“It’s three in the afternoon,” she said, “and I haven’t thought of him once today.” Not once, and this thought doesn’t count.

With that revelation, she went to the window, drawing the black curtains aside with one hand and glancing at the street without. It was raining, and the window was wet, little droplets trailing their path down – from the stars to the gutter. The rain had emptied the street, and the sight – familiar, for she has seen it so often; and alien, for she was far from home – brought nothing to her.

“Too late,” her reflection said, “you’re thinking of him already.”

Her eyes met those of her accuser, “and I can help it?”

Her reflection smiled, “maybe. Isn’t it time to move on?”

“Moving on is a lot easier when you have an idea of where you’re moving on to.”

“Don’t be silly, girl. It’s not the ‘to’ that’s important, it’s the ‘from’.”

“You know, I would never say something like that.”

“Yes, you would. And you have, just not to yourself. You don’t even know yourself anymore, do you?”

“I used to think I did.”

“The you you knew has died. Who are you now?”

She nodded at herself, then walked through the rooms of her apartment, getting dressed and getting ready. She wondered what she would need; her camera, a notebook and a pen, an umbrella for the weather, some change, and, oh yes, her bus ticket.

She stood before the full-length mirror behind her front door, surveying herself. She wore her favourite clothes, her walking clothes; a ring decorated one finger, absentmindedly picked up and worn as she gathered her things; her eyes were dark for lack of sleep and too many tears; she wore no makeup, because she had not gone out in a long time, but she wore a little lipstick, because she wanted to look good for herself when she found her.

“Well?” she asked her reflection, “did I forget anything?”

A small smile of satisfaction crossing her face, she opened the door. She was about to cross the threshold when she stopped and glanced at her reflection once more, “hey, thanks.”

She had boarded the first bus that came by, not wishing to wait and not knowing where to go.

Sitting near the door, she kept her eyes upon the street, waiting for some place with a little sense for her to be to present itself.

Then, she awakened from her thoughts to find herself at the entrance to a cathedral.

“Do you think God is ever lonely?” she asked aloud.

“I don’t know, miss. Maybe.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I thought I was alone,” she felt a blush starting. The figure that spoke was tall, a full head taller than her, a pair of white wings furled neatly behind him. His eyes were dark, and he smiled, a wistful smile that whispered irony.

“Who are you?” she asked him, as he stepped out from the shadowed doorway, thinking it would be impolite to stare, and yet unable to help herself.

“You are a rare one, who carry hope inside you. What is it you expect to find?”

“I’m looking for me.”

“And you come here?” He indicated the cathedral with an upward glance, his smile widening, “If you had said you were looking for God, I would have told you you wouldn’t find Him here.”

“God isn’t here?” she asked, then added, as the thought jumped in her mind, “God exists?”

“He isn’t any more here than anywhere else. Come inside, pray. Have a word with Him.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“It doesn’t matter, God doesn’t care.”

She nodded, then went in. As she walked toward the altar, she was amazed at the beauty of the place, the play of light, from candle and sun, the silence, the majesty.

She stood before the altar, looking up upon the crucified Christ. She wasn’t Christian, and she had never given much thought to the afterlife. She believed in goodness because goodness was important. And so she tried to be good, not because of God, not because of the promise of Heaven or the deterrent of Hell, but because kindness and compassion were too little in the world.

She knew Christians, those who carried the light within them, who drew strength from their faith. She also knew other Christians, who went to church to dance and scream ‘Amen!’, who were happy because their friends were Christians, who cheered on God and were glad they were on the winning team.

But she could never be one of them. Because her parents were not, because she was brought up going to temples and offering incense every day at the altar at home. Because she was Buddist-but-not-really-Buddist, Taoist-but-not-really-Taoist. Because, really, she didn’t believe, didn’t know enough to want to believe, didn’t believe enough to want to know.

And she stood before the altar, looking up upon the crucified Christ. It was important to them, she knew, not just to believe in God, but to believe that when Christ died upon the cross that day, He died for all humanity. INRI. The saviour.

She wondered what that would mean, if it were true. But, seeing the wounds and the blood, hinting at a pain too great for her to imagine, she knew that even if it wasn’t true, His death was not without meaning, because He had died believing that His death was for all man, and she wondered if she could do the same.

Then, as the dust motes danced and the sun sank low, she turned, and walked back toward the exit.

“Did you find yourself?” the angel asked.

“No, but I think I found something of me.”

“That’s good,” the angel smiled, without irony this time, “remember, child, God is the answer, but most people ask the wrong question.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you think if you found God, you’d find yourself? Maybe it’s the other way around.”

“The other way? If I found myself, I’d have found God?”

The angel put a finger to his lips, “hush, enough questions for today. Just say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” she said, and then she left.

She was on a bus again, moving slowly through time. Not knowing where she was bound, she chose a seat near the back, and sat alone upon the mostly empty bus. She thought of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and Siddhartha’s realisation that the river is in all places at once, from spring to sea, that the river does not know time, does not suffer from it. She remembered him speaking to her, oh so long ago, his marvel at the imagined life of a photon, how particles of light are in all places at once, past, present and future, all the same to that little speck of existence.

There is a connectedness out there, she knew. Something that joined all men, that joined all life. Would that be God? She remembered the angel, and how he answered her questions without giving her any answers.

But what if there wasn’t a connection?

What if we are all alone, disjointed from each other, touched and yet unmoved by the passage of others in our lives? She thought of him, and of her attempts to change him; subconscious, misguided attempts, doomed to failure. He could not change, she realised now, his self was like stone, immutable, immobile. Her mother was like that too, set in her ways, proud within the shield of her morality and her virtue, condemning all who were unlike her, disliking them for their lack of spine, their inability to find moral courage. And what of the converse; those people who could change, who were water, reflecting everyone back, showing themselves as the people who are seeing them, liked by all? No, none of those people were connected either.

What if there really wasn’t a connection, what if we were all alone? Each and all of us, alone together?

And she rejected the idea even as she thought it, rejected it as too horrific and terrible to be true. Stone and water, no, pale metaphors. It is not the ability to change that mattered, though that ability fitted in somewhere, she felt. Even those who are water could have hearts of stone.

She decided to walk home, and got off the bus. Maybe life is a circle, a great turning wheel. There and back again.

Being young, and Chinese, and brought up in Singapore, there’s a certain sense of identity that’s missing. A sense of guilt at not knowing enough of the traditions. Of something owed to the generations before one. A sense of alienation from the blood that flows through one’s veins.

And that’s probably why I’m here, she thought, at this exhibition, in this museum, a thousand miles from home, looking at artefacts from a China I have no connection with.

She had spent an hour there, moving slowly, reading placard after placard, examining item after item. We are an old race, us Chinese, with thousands of years of history. She wondered if Mandarin was older than Latin, and wondered why she did not know.

And then she came upon the figure. His hair was long and wild, a thick beard sticking out in all directions, framing a black face with coals for eyes. A larger than life idol of the God of War.

“What is it like,” she asked, “to once be worshipped, and now to stand encased in glass, looked at but not revered, no blessings sought, no offerings given?”

A dead god, far and away from his worshippers, without purpose except oddity.

We Chinese had Dynasties before the Empires of the West, we had philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, religion. We had a perfect, meritocratic system, the Imperial Examinations, the first IQ tests the world ever knew. We had it all, and we lost it all because of corruption, because of nepotism, and selfishness, and greed. A fat and bloated China, centre of the world, a frog in a well.

Nepotism, and selfishness, and greed. And is that not the way that we are? In Mandarin, the family name comes first, family before self, an outlook the West has never learned. Democracy is not, as some would think, the will of society. Democracy is built upon the foundation of “one man, one vote”, the rights of the individual above the rights of society. And yet it thrives, riding on Capitalism, where Monarchy and Communism fail. But I’m a Socialist, and that works, at least as far as Singapore.

But when Communism came, when Mao ended the Long March, did not the Cultural Revolution sever all ties with the Imperial past? Would a Chinese Republic have done any different, any better?

And she wondered if, in China today, children were brought up with the same values as they were a thousand years ago. And if not, what then was the purpose of thousands of years of history?

When my grandparents die, countless traditions die with them. When my parents die, what little that filtered down is gone as well. And, I, what have I left to teach my children?

A dead god, far and away from his worshippers, without purpose except oddity. Encased in glass, looked at but not revered.

She was feeling cold and overdressed, and she wondered if she should have taken a cab instead of the bus she was now riding on. But she was early and there wasn’t anything else to do, at least, there wasn’t anything that she wanted to deal with right now.

A wedding.

She really thought she would marry him. Do all girls think that, with one man or another?

The one. There was a certain mystique about it all. Some seed of romance in her that refused to die. She believed in the one. She wasn’t sure if she still believed that he was the one. But the concept of the perfect man, she still believed in that.

She looked out the window at the city as it went past, people walking down the streets, some singly, some in pairs, a family with a pair of little children.

A wedding. She barely knew the bride, and was pleasantly surprised to be invited at all. But weddings are a time for introspection, even if her mood these days were not already thus inclined.

She wondered what her wedding would be like, when, if, she got married. She wanted to have hers on a ship, but there’s something practical about weddings, that they always end up the place we tell ourselves we’d never get married, like a church or its secular equivalent.

And people marry for the most practical reasons, for tax breaks, to apply for a flat in land-scarce Singapore. Because they want to have kids, tick-tock tick-tock, there goes my biological clock.

There’s a certain romance that seems to be missing. Some idealised concept of what a marriage is. Even as more marriages crumble every year.

And she wondered how many years she had left before she would compromise, and marry someone for reasons other than that they were meant to be.

And that thought occupied her until she arrived, slightly late. The meal was splendid, and the bride was radiant. It occurred to her that she had never seen anyone that happy in all her life, with such a smile for such a time. And that thought made her happy too.

A time and a dream later, she came by the realisation that she had not thought about him for, oh, some time now.

She had been busy, the demands of reality overtaking her whimsy, and had found the bus ticket, all used up now, in the pocket of her coat. As she looked at the journeys she had taken, neatly marked out line-by-line, she remembered the angel, and the idol of the old god, and the bride, her friend. Then she thought about him, and what he would say about her journeys. And she smiled.

The thing is, thinking about him no longer hurt. Somehow, the hole in her heart that had his shape had disappeared, closed up, been filled. She did not know what had filled it, or how, but she knew who she was, now, though she couldn’t say if her quest had ended, only that it had fallen by the wayside.

I’m free, she thought, and it feels as if I’ve been free all along.

How wonderful.

And then she smiled, and her reflection smiled back.