Dear ____:

You know me as the quiet, cooperative Asian woman (probably wearing a purple headscarf) wielding a dust-sucker or a rake in and around your home. A day laborer, cleaner, landscaper. Positions that come with an inevitably intimate peek into the behind-the-scenes of your life. Some days I wonder what led to your comfortability with that; most days I just show up, do my job, and overthink something else during the shift.

I do have some hing to say, though. I think I see a pattern in how you approach existence, and I remain quite confuddled as to 1) why some consider this success, and; 2) where you find your self in all this.

You buy property, pay others to take care of it, then wonder how you quietly forgot what grass feels like.

You start a garden then hire someone to break the ground, grow the plants, and weed the garden so that you could go buy grounding mats, upgrade your indoor lighting, and hit leg day at the gym.

You have kids, then hire a nanny to tide them over the toddling years and then hand them over to teachers and coaches and babysitters. Years later you wonder why your two-year-old’s “I luv you mommie” has an empty note to it, why your ten-year-old prefers his computer screen over your presence, why your teen feels more understood by her brand-new boyfriend than by you.

You schedule in dates with your spouse between work dinners and lunch meetings, buy them gifts when they seem a little sad, then wonder why your relationship feels transactional, replaceable, and mechanical.

You have keywords for what you want your front yard to look like, how you want your weekends to go, what you want your family culture to be — but nothing is tangible, thorough, truthful.

You reach the milestones — the wife, the kids, the house, the car, an IG-styled, fully-managed lifestyle — and you wonder why the peace of your weekly yoga meditation class does not go home with you.

Your calendar is full, your schedule impressive, your energy high for someone your age; but somewhere somehow, it seems like you forgot to feed your heart, listen to your soul, do something for its own sake and not for some quantifiable, justifiable result.

I pity you, dear person. I truly wish you do find some happiness in the midst of this — but I do have my doubts.

One way or the other, thank you for being someone I have learned from. I shall see you next week, and see you more thoroughly than you would me. The difference feels unfair…

Odelia