Rootless

By Mien-Thuy Tran

It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it.” Rainer Maria Rilke.

Since my 20s, I’ve never stopped questioning my existence and where to belong, as been surrounded by a world in which I appeared nothing more than a stranger. I didn’t behave the way others did, I didn’t look like them, I wasn’t a part of them under any circumstance. I got disconnected, felt left out with feet never on the ground. I wonder why I wasn’t given any chance to decide and whether I was the only one that had been put into a wrong place. If so, where would be the right one?

On starting a quest for meaning, I found harmony with nature. Everything in this universe grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. There are countless challenges for a tree to know what it is, to keep rooted, even not on the earth, but to its deepest soul within.

I then came to realize that I’ve been in the midst of a transition where I couldn’t remain standing. As a tree demanding for its origin and root, this is a project nourished from a real need to undertake a journey despite the poignant truth.