We Are Dust

By Holin Xue / Spring 2022

It is 1:30 a.m., and I am finally sitting at my desk after three days of night shifts, relishing my own quiet time in the morning. The warm ceiling light and the cool lights of the desk lamp painted the ambiance as if it’s daytime. This image is reinforced by the sound of my landlord's soon-to-be high school graduate son obsessively playing computer games. I hunched over to the desk’s corner, where I had just purchased an electronic piano. It’s only been a few days, and the piano keys have accumulated a thin layer of dust. I can’t remember how long it had been since I last practiced the piano. And I’m not sure how long it’s been since the song I wrote to commemorate my undergraduate graduation has made any progress.

Should I go to bed now? My mind was blank, my calves were sore from standing for six hours straight, and my muddled spirit screamed that I didn’t want to pause my day. So I began to stay awake with a vengeance once again. By retaliatory staying up late, we mean that even though we know we have to go to bed early and get up early, we still want to stay up late in order to enjoy our free time. Nonetheless, I should have plenty to do. I have yet to read the Vajra Sutra that I purchased last month, and I have yet to complete the online programming practice exercises. However, I did nothing. I was just lying in bed with my eyes open and clear, emptying myself and wasting time. It was pointless, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind replayed the information I had just seen on social media: it was time for Chinese students’ college entrance exams, an important test for their future, and people were trolling the internet about the difficulty of the essay questions and math on the exam; the Queen of England celebrated her 70th anniversary of accession to the throne couple of days ago, and you can still see tweets about royal figures; a kind and diligent Chinese restaurant delivery man in New York was shot dead by a white customer because the restaurant had refused to give him more sweet chili sauce. Every day, the tension, the anticipation, the celebration, the tragedy, the violence, and the hatred are played out and intensified. How do I, my family, and everyone else who is simply trying to live life to the fullest in a world that changes so quickly? I don’t have an answer because my mind is blank at the time. I’m trying to think of something, but I can’t seem to come up with anything. With a vengeance, I am consuming time.

Although it is claimed that time is like water in a sponge, it appears that no matter how I measure it, I can’t manage to locate an amount of space in which I can enjoy myself when I am weary of school and life. Other than grades, my brain is slow to process information. Because I am well aware that what I say is meaningless, that no one cares what I think, and that my viewpoints are not beneficial to others. Is this, however, correct, or am I mistaken?

I. Molecular Aggregation

Or, the initial form of matter / the establishment of an individual’s worldview.

Staring at the ceiling, the ceiling fan spinning at high-speed overhead transported me back to that summer, the year I was about to take the college entrance exam. It was still in a small county near the east sea of China that relied on heavy industry to make a living. I had no desire to be first since I was a child, and I just got by with everything. However, parents have always hoped that their children will be the best of the best. I remember taking seven extracurricular classes a week in elementary school, including Taekwondo, piano, and Japanese lessons, all of which were arranged by my mother. The entrance exams for junior high school were uneventful, and I was able to enroll in the nearest junior high school. But as I gained weight and began to wear glasses with thick lenses the summer after I graduated from elementary school, and as I entered puberty, I gradually closed myself off. Worse, I became more cautious with the motto “more talk, more mistake.” My struggles in middle school with newly added physics and chemistry rendered me not only invisible in class but also in the middle of the grade ranking. Even so, I didn’t give much thought to competing. Apart from passively accepting that I was not as good as others in my studies and being slightly envious of the fact that top students could often receive praise, I had no idea what would happen if I perceived myself to be inferior to others. However, after the high school entrance exam, self-perception was forced to change. Although not as important as college entrance exams, the importance of middle school to high school exams cannot be overstated in the Chinese education system. After all, there is a clear distinction between the educational resources of key high schools and regular high schools. My middle ranking was, predictably, insufficient for admission to the key high school. So I consoled myself by saying that I’d rather be a chicken head than a phoenix tail and enrolled in the regular high school, which is second only to the key high school in terms of popularity. I thought I was “descending” to the new class with a high score, but I was dissatisfied with the first monthly rank exam. I finally realized that, just as there are always higher mountains, there are always people outside of me. That was probably the first time I became aware of the pressures of peer competition. Despite this, I was still conceited in high school, with a sense of psychological superiority because, by simply paying attention and doing my homework, I managed to finish in the top five of my class and the top thirty of my grade. Even later, after the college entrance exam results were announced, I discovered that I had finished second in school. But I had forgotten I was in a small town. My ranking was simply a grade in a regular high school. My grades were unremarkable in a country of 1.4 billion people. It reminded me of the image of the pale blue dot and how the Earth, and even the entire galaxy, are just specks of dust in the vast universe.

II. Shaping

Or, the transformation of the individual’s worldview — the enlightenment of tiny matter.

I’m in a foreign country now. The chirping of unknown birds outside my window is something I couldn’t hear in my building-filled hometown. It brings me back to where I am right now. I am at a pivotal point in my life as I am studying abroad. I got off the plane alone at the San Francisco airport five years ago at night, went through customs, and landed in the rainy season. The journey was made possible by a yellow cab. I had no idea what was in store for me. But I knew that since then, I’d have to face everything on my own. I’d be forced to mature. I became aware that my English foundation, which I had studied for over a decade, had vanished overnight. I realized that if I didn’t have a car, my mobility options would be severely limited. And I became aware that it would be difficult to establish close relationships with my classmates. Life at community college was generally easy, but because of my own upbringing differences, staying in the school library until closing time became a regular occurrence from my first semester. I started pushing myself all the time. Unlike in middle school, when I was indifferent to people who were better than me, I wanted to outperform them and be good. This pushing and psychological pressure became even more intense after I transferred to the new school. The library’s 24-hour space made me feel like I had found the “perfect spot.” Now and then, I’d see raccoons emerge at 3:00 a.m. to march on the Library Walk. And the 8 a.m. class forced me to say goodbye to the science of eight hours of sleep. I was also forced to rely on iced coffee and self-hypnosis to stay awake. After the first quarter, I had grown accustomed to the “Rat Race” of learning a book in three months. I scrambled forward, not daring to take a breather or rest because you see all your classmates studying, and there was always someone better in the class getting a perfect score on every test. Every math problem had an unexpectedly optimal solution. Meanwhile, I conceived myself turning into a number. Not only because the administration assigns each student a unique school ID; but also because we were a group of data concerned about the statistical results of the professor’s tests in class. Our transcripts are used to appraise us and assess our abilities. As a consequence, I needed to perform well in my tests. I required a solid transcript to stand out from the crowd. Yet at the same time, I began to feel numb, as if I were losing touch with joy and grief.

III. Circumstances

Or, the conditions that shape matter

In an assembly line factory, the quality inspector will grade the products based on the standards set, similarly to how students’ transcripts are interpreted as their ability. In other words, an A product is qualified, whereas a D product is defective and must be rebuilt. People are frequently judged based on lifeless components while also being graded by an institution or a person representing a particular authority. Money is the most intuitive and effective way for people to improve their class in the shortest amount of time. As a result, the general public works hard their entire lives to accumulate wealth because they believe that as long as they are willing to give their energy and time, God will never let them down. But if we stop running forward, if we stop running to a bubble called happiness that society provides, we ponder and recognize that our efforts are now just a burden for the comfortable life of the upper class. This is the essence of neoliberalism as it is currently practiced in society. The pendulum, which represents the ideology and social processes, is skewed to the right. Large corporations and elites control society’s interests. When power, wealth, and privilege are concentrated in the hands of a few, the upper class becomes increasingly desperate to protect their current interests. As a result, machine intelligence and human mechanization have become unavoidable trends. Like robots, we tend to separate ourselves. We made our own space by erecting walls. The rise of the Internet and social media has exacerbated the self-imposed isolation of the real world. Hurtful or irresponsible words may appear to be spewed out more unburdened when confronted with a screen and cold characters. As a result, social media platforms have grown in popularity as a means for people to express themselves. Simultaneously, the issue of free speech and the right to speak has become increasingly serious. After all, even Elon Musk, who is extremely wealthy, has gone to great lengths to acquire Twitter, which is not much of an investment, in order to get control of the voice. We use social media to share our life, express ourselves, and keep up with current events. The issues that come with the age of big data are significant. Everything we are exposed to in the online world is controlled by algorithms, as we learned in the “Rabbit Hole.”

To better understand the system’s current problems, let us first examine democracy’s historical development.

IV. Manipulation

Or, the force of the larger environment — we are relegated to dust

In the 1940s, when liberalism was on the rise, we saw the rise of a series of reform movements in society. People came together with the same goal to show those in power the strength of gathering sand into a tower. What’s more, there was President Roosevelt’s Second Bill. FDR emphasizes rights such as housing, education, health care, and fair market competition in the second bill as “under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station, race, or creed.” Now, decades later, the wagon of history seems to be going backward. In reality, cities are purposefully divided by the government into neighborhoods based on ethnicity and income levels, trapping them in a never-ending cycle of failure to upgrade due to loss of investment value due to security and other factors. Inequality in educational resources, as well as student debt, has rendered educational equity unconvincing. For a long time, no effective government policies have supported public welfare, such as health care. In today’s economy, where monopolies are prevalent, fair market competition appears to be a farce. These activities are all related to profit. When everyone is concerned with making a profit, the well-being of others are overlooked. A recent shortage of infant formula, for example, was caused by a monopolistic market in which large corporations could arbitrarily raise prices. Because there were no substitutes in the market, corporations didn’t have to worry about not generating revenue. However, in addition to unrestricted price increases, such unfavorable competition is frequently more concerning in terms of product quality. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalled some infant formulas sold primarily to the middle and lower classes in February after discovering Cronobacter bacteria, which can cause disease in babies. However, due to the monopoly situation, the infant formula company’s factories were allowed to reopen just a few days ago, on June 6. If they had not opened, the market’s shortage of infant formula would have worsened. Looking back on the entire incident, I have a strong sense of what it means to have a large tree with deep roots. This may be a PR disaster, a symbolic overhaul, and a statement for the infant formula company, but consumers must still buy it even though they know the consequences. Perhaps corporations already did the math: how much would it cost to pay for a lawsuit if the baby’s illness was caused by the milk powder? If they don’t want to file a lawsuit, how much money will they have to invest in a total overhaul? Then they concluded that because legal compensation is less expensive, there is no need to change the status quo. However, in a deal in which even babies are counted, human rights appear to be even less valuable. This disregard for human life, like that of baby formula companies, can be found not only in the commodity market but also in gun violence, where attackers target schoolchildren, ethnic conflicts, police overreach, and wars over the imposition of national ideologies.

The warfare that occurs thousands of miles apart, as well as violence that is temporarily irrelevant to us, are not distant issues. They are happening right now, and they could have an impact on you and me in our little world. Individuals may be insignificant. I know I can live with disagreement, while I can’t help but try to stay as clear as possible in the midst of the chaos.

V. Clustering

Or, dust can accumulate into clouds and obscure the sky.

But what are our options as dust? I frequently profess my desire to lie down and relax. It’s what young people are talking about these days, “tank,” to put it in a more fashionable way. The term was initially used in American sports commentary and the NBA league. It has a similar connotation to “broken,” but it is not identical. It refers to the practice of purposefully losing games in the NBA basketball league in order to improve one’s draft picks. It can be taken in internet jargon to signify that things aren’t going in the proper way, so we stop trying to control it and let it go. While I prefer this attitude to express frustration at the inability to change the problems in the world, I also think that the interpretation of the word change is not all negative but more akin to breaking one’s wrist to survive, giving up the present to seek the future. To do this, I think we first need to maintain a clear-eyed ability to discern events. We must be mindful of how the news media covers the internet since it is a diverse community. After all, facts are facts, but the narrative’s perspective can be artificially determined. Also, reporters and outlets are more or less dragged by political leaders, policies, and other factors to the point where they can’t be neutral. As a result, in my opinion, the only way to carefully filter the news on the internet is to strengthen our own quality and preserve our own judgment. As I attempted to learn more through online classes while also maintaining one or two hobbies and cultivating my emotions. Even if it’s hard to find time, half an hour of piano practice per month is enough to put me at ease for two days. People are treated like dust, but dust isn’t meaningless. It is made up of energy, which is why everything in the universe is made up of it. Cosmic dust is the result of a dead star exploding. A nuclear explosion sends all kinds of material from the star into space, including many fusion products. Rocky planets (like Earth), asteroids, and cosmic dust are all made up of this stuff. Each of us is a particle of dust in the system, invisible to the human eye. However, this system, the Earth, and every other object in the universe are all formed of dust on a macroscopic level. So, even if we are unhappy with reality or dissatisfied with the system, we must remember that we are all valuable persons on the inside. When the dust accumulates, it will be a global sandstorm.

Works Cited

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “FDA Investigation of Cronobacter Infections: Powdered Infant Formula (February 2022).” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 6 June 2022,

FDR. “Second Bill of Rights”

Happiness. (2017, November 24). [Video]. YouTube.

Miller, Ronald V., Jr, and Ronald V. Miller Jr. “Similac Powder Formula Recall Lawsuit.” Lawsuit Information Center Blog, 8 June 2022, .

The New York Times. (2022, April). Rabbit Hole.