Greed in a Minor Key

Jocelyn Shen
3 min readSep 21, 2024

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I want to have lived a different life. Any place is better than here.

Out there, the trees look greener, they smell like toasted spices crisping up in the summer heat. Everyone around me appears idle, floating through cobblestone streets like spirits. Where are they going? Where did they come from? These are the questions I asked so often when I was a child, peering brightly outside of my backseat window with shining eyes. Why now, when I look at these spirits, do they feel so lifeless?

I wonder instead how tired they must be. I feel detached from the threads that people reach out to me — I snip away from them, afraid to get caught in this web. I am still coming to terms with how small I am, and the fact that everything I do will amount to nothing.

I feel like sea foam, sizzling away at the edge of the shore. Always in a constant state of push and pull, but never daring to go further up the beach. I bubble and gurgle at people’s toes. Maybe I am reaching too high.

The skyscrapers in Asia puncture the clouds, and I play a game of guessing how many windows are lit — how many living people breathe warm breath inside those windows. I imagine them flapping their wet laundry against the railing, sprinkling water down below. The city is so alive, but I can’t feel it within me.

I am reaching too far, like those buildings. I want everything and nothing at the same time. I want radiant beauty but to be unobserved. I want to be in the sun, but I am afraid it’s too hot. I want nostalgia and the excitement of romance somewhere halfway around the world, where raindrops will tear up against the city lights like shining gems, and I will sit on the cold steps, looking pensive, like I am in a Wong Kar Wai film. I wish the scenes of my life were colored with grain, red yellow and green against the traffic lights. I wish I was anyone but myself.

Other people’s greed takes the form of money. We are all made of greed — the bricks that build us up — and the cement cast of insecurity we fill the gaps with. I used to despise those greedy people, but now my eyes are dripping with sympathy. My blood no longer boils, because I realized that these walls protect us. What are we so afraid of showing to the world? I am afraid too. I am afraid that people will look past my flesh and bones to my beating heart and realize I am nothing as well — a lump of organs held together in a systematized way that somehow makes me me.

I want to be someone so badly, but I don’t know who I want to be. I am afraid of not wanting anything, but wanting something too much as well. The unknown is scarier to me than anything else, so I distract myself with whimsical worries. I imagine my life far away, if I was reborn. I feed myself until my belly balloons up. I am addicted to my screen. I put jewels before my eyes that shine so brightly I can’t look away. I want to create but I want to consume more. I want trophies. I want to be special, but I don’t want to believe I’m better than anyone else. I find anything that makes my heart pound faster in my chest — rage, jealousy, euphoria — just to remind me that I am in fact alive. I want to live inside of a film, but I hate sad endings. I hide the natural flush of my cheeks then put rouge over them again. Everything is fake and sterile in this world. I want to live in my own head, in castles I build in my dreams, but I am just avoiding the world.

I fill my days with things to do so that I never ask myself any questions. “I’m moving towards my goal” I tell myself repeatedly.

What are we even doing?

What am I doing?

What should I be doing?

This is the form that my greed takes.

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