All I Feel is Joy

By Li Yin

In this moment, all I feel is joy.

Music that Lin curated for me in my ears, the sun casting nothing but a golden glow and gentle warmth, enveloping my silhouette like my mother’s hands. The waves underneath this aircraft resemble silk, slowly but surely ebbing and flowing, reaching every part of the Earth. Thoughts of Miyabi across the ocean, waiting with her eyes gleaming with joy and welcoming me with the biggest embrace. Soon I will see Jack, Carina, Eileen, Lola, Natalie, Stella, Annika. Memories of Edwin, Nicole, Greve, Lawrence, Sarah. These threads, however much time has passed in the time when each intertwines, never fall into fragility. The strength of human connection always amazes me. They say time is powerful—it is supposed to kill the beautiful things in life and make them wane in vibrancy. But the longer I live, the more I’d like to think that’s a myth (or perhaps, I haven’t lived long enough). The passage of time, the distance between one inkling and another, creates longing, giving people the chance to live incessantly, rent-free in my mind. And what is longing if not love persevering?

I long to see all those whom I love in one place. Father and mother, Yao, grandma and grandpa, Candy, and those from my childhood who taught me the meaning of care. It takes stamina and hope and work and perfect timing to see all the people I treasure in my heart, fragments that make up who I am.

Come to think of it, is timing everything? Recently, I’ve been running into things. Things like opportunities, moments of growth, conversations that spark something new. Things meaning intense feelings, affection, heat, wholesomeness that I’m not sure I deserve: everything all at once condensed into one moment.

I may read back on this and realize just how foolish I was. That I still have so much to learn, and maybe I’m stepping in the wrong direction, making a wrong move yet again. But I am no longer afraid of change, now that I know there are more possibilities of love than one so tangled with violence and judgment and pain. Will I ever stop carrying the cartons of wastewater, of ink that the infatuations of the past have spilled in my world? Will the tarnished memories ever be bleached and erased? Perhaps not.

But perhaps, too, it no longer matters.

Because in this moment, all I feel is joy.

Li Yin ’26 (ly104@wellesley.edu) is hoping you, the reader, can feel this joy. From the February 2023 issue.