Today's my last day of leave. I came back to Singapore yesterday, all tired up, but loved by my parents. It was rather amusing unpacking my luggage and compartmentalising them - a little like separating the groceries or dissecting a body. This is the lungs, the stomach... my heart.
I understood a little more of the nature of the anonymity I sought and enjoyed in Seoul. Does one loses one's identity when he or she goes to a foreign land? I can't answer the question of whether we have an instrinsic essential nature within us, but I think what gave me that freedom of anonymity is that we lose the usual external factors constraining or even elevating us. There are no ties that bind. It leaves us both vulnerable and yet completely free to be as hedonistic or altruistic as we would like to be. Pleasure seeking beings, so to speak.
There is no place calling out to me in a foreign land. I've no home, no workplace, no destination that I need to be. I do not belong. I am only a tourist. There are places tailored for tourists but they do not necessarily call out my name. For I have no name. There is no struggle between all the places (home, friends, work, pleasure) that call out for us.
The anonymity was wonderful. But, I have to admit, I missed the struggle. Even typing this now, I can already hear the beckon of all the places I "belong" to - all the places I need to go. All the people I love and missed.
I'm back. The person and the identity.
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