At the very end of 2023, one not so special night, I stared at the ceiling in a darkening room, and told my boyfriend I think I know.

Life has been both extremely calm and turbulent recently. I finally decided to quit my current PhD and have mentally checked out from my current research. It’s a risky decision, where I am going funding is scarce, all the brilliant minds set fireworks on their CV trying to secure a spot, thus I am well prepared to spend a long time in the in-between status. My family, my friends, everyone around me supports my decision, however, initially, questions were asked if I was truly ready to “waste” a year and start all over again. In the past, the silly idea of wasting time fascinated me perpetually, for what gives time itself meaning was never so clear to me growing up, as an adult, the line seemed ever so blurry and I started to get the dreadful feeling that for the rest of my life, I will be doing nothing but wasting time.

When I first started my PhD, I was 21 years old and students here in Germany would marvel at that fact and call me a prodigy. It’s funny how our society rewards people for rushing through checkpoints in their lives, the faster you race towards one, the “harder” you work for your dreams and boom, you’re an inspiring case of success.  I was raised in a country where ever since you are a toddler in a kindergarten, you are compared with others, when the comparison is not even quantifiable, they make up some ineffable chart and shove you into your own rank. I got so used to going a hundred miles per hour, obsessed with time management, made daily task planning down to the very hour, not really for success in school or getting a medal for playing the piano, but to race death. My own existence perplexed me so much, that I looked everywhere I could as a child, in philosophy, science, biology, that good grades really came as a coincidence. I was never a conventional STEM-y girl, for I’ve always actually wanted to be a novelist. Yet physics as a science and the insight into our consciousness, perception of realism and spacetime it offered was the most promising candidate for an answer that I decided to make it my life-long career, when I was 12 years old. All of this, just to find an answer to my existence before I die, so I can die in peace knowing that I know.

I have realized as I am typing all of this at New Year’s Eve that I was probably not exactly the most neurotypical kid nor the most mentally stable. Alas, that’s all before I studied physics in Uni and academia for the past 6 years and realizing that I have now a good understanding of the boundary of human knowledge when it comes to the physical universe. I’ve also formed a self-consistent picture of what limit of reality I personally choose to believe in. My life-long plan of searching for an answer appears to have slowed down and approaching a convergence in the past year, and I have instead started to grow as a social being, a conscious friend, a responsible family member and a trusting partner. I no longer direly need to study physics to find an answer, quite the contrary, I am now left with the skill set of a physicist, that can instead enjoy research because of my passion for maths and symmetries in our universe, but I am quite free to do whatever I want. I stopped going at 100 miles per hour and halted in the middle of nowhere, and realized a journey was over, that journey no longer overlapped with the paved path of success in our society.

I don’t want a lot of money, and I have no interest in exploiting others. I don’t care for rushing towards my own house, and I will probably never own a car. I don’t want academic success if that contradicts with the way I would like to do research. I don’t want to be a prodigy with several PhD titles, and I don’t know if and when I would like to have children. I have nothing on my agenda that would make me the perfect Asian daughter anymore.

The entirety of last year, I spent going to yoga four days a week, I mastered the art of headstands and did not get significantly more fit. I played probably hundreds of board games and hosted board game night every Wednesday and did not receive a diploma for it. I traveled to Belgium, Bulgaria and Czech Republic, and realised Aachen is probably the first city on a list ordered alphabetically, spent money and got no pay check from the government. But as I said, I grew as a living person, not someone who was trying to start living. I spent indulgently long staring at my house plants, I started lighting candles and reading young-adult fictions. I cycled for three hours in the weekend just to go to a random Dutch city across the border. I crocheted a drawstring bag for small game components and it was lovely.

I started wasting time and I felt uneasy for having had no problems with it. I worried that I had become complacent, though I don’t know in what way it differs from being content. I was alerted by the lack of constant struggle and going against the tides, where am I once I’ve exited the race track??

And that night, I thought that I know. I was in the bed, and it was dark. And that was it.