Purpose in the Pivot
Earlier this year, I went to Vietnam with my maternal side of the family for a cousin’ s wedding. It would be my second trip to the motherland but a hopeful promise to reinstate my growing relationship with my Asian heritage. My first trip was back in 2018 when my mom insisted we go as a family because it was important to understand our ancestry together — as with most children of immigrants, any trip back to the motherland is a two-fold journey where the parents revisit their past with a newfound aged perspective confronting an internal longing to validate why they had to leave their childhood homes, while the children see this trip as a way to understand themselves further in the eyes of their people. This combination of preset expectations sets a very treacherous dynamic for any family, mine especially.
I expected a lot from this trip — maybe a resurgence of cultural identity, maybe an awakened sense of self discovering myself in the people of Vietnam, maybe an affirmed thread of kinship, and ultimately, belonging to a greater family beyond my own blood. Without getting too deep into it, I was expecting a lot from this two-week trip. But two weeks was an ambitious venture to accomplish all of that. Rather, two weeks was a fool’s errand in believing that a trip with family would be a trip for self-discovery. In reality, a two-week journey with family to the other side of the world is a magnified version of your relationship with your own family. And at the time, it was manageable at best.
Needless to say, I still wanted to make the most of my visit to Vietnam. With a solo trip to Bali now under my belt, I felt empowered to explore on my own and spark that sense of adventure and curiosity that I found within myself in Bali. So I booked a flight to Hanoi from Saigon for two days — no family, no itinerary, very little understanding of the language, but a very desperate desire to immerse myself in a foreign-but-not culture and connect to the beauty of its lands. I knew I wanted to visit the Incense Village (formerly called Quang Phu Ca) so I looked into tours that would take me. Turns out, I found one meant for photographers. Despite my debilitating imposter syndrome, and only a janky 35mm point-and-shoot film camera with me, I booked it anyways because I needed to look forward to something solely for myself.
Leading up to my Hanoi trip, several incidents happened that threatened to sour the rest of the experience. As an overly anxious person, these incidents served as very convincing bad omens and my anxiety grew to inevitable disappointment.
I was already dealing with family drama, engaged in some emotionally-exhausting arguments, fighting feelings of homesickness, and to top it off, I found out that my trip to the Incense Village may not happen due to the rainy weather. My tour guide did his best to assuage my disappointment by offering another tour to a fish trap basket weaving village instead. But my heart was set on the incense village, and with the inflating feeling of disappointment, I needed this “win” to turn my trip around. I insisted we visit the village and hoped the rain would lighten up. While my tour guide didn’t believe the weather was going to change, he offered to take me to the incense village on the way to the fish trap basket weaving village.
At 7am, my tour guide picked me up from my hotel after I stuffed my face with a warm bowl of phở, and we drove about an hour outside of Hanoi to visit the incense village. As we drove further away from the city and into the misty marsh lands of rice paddy fields, my wonder and curiosity began to light up. Even amidst the gloomy weather and foggy skies, I was reminded of why I love traveling, and more particularly, why I love exploring on my own and for myself. I began dozing off (mostly because it was so early for me) as I gripped onto this sense of calm amongst picturesque landscapes. My tour guide woke me up just as we entered the narrow streets of a small town. The buildings were run down, the people were either working laboriously, even in the rain, or eating together on the ground in front of their homes. Everything looked brown and muddy and on the verge of collapse, but I loved it all the same. There was nothing trying about the place — no tourists to impress, no call for overt aesthetics, not even signs to let you know what some of these storefronts were.
We stopped in front a tailor shop — the only reason I knew was because an elderly man was sitting at this large rusty machine, sewing away at scraps of fabric. I soon learned that he has been the community tailor for a very long time, and he still got up everyday to cut and sew in front of his home, threading away at this run-down machine. I snapped a few photos before we walked further down the road to the incense “factory” (really, a tented area packed with piles of batched incense sticks).
First, I met the workers one by one. I saw the beautiful bouquets of freshly dyed sticks of red — meticulously cut, weighed, and sorted by hand. Due to the rain, they didn’t dry the incense outside like they normally would, which meant there wasn’t a beautiful setup to take photos. Instead, they mimicked a small area of incense bouquets under an outdoor tent, where I and my tour guide manipulated angles and camera adjustments to capture what we could to get that infamous photo. While I managed to snap one of my more popular photos from my Vietnam series (pictured below), the experience itself was rushed and brief. (Though, I did learn a lot about the entire incense process and its significance of flowing income for this tiny village!!)
Photography by me
The incense village was beautiful and I was grateful to have met the people there, but I knew I was still longing for something profound and moving. So we ventured on to visit the fish trap basket weaving village as planned, and without expecting much, I found myself experiencing one of the most memorable moments of my trip.
Just how we entered the hidden road towards the incense village, we approached a nondescript pathway, blanketed with new mud. I followed my tour guide, who greeted the neighbors along the way (clearly a frequent trip for him, and I admired his dedication to respect the citizens). An elderly man in a brown cotton matching set walked out barefoot to shake hands with the tour guide. He lead us down another hidden pathway where we entered an area housing all the fish baskets. The view was unlike any other — I felt like I was in an outdoor sculpture museum decorated in fish baskets, either hung around or placed in piles. Suddenly, a few more elderly members walked through (three women). They all took their seats as though ready to perform a perfectly orchestrated set just for me. Being that I knew very little Vietnamese, my tour guide carried the conversations, asking them questions as they answered with childlike glee and casualness. All I had to do was photograph.
In this moment, I knew my sole and significant role was to be a silent observer. As I carefully choreographed my steps to be as discreet as possible, I witnessed these elders engage in their everyday banter, as much as I vaguely understood. Even if they were used to these regular tours of their particular craft, they conversed and wove baskets as though I wasn’t there. And I didn’t need to know the specifics of their conversations because it was the way they naturally laughed back and forth and shared stories, moving as comfortable neighbors, that enthralled me. It wasn’t just the basket weaving that was poetic and encapsulating, it was their fervor for everyday mundanity in the company of each other that completely reeled me in. Here I was, an American with akin Vietnamese ancestry desperately searching for meaning in my privileged first-world life, when there was a whole remote community surviving on weaving fish baskets (a dying craft by the way!) for their entire lives. The meaning of their lives was not any more profound than doing what they had resources for in order to sustain themselves, amongst each other.
I was completely entranced by it all. And it was in this simple, pocketed moment that I understood my purpose. Through my wallflower act of observation, I knew then that I wanted nothing more than to share their stories, capture their everyday innocence, and preserve the profound inevitability of human fragility. Their fish basket weaving craft was becoming a dying a trade and their lives were more brittle by the day, but they continued on — moving their hands as swiftly and meticulously as ever. I didn’t know how to describe the intense grounding feeling in that moment nor did I know how to define my exact purpose, yet, nothing felt more concrete and clear than knowing that I am meant to tell their story in some way, and with whatever resources I had.
“You may not feel reverence in that moment. But so many of the experiences that have increased my reverence have been ones that reminded me how small and temporary and woundable I and all my fellows are. There’re also a great many experiences like wilderness, like lostness, like fear, that can also end in reverence.”
In my own world back in NY where everything moves so quickly and only with reason, I keep that Hanoi trip in my back pocket, whenever I feel lost in my purpose.
It’s within these moments of smallness — the moments where I am hyper-aware of just how small my existence is against the vast beauty of the world — that I can recall that feeling of concreteness: the assured voice narrating my thoughts sounds truthful and dignified; my emotions feel empowered and meaningful; my entire being feels affirmed in that exact moment where it can only exist because I was at the right place in the right time with an open mind and heart. I may not understand what that purpose is but I know how it’s supposed to feel, and it’s because of that one experience that unlocked a level of personal profundity. It showed me how to trust with my very presence of existing and observing.
It’s these moments that feel less like a sign from the universe but more like a gravitational pull to your purpose on this earth. The sign wasn’t just particular circumstances strung together, but rather the intuitive calling that lead you from one decision to the next. The purpose wasn’t in the knowing, but rather in the pivoting.
Right now, as I write this post, I am struggling. I am unsure of who I am right now and what I’m meant to do to move forward. But recalling this significant experience serves as a deep reminder that somewhere inside I already know, even — especially — in the times when hope feels lost and I am desperately searching for meaning. And for any reader who is finding themselves in a similar place, I hope this story offers some comfort as well. Don’t look too hard for the answers; lead with reverence first.
