Allison's Archives

There is a symphony of chatter and clinking of cutlery against bowls but I find myself unbothered by sound and, rather, captivated by sight. I watch as the steam from the hotpot machine billows and rises like the smoke cloud of a locomotive. The only difference: The smoke cloud finds itself free to wander the world, untethered to the vessel from which it originated. Just as the steam is unable to escape a room with closed windows, I find myself unable to escape my past. There is no distance to outrun, no string to sever. Eventually, the steam becomes a part of the room instead of an addition. The worst part of it all is how I am the only one terribly aware of this reality.

The broth leaps out of the boiling pot before me and splats on my forearm. I wipe it off without much reaction knowing twelve-year-old me would’ve chosen to make a big fuss about it just so someone could show a semblance of care towards her. Physically, I am sitting at the head of a dining table with my friends scattered down the seats—the talk lively and gossip column-worthy, the beef slices and fishballs being impatiently rushed into the pot, the magic sauce in the center of the table being vied for. Mentally, I am far away. Not in distance but in time. 

You are growling like a starved animal for the truth so I’ll throw you the meat. Open wide and bare your canines. I want to see you bite off more than you can chew. Have a cup of water on the side in case you find it hard to swallow. If you choke, do not look to me for salvation: Just because I was good at doing something does not mean I enjoyed it. Just because I had to work with people doesn’t mean I had to love them. Just because the curtains closed doesn’t mean I patted myself on the back. Sometimes I do it for the resume. Sometimes I bite my tongue instead of going rabid on someone who couldn’t do their job right. Sometimes I tear a completed project open to inspect for flaws. Sometimes it boils down to getting the job done and, most times, a job well done is not a job automatically enrolled into your legacy.

I will come across as arrogant in this essay—there is no other way to write it—but you will also see me humbled; I hope this balancing act preserves the image of me you had before reading this. If not, I guess you can thank your guardian angels that your life is nothing like mine, and I will keep insisting on this life I have built from placenta to palace.

And so we begin: If you were to take an axe to my life and split it neatly down the middle, the first half was a struggle of always coming second place while thirsting for the first; the more recent half has been a laborious building of my castle once I realized nobody was going to hand it to me. Unfortunately, all I had was sand and I lived in a constant fear of tides.

I was obsessed with building a legacy and to me that meant succeeding at whatever the cost. To understand my obsession with success, you need to first understand the stories I grew up with. Right after I graduated from my stack of Peter and Jane, my parents quickly moved me to fables and legends, most of which sounded like this—

The first: Li Bai was a boy with no patience when it came to his studies. Frustrated, he wandered off from his books and came across an old woman who was grinding an iron rod on a stone. Upon asking what she was doing, the old woman explained that she was grinding the rod into a fine needle, and that, with enough persistence, she would succeed. Inspired by her wisdom, Li Bai returned to his studies with renewed perseverance and eventually emerged as a great poet.

The second: Kuang Heng came from a poor family who could hardly afford anything, much less candles for him to read at night. One night, the diligent scholar noticed light seeping through from his wealthy neighbor’s and decided to drill a hole in the wall to “borrow” some light for reading. His dedication eventually paid off as he rose to become a well-respected scholar of his time. 

The third: In the height of summer, the grasshopper lazed around, playing and singing. He scoffed at the ants who spent their time gathering food stock, saying they didn’t know how to enjoy life. When winter came around, the ants had plenty to eat while the grasshopper was left starving. 

The fourth needs no introduction, really—the tortoise and the hare. 

You should have pieced it together by now; I was raised on the value of hard work and patience. There was no privilege or connection in play—I believed myself to be the sole dictator of my destiny. If I worked hard, made do with the resources I had, and lay in wait, success will one day be mine and that will be my legacy. But success never came. No distant footsteps. No stopping right before the doorbell. No fruit basket. I always came second. Second place in the elocution competition. Second place in the essay writing contest. Second place in the student council presidential election. I convinced myself that first runner-up was first loser. I started to wonder if success was a reality within reach for others and just a bedtime story for me—a little fantasy I tell myself to sleep better at night. 

The older I grew, the more I saw the pillars that buttressed others—less with envy and more with confusion. When you see connections and success being spoon-fed to people, even without hearing the backstory, you start licking knives for remnants of validation. This obsession with carving a legacy made me more in love with my potential than who I was. But the dangerous thing that nobody tells you is how potential is illusionary, you are tangible. We don’t actually see potential in ourselves, others do. But when people tell you they see potential in you, what they’re really saying is that they have created a mold in their head they’d love for you to fit in. 

In the recent half of my life, by some miracle, I distilled, boiled, pressed, and condensed myself to fit every mold that has ever presented itself before me, never mind who had delivered it. It began in university with a blank resume that needed filling: Manchester’s Malaysian Society publicity secretary. UKEC executive councilor. MNight actress. KPMG intern. Vice-Chairperson of UKECatalyst. MNight scriptwriter. Reader’s Digest editorial intern. HSBC summer analyst. Mancunion sub-editor. MNight emcee. University of Manchester graduate. I have never felt more successful. And I never felt less like myself. 

Of course I got to pick up the pen and get to work wearing all of those hats. Of course I told stories of mine and others. Of course I filled my planner to the brim just like I was filling my potential. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing and I betrayed my morals and ideals many times before I crawled onto the podium. I’ve had to compromise and move goalposts, bow down to unjustified authority and pretend to accept actions I knew would fail. I took up more work than the job description advertised at the cost of my well-being because the flagship had to be the biggest in its history, because the articles had to be published, because the production had to sell out, because the return offer had to be made out to me. But really, what good is the result as a legacy when you had to lose parts of yourself on the way?

My gripe with my legacy extended beyond my work to its succession. It’s worth clarifying that I had accomplished most of my work in the first and second years of university, choosing to dedicate my final year purely to academia; but I wouldn’t be a very good writer if I were good at letting things go. And so I spent my final year clinging onto the castles I had built the year before, cursing when windows were demolished and defenses were switched. To prove my worth, my legacy had to last, yet it was fleeting right before my eyes. It was as if the tighter I gripped the yarn, the faster the tapestry unraveled, demoting art into trash—the kind that no other man would salvage as treasure. I was plastered with the worry that if what I had built was written over, no one would remember me, much less my legacy.

But it’s never that deep, is it? The tenures and flagships go on after you’ve left. Every annual competition finds a different champion. The stage curtain rises and sets year after year. Event marketing may deflate in quality or it could skyrocket to heights you never thought possible. Claims of elitism never really die out. And all you are left with is a LinkedIn section as a minute reminder of the colossal legacy you were a part of. Allegedly, anyway. 

Those who come after you could very well have the same legacy—and I’m not trying to say you are not special. I’m not insinuating that only people who break records and glass ceilings deserve to have praises sung of their legacies. Some people choose to break the ground over their tenure instead. Some people choose to forge weapons during their time. Some people take what their predecessors have left and hopelessly jump on the starting square, wishing the ceiling would crack itself open. What I’m saying is it does not matter because only you remember your legacy the clearest. Only you know how it felt when it happened. 

Every stage director wants to believe they can do a better job than the director. Every backup cast wants to believe they could have outperformed the main cast. Every treasurer wants to believe the society would not be afloat if it weren’t for the sponsorships they raked in. Every student society wants to believe they are the first to host some kind of interactive forum featuring some kind of minister. Every scriptwriter wants to believe that their story is one of a kind and will feature the first-ever musical in the history of MNights. We will all believe what we want for a chance to be special, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t trust someone who hasn’t embellished their CV just a little to get an interview. I wouldn’t hang out with someone who hasn’t gone on an ego trip at least once in their undergraduate degree. If you didn’t believe you were important, why would anyone else?

I sit in a dining room full of lawyers and engineers and find myself hammering my worth until it is flush with the ground, until the land turns barren and will never again bear blooms. Through the steam, I look back at the last three years and feel the foreignness of it all. I think about all the things that have happened since and how I’ve strayed away from success being the defining core of my legacy. In a world of student societies and banking internships, am I allowed to untangle myself from the stripes of my country’s flag and lines of my ancestry to build a legacy that only I am proud of? Not all of us are meant to revolutionize the youth of our country, program the next big social media app, or bring humans to Mars. What we are undoubtedly meant to do is to experience this life. Achievements are optional.

Your legacy is not your cryptic small text on a black screen on Instagram stories. Your legacy is not the snatched body you achieved after your ex went and cheated on you. It most definitely is not the number of designer bags and jellycats you have stowed away in your gated community. The undertaker doesn’t care if you’ve shaken a finance minister’s hand, they care about whether there is someone around to ID you. 

So, perhaps at the end of the day, your legacy is having the right people around you during a hotpot dinner. Maybe sometimes what matters is petty gossip and drawing up summer plans that might never see the light of day. Maybe it is about saving on groceries so you can splurge on the next music festival. Maybe it is retelling the story about how you met your boyfriend on Hinge and how your relationship has been a steady ship ever since you started dating outside of your normal pool. Maybe it is biting into an uncooked fishball and having to put it back into the pot with a hint of embarrassment. 

And who’s keeping count? Maybe the people around the hotpot table. Even then, they’re more concerned about who’s going to take the last slice of beef floating aimlessly in the pot.

I watch the steam billow and rise from the hotpot. And instead of looking at something that no longer exists, I look around the table and dig my chopsticks into my bowl. Wait, I look over my shoulder. No chip there. I fight for the last slice of beef. My legacy will build itself and so will yours.