The reading this morning is from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” 

I grew up at one of the frontiers of modern globalization. Shanghai’s Pudong New District was a mashup of all the benefits of globalization one could imagine. Just across the street from my apartment was a patchwork of various cultures. On the northside of the block were typical local Chinese stores – a grocer filled with fresh tanks of fish, stands of tofu, and rows of every kind of vegetable imaginable; a street vendor selling steamed buns and tea-steeped eggs for a cent; a pharmacy of traditional medicinal cures. On the westside, local elementary school students, dressed in tracksuits and red ties, performed exercises each morning on the outdoor track. On the eastside, there was a row of restaurants established by expats, such as Olivier’s, a crepe café that doubled as an art gallery for Olivier’s eccentric creations, and Yasmine’s, a steakhouse that grilled A5s from Australia to Argentina. 

In spite of all the progress and mixing of cultures that occurred on the patchwork block, my eyes were always inexplicably drawn to the neighboring patch of walled-off green pasture, out of place among streets of concrete developments and shopping centers. I could spend hours of my day observing the farmers who lived in the small, squat houses at the center of the pasture. I would watch as the shepherds milled about with their flocks of sheep and as visitors filtered in through the gate, forming trails to the man-made ponds where they were charged a couple yuan to fish for an afternoon. The more I observed the block of pasture, the more I began to imagine it as the beating heart of the city, a rare remnant of the past, when Pudong was nothing but miles upon miles of fields, joined end-to-end as far as the eye could see. Even once the shepherds and fishermen lost their precious flock and fishing holes in my final years of middle school, when the standalone green was razed by tractors and cranes and replaced by a condo complex, the image of the pasture never left my mind. 

At the time, these observations were fleeting, a simple way for me to procrastinate or fill empty time. As I was too caught up in my own life, it was easy for me to move on from what had happened just across the street. I never questioned where the people went, or whether they found another home. There were no moments for me to stop and think about what I had observed as I rushed through my life at a breakneck pace. In the international community that I lived in, things were constantly changing. Friends were always moving from one country to the next, and the city itself changed rapidly each month, with new skyscrapers and highways rising to the sky every couple of years, completely altering the skyline. Around every corner was fresh excitement, and before I could ground myself, I was once again swept off my feet by the tide.

I first began to consider the way that I observe the world around me when I learned to sail. Sailing was something I picked up on one of my father’s whims. After he learned to sail in San Diego, he fell in love with the sport. It appealed to him not only as a physical activity but also a mental one; so much of success in sailing counts on the course you navigate. Out on Dianshan Lake, a two-hour drive away from my home in Pudong, I learned how to navigate my own course by observing each shade of darkening water on the horizon as a sign of a gust that I should turn into. Alone on the lake, with no guidance but the wide expanse of wind and waves around me, all I could depend on were my observations and judgment. Sailing on the lake taught me the sensitivities of nature – what the wind feels like against my cheek before it hits the sail, what break in the clouds means slightly stronger wind, and what it feels like to cut through the water on a run with minimal resistance. My observations were no longer ephemeral – they were my guidebook, a map of the waters that I charted. 

Reading the waters was not quite so different from reading my father. Just as I learned the sensitivities of nature, I learned empathy. A ripple of satisfaction and almost childlike delight on my father’s face after a long day kayaking on the lake while I was sailing with the team was not so different from a distant welcome gust. He, who once seemed so stoic and unreadable, became mutable as water in my practiced eye. I learned to recognize the twinkle in his gaze whenever he thought of a novel idea. Always the quietest in our family of three, I realized he was silent whenever my mother and I debated not because our arguments did not interest him but because he was listening, trying to find rationality within our chaos. During our early-morning drives to the lake, I learned what my father liked: the Fresh Air podcast with Terry Gross that we listened to on every drive, “Enjoy the Silence'' by Depeche Mode, and freshly peeled mandarins that I would hand him as a mid-drive snack. Observing my father became my way of learning who he was, a way of knowing him more intimately than any passing conversation could accomplish.

Like Dianshan Lake, Groton became my oasis for observation. Here, as I’m grounded on the Circle, observing is no longer a passive process but the way that I learn and know the people and environment around me. I’ve learned about Amber by her gentle humming in the shower and the feel of her fingers running through my hair, Olivia by her radiant smile and the sound of her climbing into bed at night, and Lang by the way that she ever so softly opens the door so as not to wake anyone in the room who might be taking a nap. I know Kyra by the periodic sound of her cracking her joints in the middle of her studying. I know Room 246, my Third Form English classroom, by the view through the window, where the tree still stands, casting myriad shadows against the glass panes at different angles throughout the year.

And as I began to truly know Groton, distant memories subtly began to bubble up through my mind. I began to remember my grandmother’s earlobes, soft and supple between my infant fingers, that I liked to call mu er, or “wood ear,” one of my favorite ingredients in Chinese cooking. When I learned to dissect Piggy in Third Form Bio with surgical precision, I remembered all the stories my mom would tell me about her days in the lab, how she would gesture to me the way that she examined slides of drosophila until fruit flies filled my dreams as they did hers. Whenever I make a hairpin mark in my choir sheet music or draw a note between the lines of a staff, I remember the scent of the small wooden classroom where I first learned to draw the symbols from my music teacher, when I tried to copy his perfectly curving flags and slivered note heads.

So why observe? On days when you are alone, or when the people who mean the most to you are no longer around, these observations are what will bring their memory back to life in your mind. Perhaps it’s a cool breeze on your cheek, the feel of mu er, the weight of a scalpel in your hand, or the smell of sheet music, eraser shavings, and wood. At one time buried deep in your mind, those memories will start to resurface, vivid mementos of the people whom you have truly learned and known.