A week ago, I flew to San Francisco. It’s been a little over three years since I last lived here. Somehow, everything is different while still being the same. The streets still look beaten down and tired from too much sun. And the billboards are still full of inside tech jokes from too many startups.
Luckily though, my old friends are still around.
Friends might be a bit of a strong description for ancient landmarks tucked away in small corners of the city. But they greeted me when I was still just a baby-faced kid, and they’re still around to welcome a gaunt-faced adult version of me back again. So friends they are.
The first friend I visited was a set of stairs that connected Coit Tower to the lower piers. I almost couldn’t find it. Since I was last here, nature has tried its best to reclaim lost territory. The pristine red-brick stairs are now squeezed on both sides by foliage and almost perfectly camouflaged into the hillside. It took me a few minutes to find my friend, and even then, it wasn’t a sure thing. As I gazed down, the stairs seemed closer to an obstacle course than anything else. Vines snaked along the sides while moss crept on nearly every surface.
The last time I met these stairs was at the start of something new. I had walked the steps with a conviction that I was going to build a big company, get rich and famous along the way, and have a perfect life after that. As it turned out, reality is rarely so simple. A few months later, I split with my cofounder and, given my tendency to cut people out of my life in one swoop, I left the company with all of its funds to him. That put an end to the dream of building generational wealth, at least for a time.
This time, I’m once again at the start of something new, but with a lot less confidence that I’ll finally snag that perfect life that I’ve been dreaming about. As I walk down, measuring my way with every step, it feels like a strange metaphor for my life. The last time, I climbed upwards and felt sure of my future. This time, I’m descending into the piers and more lost than ever on what I want for my life.
San Francisco and I have a complicated relationship. This is the city where I lost my swagger. I had come as a young boy with the belief that every problem in my life could be solved with a bit of elbow grease and honesty. I had plenty of evidence to support that theory. I wasn’t the smartest kid in class by any measure, and yet I had started, scaled, and sold a startup before any of my classmates had graduated college. That had to count for something.
It didn’t. I could work until I coughed blood and still find myself on the butt end of my manager’s pleasure. I could make large contributions and still find myself as the odd man out when it came time to divide the spoils.
It was, in some ways, the loss of my innocence. I became a hardened veteran, no longer giving people the benefit of the doubt, and began to view the world under an ugly tint. Yet, success only came to me in short spurts and was usually followed by long periods of fallowness. I gained a long list of semi-accomplishments, but looking back at it all now, I’m not proud of any of them.
About a third of the way down, the red bricks disappear. The stairs lead into a random asphalt road, where a savvy traveler has to read the tiny indents in the ground to find the next set of stairs. Even then, it’s hard to know where to go. For one, the new stairs are made out of wood and glisten with dew. For another, houses line the sides of the path down. It’s hard to figure out where the public land ends and private plots start.
Sometimes, we have to take a leap of faith to continue. Or be guided by past knowledge.
I found a couple as I walked down this second set of stairs. The woman’s arms were around the man’s neck and they whispered secrets into each other’s ears.
Love is a wonderful thing. It’s one of the only times we can be truly present.
We spend most of our time outside of the present. We reminisce about the past or sneak glances toward the future. We only come back to the present to make sure we don’t make a mistake, such as accidentally slipping on wet stairs and bashing against some rock. No such problem plagued the couple. They lived for the here and now, professing their love for each other with the trees as witness.
San Francisco, on the other hand, is a city perpetually looking towards the future. People here often quote, “the future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed.” The subtext is that they’re already in the future while others are relegated to the past. They talk about some new way they discovered to optimize their lives with AI or the startup CEO they know that just raised some obscene amount of money and is now sure to succeed. It’s a permanent game of trying to live further in the future.
For some reason, as I wander down these steps, all I can think about is the past.
Growing up, I found myself dropped in new schools and forced to learn new (or forgotten) languages while staring at new faces. I more-or-less stopped trying to make friends at a certain point and nestled myself in books. The heroes and villains in each story accompanied me as I waddled through life.
My favorite book was The Stranger by Albert Camus. I had trouble connecting with others in much the same way as Meursault. I couldn’t find myself caring about the seemingly trivial stuff that seemed to compose so much of life.
Every time I read the book, I would get stuck on this single line, “a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.” It was the only part of Meursault I couldn’t understand. I certainly didn’t want to spend more than a single day, let alone years, thinking about my past.
I understand it now. I wouldn’t even be back in San Francisco if not for the end of a romantic relationship… which is ironic given that I fled this city at the end of another romantic relationship. Despite being far in the past, I still think about these relationships. The smallest things, like wearing home clothes or picking seats in restaurants, bring forth a wellspring of emotions. I feel pangs of regret, joy, sadness, contentment, anger, and above it all, longing. I would trade the future for the past.
At some point, the cozy wood stairs are replaced by a practical concrete and steel structure suspended alongside a sheer cliff. It’s an apt analogy for my current station in life. A long time ago, all I wanted to do was fast-forward, earn some money, take care of my parents, and then build up a nice library. I didn’t realize the horrors that awaited me when I actually reached that goal.
Once I found financial freedom, I had to contend with the far more important question of what I wanted to do with my life. There’s only so far that a nice library can go. The past few years have been this long random walk. I became an author. I drove across the US, both ways. I flew to China and trained badminton under a national coach. I even lived in Europe for a bit. Through it all, I wanted to find somewhere that I truly belonged. I’m now back in San Francisco. Needless to say, I did not find it.
The last part of the stairs is the scariest. I can see the ground below between the far-too-thin metal railings. The stairs switch left and right, as if the designer couldn’t make up their mind on how people should climb the thing.
I feel the same way. At a certain point in my journey trying to figure out what I should make of my life, I began to doubt that there was even an answer. More seriously, I began to question if I could find true, lasting happiness. Unfortunately, this might be a journey that takes decades or even the rest of my life to complete. There’s still so much of life that I haven’t explored yet, but, ironically, what gives me hope are my memories. I now have enough to carry me through a hundred years of solitude. They are my most important treasure.
The final steps of the concrete stairs are supported directly by the earth underneath. After being suspended mid-air for so long, it’s nice to take in a feeling of permanence. These stairs were here before I came, and they’ll stay long after I leave.
In Chinese, there’s this proverb of, “wherever you fell, stand back up in the same place.” That, more than anything, is why I’m here in San Francisco. I’ve spent the last few years putting my life in limbo as I explored the world. Now, it’s time to pick myself back up and build some permanence into my life.