of self(ish) perception — but maybe it’s the voice that develops when you’re transplanted so often. In the process of dissecting and internalizing experiences in various environments, I almost seem to understand myself more.  

Ultimately, it’s a voice I’m glad to have, and an echo of why I’m always game for the riskier option. After all, it’s the only way to play with the post-facto experience of time like it’s a stretchy thing. 

1. In case you’re unfamiliar with my spiel, I spent my first year of college at the University of Southern California, my second year at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and my third year in Milan’s Bocconi University. I chose Milan fourth year again for stability and other pandemic-related reasons. (It’s like study-abroad, but also not really.)