Yeah, when I was 10, I was laying flat on my back on the grass of the soccer field after getting out of school in Jakarta and I was contemplating my life compared to the lives of my neighbors who lived about 200 yards away. We lived in Pondok Indah, at that time the most prestigious and richest neighborhoods in Jakarta. The neighbors I’m talking about lived in a Kampung in the little jungle just down a dirt road from our house, which was on the very edge of that rich neighborhood. I made some friends in the Kampung and we used to run around and get up to shenanigans together. To me, as a kid, the distinction between rich and poor wasn’t much of a thing, they were just my friends. But I got to thinking about how there are these divides in life, and that from what I had seen, those kids and their parents were much happier than anyone else I knew.

But I digress, that’s not actually what I was trying to say, it’s just what started me thinking. While laying there staring up at the clouds I slowly came to realize that I was laying on a giant ball, spinning through space traveling at who knows what speed through that void, and I had a major (first) existential crisis, fully internalizing that we’re just tiny specks on another tiny speck hurtling through the unknowable and that nothing I could ever do would have any impact on the universe whatsoever. And that’s how I became a humanist nihilist. Nothing matters but what you choose to matter to you.

This is why I try to find a way to empathize with others, to be patient and kind where I can, because that stuff matters to me. I wear the clothes I want, I am in relationships with people I love, and I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks of me. That moment when I was 10 led me to become the man, father, son and lover I want to be.