Excerpts from Journal Entry #250
September 8, 2025
I find myself thinking back to that one night where the sky and heavens were turbulent, with the clouds moving rapidly above us, revealing the stars behind them, as we were handing out food, clothes, medical supplies, and hygiene products to those in downtown encampments. Like in van Gogh's painting, The Starry Night, we were nestled into the Earth, protected, or perhaps isolated, from the heavens above, and the clouds and stars undulated. In van Gogh's painting, a church steeple reaches towards the heavens, connecting the earthly and the divine, mirroring the dark and flamelike cypress tree in the foreground. We are reminded of death by the cypress tree, which also reaches towards the heavens. Don't we all try to do so? To be closer to God?
Excerpts from Journal Entry #197
February 18, 2025
Today I learned that an unhoused woman died last night in the cold. She was found in the exact place I picked up an unhoused woman during Downtown Distro last Tuesday. When I picked her up and moved her to a nearby shelter, she was in a horrible condition. She could barely walk, and as I mentioned in a previous entry, it seemed as though she was barely conscious. Even spending a little bit of time outside that night made me shiver like crazy. I cannot imagine how cold she must have been. I wonder where she is now, now that another 3 inches of snow and below freezing temperatures have returned to the city. It's hard to think about, but was she the woman who died? A woman's body was found in the exact same place that I picked the woman up. Was I, among others, one of the last people to ever speak her? To care for her? To provide her with the last sip of comfort in a life of pain and suffering? A life which led to her undeserved death? I wish I could know more about the woman who died and what became of the woman who I transported just one week ago.
Excerpts from Journal Entry #196
February 15, 2025
And so I want to point out one beautiful thing I find about life. It is to ground yourself in the world. Because not an actor, but an observer. Be still, and take a few deep breaths. Understand where you are in this world, and understand who you are in this world. Look around you. See how the world changes, morphs, as a function of time? It moves around you whether you are still or not. Let me sit on a mountain, or a green hill, during a summer night, and let me listen to the crickets chirping, the cars passing by, leaving streaks of light in the night. Take a look at the city, the twinkling lights of those buildings, the stars and the clouds and the moon overhead. Take a look, and a deep breath. And sit there for a few minutes. Maybe an hour, if you'd like. Take a stroll around the city park on a warm summer night, observe the wildlife if they're out, or the trees, which rustle in the wind. And the lights which shine as if it's their purpose. Look out into the ocean, maybe see a boat or two, lights in the ebony black ocean. Or the streams of blue lights which dot the ocean surface, a matrix if you will, extending into infinity, which brings tears to my eyes. For the lights shine because they were made to shine. And the blueness of those lights, unwavering, in the midst of the ocean currents, endures as I stare, peering with discernment, concern and longing.
January 21, 2026
You can consider this my "Last Will and Testament" if you will. I don't plan on dying or being in the process of dying soon, but if I do, here are instructions for the end of my life and after I die.
If I am in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery, you may turn off my life support. If, while on life support, I have a chance of recovery, but that recovery results in me being in a vegetative state with little to no consciousness or quality of life, you may turn off my life support; I would rather die peacefully than wither away slowly in this world.
I do not have much wealth, but if I do, all of my wealth and items must be donated. I wish for organizations like Tent Mission STL, St. Louis Public Schools, St. Patrick's Center, and similar organizations to receive all of my financial and physical assets (including liquidated stocks and other investments) as soon as possible. All my books should be donated to St. Louis Public Schools. All valuable items (my computer, phone, etc.) should be liquidated and the finances used to fund the aforementioned organizations. I do not wish for any of my assets to go to any singular person.
As for my remains: I wish to be cremated. After cremation, I would like to return to nature. Please scatter my ashes in one or both of the following locations.
Some of my greatest memories were made hiking Po Toi Island (蒲台島), Hong Kong's southernmost island. You can scatter my remains on the southernmost part of that Island in May. The vastness of the ocean will surround me, with the clouds towering above me, and the ships and planes will come and go, day and night. I look to the sky, to the rocky ground below me, and the grass too; why are there no trees here? The land is young.
In June you may scatter my remains on the Sengokuhara Suzuki Grass Fields in Hakone, Japan. A small bus can take you up and down the mountain on a winding road. I loved the vibrant movement of the green grass, the mountain winds, and the vastness of nature. Consider each blade of grass to be like a life. Each blade interacts with the others, with the winds being like the motion of the world, the grass rippling like the waves of the vast ocean, which I love. Mount Fuji is visible from here like a pale blue shadow. With time, Fuji will be teeming with the greenness of grass I love.
If, for some reason, these areas do not exist or are absolutely inaccessible, you may find a park or a hiking trail and scatter me there. I do not wish, under any circumstance, to be given a grave or a plot of any kind, nor to be placed in either.
I hope that, when my life has ended or is about to end, there will be someone who loves me enough to fulfill these instructions.
Enoch Lai
Excerpts from Journal Entry #272
November 17, 2025
You know, I really admire so many people that I work with at Heart for the Unhoused. I'll name a few [I have replaced their real names with fake names, but have fun speculating]. Ethan is a person who comes to mind. What makes him so special? To me, I think it's just the ease with which he carries himself around others. For example, today I went to a HU bonding event. Ethan was able to talk to everyone in a very affable way and just be himself. Loud at times. Funny too. He smiles a lot. He really strikes me as someone who feels very comfortable in his own skin. I'd like to be like that, because today I was sitting a little bit alone, listening of course to the banter, but not really speaking myself. In many ways, I wish I could be like Ethan. On a personal note, his personality is very attractive to me. My mom was right. As a rather shy person myself, I would be attracted to, or marry, a romantic partner who is very extroverted and talkative. Ethan definitely falls under that category.
On the drive to the bonding event, I was thinking about how so many things are interconnected: the manufacturing of cars, the technology that we use, and the computers allowing for self-driving. Actually, that day was the first time I experienced Tesla self-driving, and it was so impressive and amazing. After the HU bonding, I was in a contemplative mood. I exited a home of warmth into a cool autumn night, with the shadows of the still-warm trees eclipsing the clear starry night. To the west, the buildings of Clayton -- I particularly love the one that looks like the UN headquarters in New York City. And to the east, the university, and the rest of St. Louis, the broken heart of America. I thought about how great my life was at that moment. And it is true. My life has been so great. It has been amazing.
I spoke to Elena about this briefly after the ride back to campus in Ethan's car. I was thinking about this as the car drove itself through the dark streets. Looking back and thinking about how my life has gone, everything has been so great. Elena is one of those people who always cares, who is always there for people. She's fierce, and she's strong. She's honest. I really admire that about her. Her compliment to me -- that I have great judgment -- continues to stick with me. Elena will go so far in life. We don't know each other too well, though. Yet I felt comfortable sharing my thoughts about life with her in that moment. I talked about how it's hard to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I have a loving family and friends. I am in a position where I am able to pursue my dreams.
In the grand scheme of things, there is not much to complain about because my life has been, and continues to be, so good. When I spoke those words to her, even my eyes were watering up. I felt it that strongly: that despite all of the challenges in my life, it has been a great one. I'm glad Elena understood where I was coming from. She talked about how she's been frustrated by many things today, but agreed it's important to understand the bigger picture. These moments of humanity, of vulnerability, fill my heart to the brim. My cup overflows.
Excerpts from Journal Entry #284
January 24, 2026
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. This is both physically true and cognitively true. I want to apply this thinking to the concept of attending medical school in Iowa City (which I will refer to as "Iowa").
I've generally been negative about this and I still feel quite a bit of negativity about the possibility of this. I can frame it in this way. Iowa is cold. Colder than St. Louis. Iowa is small. Smaller than St. Louis. There is no one there, and there's nothing to see. You will be spending four years trapped in this small city with nothing to do (except study) while freezing to death in the winter and fall every year. That is not acceptable. I want to be somewhere warm. Somewhere with vibrancy and people. I want to be in a big city for once. A city that is alive, where there's alway something happening. Cities where there's food, art, music, and people. I don't want to be trapped with other medical students in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I want to see the world and there's not much to see in Iowa. Perhaps I'm being too narrow-minded. This is a "privileged" perspective. Maybe I'm just naive.
Here's a different way of looking at this. My parents will be moving to Iowa regardless of what medical school I attend. They are aging and I'm seeing this in real time. To be able to spend time with my parents, and to see my parents, while in medical school, is a great blessing. They are in their fifties now, and by the time I'm done with medical school, they will being entering their sixties. Who knows what could happen. One or both of them could get cancer. One or both of them could die unexpectedly within the next few years. I want to see them as much as I can. Furthermore, compared to many other state medical schools, Iowa is decent. It will give me a great quality of education and allow me to be more competitive during my residency applications (and more importantly, be a better physician). Iowa is close to Chicago which I can visit regularly if I want to experience the city more. From Chicago, I can fly anywhere in the world (including direct flights to Hong Kong). My parents plan to visit Hong Kong every year, and I will be able to join them.
I guess that looking at an "object" such as Iowa in a certain way doesn't really "change" it. What I suspect is happening is that Iowa looks good from one angle and bad from another. Iowa is both good and bad simultaneously depending on how you look at it. Iowa is only "good" if I only look at it from the perspective that makes it look good. Likewise, Iowa is only "bad" if I only look at it from the perspective that makes it look bad. Since I can see Iowa from multiple perspectives, it can be good and bad simultaneously partially because I have the memory of its former goodness or badness. If, like a scientific instrument, I have no memory and the only thing I observe is "a perspective" then we get the same result as what is known in physics; a collapse of a wave function, a superposition of states, into a single defined classical state. Still, this isn't quite analogous, mainly because the concept of Iowa as I describe it isn't a quantum-mechanical particle as we understand one to be.
Like most things.