Geraldine Ang

There’s another term for breech babies in Malaysian Buddhism and mythology — lotus children. We’re believed to be particularly blessed by the gods themselves, already seated in an upright, meditative pose in our mothers’ wombs.

But you’ll learn that the best way to foster human connection is to just put yourself out there, among other humans.

Rather than remaining in a single, unyielding form, you have allowed yourself to be reworked and repolished into a new but no less beautiful shape.

My point is that distance has always been a natural part of our correspondence, the ebb and flow of it as organic as that of ocean tides.

The universe remains infinitely massive, but my universe is not. Instead of worrying about the endless space around me, I’ve decided to focus on the miniscule space I do take up.

Embarrassment is actually one of the most powerful ways of forging human connection. We seem to have a wonderful instinct to share feelings of humiliation.

It’s still a far cry from completely demolishing the interminority racism in my family, much less the interracial conflicts in our society as a whole. White versus minority conversations tend to eclipse those of minority versus minority.

So, our love marks don’t always have to be scars, ugly reminders of love we couldn’t keep. They can also remind us of how that love has become a part of our journey of growth.

Even though our individual goals might be vastly different, we are all moving in the same direction — up. We are all subject to the perpetual human instinct to ascend, to improve, to reach for the stars.

Even the smallest of superstitions represents this integral part of being human, this belief in something irrationally greater than ourselves.