I

shared with a good friend that I don’t really know where I belong now. And I might always feel this way throughout my lifetime.

He said, “You are lucky, Jen, because you have two homes. Many people don’t even have one.”

How true.

I am blessed with having two diasporas: Indonesian and the overseas Chinese in America. I have a home in the US, a home I made for myself as an adult woman.

I also have a childhood home in Indonesia, a home my parents made for me as a child and a young college student.

China is another place I consider home, as it is the land of my ancestors where they left their footsteps and eventual legacy.

I have choices and I can choose one, two or all three of them. Or, I can choose none of them. Sometimes it is dizzying, sometimes it is empowering. Most of the time, they are parts of me.

The ongoing foreclosure crisis in the US, which started in 2007, has shattered 13.5 million homes, one of which was mine.

I am now starting over with a positive balance sheet, as the negative equity resulting from the ongoing economic crisis is now history. Something bad turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

There is a silver lining in every cloud.

In these few weeks I am home in Santa Clara, located at the heart of Silicon Valley, a very good friend who is working as a successful executive shared with me that she is considering joining a convent as a nun.

She is eager to leave behind all of her wealth and worldly belongings to embrace the oath of celibacy, obedience and poverty. She is eager to leave a good job in a high-tech company for a simple white habit.

It did not take me long to comprehend her reasoning.

She and I already live a contemplative life. We had everything we wanted: Financial stability, great jobs, admiration from men and the people around us, nice cars, branded clothes, diamonds and Rolex watches. But we missed something larger: eternal love for all humankind.

Living a meaningful life is worth more than millions of gold bars and thousands of Tiffany rings.

While she is in the process of leaving her material belongings, I have already done so. Now I live with two pieces of luggage, two Kindle readers, three laptops, two smartphones, a pair of noise cancellation headphones and an iPad. Just like the clouds, I am mobile.

I feel rich because I have less. And I think it is the way it should be.

Money, power and lust are three of the most intoxicating things in the world. No one is prone to their influences. Thus, for my good friend to consciously choose to love fellow human beings instead of those three is totally admirable.

I might not join the convent as a nun, but loving all humankind equally is something I have been striving to do. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail.

Sometimes I love certain individuals more than others. Sometimes I have preferences over who to love and who not to love.

In the US, I have learned to treat people equally, perhaps the same way that 19th century political
philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville did, where he found that the more he studied the American society, the more he perceived that the equality of conditions was the fundamental fact from which all others were derived and the central point of his observations. De Tocqueville did it nicely, a good example to emulate.

Recently, while having breakfast at a neighborhood Burger King, I said to myself that I was going to miss this moment. Executives in nice suits, construction workers in orange vests, special education students with their teachers and senior citizens with their friends ate the same whopper burgers, chicken nuggets, soda drinks, frappucinos and smoothies.

We all belonged to the same “class”, hence we ate the same meals and drank the same beverages.

In Indonesia and China, things are not that equal. Social stratification is so obvious. While I can easily pass dozens of cardboard homes just to arrive at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to have a muffin at a coffee shop, my heart has already sunk so deep upon arrival.

For me success is a mindset. It’s not a journey or a destination. It’s already within you. I have earned millions and I have lost them. Yet, I am still the same person, only stronger and a little bit wiser.

Success in a spiritual form would stay. As long as I love people equally and place love for mankind above love for any singular man.

Universal love is what matters. In the diaspora I’m home.

The writer is an award-winning author and columnist based in California and Jakarta.