By Trinity Nguyen

So many aspects of my future are uncertain, but art has been one thing I never needed to question. This is the part where I say I didn’t choose guitar, guitar chose me. But it really did feel that way at first, the wonder I felt seeing a man playing his electric guitar in the airport. I walked up to him, trying to understand what I was seeing, barely even strong enough to pluck the strings. It was so long ago that the only proof that memory is real is a guitar pick the man gave me.

For a while after that, I wanted to be a person who played guitar. Once I was big enough to hold one, my guitar came everywhere with me. When I didn’t play for a while, my fingers would itch, like they missed the calluses I had formed.

Now, guitar and music have to share space with drawing, writing, photography, and more. It was a relief, finding out that I could feel that curiosity and passion about something else, that how I think about myself can still shift with new experiences.

Very rarely am I consciously thinking about how each small decision is one step towards my future self. Even rarer am I asking what version of myself I would be happy with in its entirety, and not just sections of my life. Deep down, I think I have been living in preparation for a version of myself I have yet to meet, hoping that my curiosity leads me to a person I would be proud of.

While I still consider guitar as an interest fundamental to my core, there might come a day when it’s nothing more than a decoration, collecting dust in a dark corner. Life inevitably gets in the way, and all of the things I care about will be tested until I can reconfigure how they fit into my life. But I’ve been through this before, even if I haven’t realized it. My interests have only become a part of me after I’ve chosen them over and over.

As I learn about the world, I hope I always have a future self to aspire to, and that I do not run out of things to learn about myself. At the same time, I hope I can recognize myself as the result of my past aspirations, and that I enjoy what I’ve (hopefully) worked for, artistically or otherwise. Even though I am inclined to follow what I’m familiar with, I aspire to be someone who can let go of the things that don’t fit into my life in the pursuit of feeding the things I care about—now, or years from now.

What You Love is Your Fate

I Wished and Wished and Wished