Page 36 of Somewhere Only We Know
She contemplated me for a second before countering my question with one of her own. “What do you know about Buddhism?”
“Uh. I know it involves… Buddha?” Where wasthiscoming from?
She laughed, then covered her mouth quickly. “Buddhism is pretty interesting. It’s all about the path to liberation—to be free of things like earthly desires, to be free ofcraving.” She was fluttering her hands in the air, punctuating the whimsicalness of what she was saying with graceful movements.
“What’s so bad about craving?” I asked with an easy smile. But I was serious.
Her mouth scrunched up slightly, unsure if I was teasing. “Sometimes it clouds your decisions. Like, you’re driven by the wrong things.”
I glanced at her sharply. “What are the ‘right’ things?”
“I don’t know. Um, doing good things for the world? Humanity? Desires not born out of selfishness and ego, but like… something bigger?”
“That sounds super boring,” I said.
She laughed. “Shut up.”
“I’m serious!” I tried to keep my voice down. “Because even if you’reliving your life so selflessly,whyare you doing it? Isn’t it ultimately to feel good about yourself anyway? So then you come back full circle to this idea of being ‘selfish.’ Like it’s a bad thing.”
“I couldn’t disagree more,” she said, her face tilting up to me, fully visible under her cap. “I don’t think doing good things is selfish. That’s so Cynicism 101.”
That stung. “Thanks.”
She shook her head. “It’s true. Jack, there is actual goodness and badness, you know that, right? Like, there’s a life that is quality and there’s a life that is… empty.”
“Trust me, I know,” I said quietly. “But I think you’re applying like, morality to measure quality.”
“How am I doing that?” she demanded.
I stared at her upturned face, the earnestness of her expression. Did she truly find her life empty? I couldn’t believe that. She was at the top of her game. A job people would kill for. A job that people who worked in banks dreamed about.
My question rang through the quiet temple: “Who says a quality life can’t have some selfishness in it?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LUCKY
We got kicked out of the temple.
“Jack! Look what you did!” I said, holding back laughter.
His eyebrows shot up. “WhatIdid? Okay, Chatty Cathy.”
“You chatted more than me!”
“Let’s agree to disagree,” he said mildly, the late morning sun hitting his hair, making it glow. I would kill for that volume.
He glanced down at his phone then. “Hey. Are you hungry?”
“Always.” The wistful tone came out before I could help it. “We don’t get to eat that much in church choir,” I clarified.
“When you travel, or all the time?” He asked.
I was careful with my words. “We’re encouraged to be healthy. All the time.” What an understatement.
“Well, today’s the day to screw ‘healthy.’ You’re in Hong Kong!”He put his hands on his hips, thinking for a second. “Ooh. Are you a fan of bao?”
“What’s that?”
