• 10 Dec, 2025 *

Do you ever cross paths with a person whose journey has been completely different? I feel like this happens to me constantly.

Last year I was finally able to choose my classes at university, got to meet people other than everyone who entered the same year as me. In one class I met a girl who had just finished her undergrad and just started her master’s, helping out our professor with the class. She also happened to be the daughter of a professor at our university, who also has a younger brother currently in year 3 that I met this semester.

They both excel academically, not necessarily just in the studious sense, but also in knowledge and passion for our undergrad’s subject - Environmental science. I can’t help but compare myself to them. I’m also passionate, I’m also hard-working at university, but I can’t help but wonder how much further I’d be if I was raised around environmental academics, around people who support a cause wholeheartedly.

I had to convince my parents very hard during my last year of highschool to let me go and study environmental science. My father especially never believed in "environmentalism". In retrospect he’s probably never believed in anything in his life. Very much the type of person who never takes anything seriously, as if treating everything with a grain of salt or ridicule makes him intellectually superior. "I’m not like those emotional people attached to their causes!". Detached from everything. My mother came around more easily, after relatives confirmed my department’s credibility and watched academic orientation videos.

I struggle imagining being raised in a curious environment, surrounded by knowledgeable people interested in good faith conversation. Similarly today, after a sewing class I started taking last month, I sat and talked with a girl who just joined after me, who is also the daughter of a long-time student of this sewing class, because she asked me to keep her company while she waited for the next class that they host at this center - jewelry making.

As we talked and I asked questions, I found out she has been coming to and interacting with the people who built this center since she was very young. She had something about her, this familiarity with expression, this sense of community as she spoke about the old ladies who teach there, that brought me back to this state of mind. What if I grew up in an environment with artists and makers? I am already interested and trying to get into making, where would I be now if I had that start? If I was encouraged to create and not just to consume because "it’s a bother/unnecessary".

This line of thinking is honestly - probably not healthy. But I can’t help but rue the environment I was raised in and am currently surrounded by. I’m trying to surround myself with the kind of person I want to become, but I may never fully integrate as they have grown with eachother. Kind of like trying to shoe in last minute a branch from a neighbouring bush on a mature and intricately woven arborsculpture. Will it eventually graft? Probably, but it’s clear as day that it came from a different plant.

I can only hope I might use these feelings productively. Make sure I inspire and motivate the people around me to create, to love things wholeheartedly, who similarly to me might not have been given a ladder to progress as they want.

#blog #thoughts