Lost in the making: A journey of identity, art, and the heart in a cup

Silhouette of a man meditating in lotus pose placed on vectorized abstract watercolor background. (DrAfter123/Getty Images)

I turned 20 on December 23, 2024. some things have changed in me—not just the conquest of my scalp over my once-glorious hair, but also the loss of clarity about who I wanted to become. So, where does one go when they don’t know what they want, especially when their parents are pushing them toward learning something they themselves never could? Computer science. 

I’ve been living here in Langley Park. Sometimes, the construction sites fascinate me. “This is happening because a bunch of people decided it should. People like…like those crackheads rushing for a free donut before we toss them at midnight. Or the young Spanish woman with a child across the street—who is 14? Maybe 15, but no older. Wait…someone like me.”

At that moment, I realized the next question was unavoidable: what makes me stand out? Is it the 30 minutes of daily meditation I commit to? The doodles I make that lean dangerously close to “useless”? Or perhaps my passable English and poco Español?

In my search for answers, I looked both inward and outward, within myself and the small patch of earth I walk each day. Meditation and a job that paid $15 an hour became staples of my routine. During busy times, I my aim shifted to repeating the actions more efficiently. But a quote from Osho echoed in my mind:

"Man is not a machine, and it is not his destiny to become efficient. Efficiency is for machines, not for man. If man becomes efficient, he will lose something immensely valuable: his humanity."

From an early age, I’ve been labeled as someone who gets “lost.” And sure, I still take mental detours—retracing paths of thought that twist and turn like unpaved roads. Each episode of being “lost” has given me another theory on how the world might work.

One such episode hit during a slow hour at Dunkin’. As I stood there pondering what truly made me stand out, my thoughts drifted back to how I ended up here in the first place. I arrived in the U.S. as an international student, living in a dorm where my friends became my chosen family. It was like having cousins who taught you both the best and worst of things. After a semester of that joy, I transferred to D.C. to work and study.

I was 19 when I started working at an alcohol store—a questionable choice for a young adult, but hey, the great U.S.A. doesn’t always leave you with many options so no blames on me. Not after rejecting my visa twice before. 
That was 6th grade. I recently got my green card, and life got a little easier. That’s when the gratitude took root in my heart. At the alcohol store, I was the employee—working 10-hour days, carrying heavy boxes of fragile booze, and arranging them neatly on shelves. But the illegal cash wasn’t nearly as heavy as my heart when I learned one of our regular customers had died. And the cause? Let’s just say it was a 30 minute bike ride.

Fast-forward to Dunkin’. People working at Dunkin’ neither get to carry big boxes of extremely fragile alcohol on their shoulder nor do they get to arrange them neatly on shelves. My first few months were spent saying, “I’ll make it” and “large hot coffee with extra sugar and cream.” Only rarely did anyone in Langley Park order a latte. But when they did, I didn’t just “press buttons and pour milk”.

Instead, I steamed the milk at an angle to avoid large bubbles. I held the cup in my hand, moving it in an anti-clockwise direction while I poured the milk from a height. As the espresso and milk blended more and more, I shortened the height of the cup and gave it a little wiggle to let the white crème pierce its way through the brown residue. I cut the white oval that just pushed through, with the same milk at a greater force from an even higher distance to reveal a decent looking heart. 

My coworkers admired my work, but none showed any interest in learning. That’s when it hit me. It wasn’t the 30 minutes of meditation, nor the sketches I created.  It was the willpower to learn what meditation is and to try it out. It was not the sketches I made. But it was the fact that every time I started, I started out with something new. It was me trying to understand the lyrics of Lil Wayne.

My dilemma now is whether art should be my career path. I often find myself torn between creating my own work and admiring the masterpieces I see on TikTok—pieces crafted by those who’ve honed their craft for years. Their consistency comes from viewing art as their life’s work.

“Do I want art to be mine?” That’s the question I’m wrestling with, all while getting “lost” yet again.

Trying new things that align with our beliefs can create artists. For me, that means ensuring there’s always a beautiful heart under the lid of someone’s coffee cup—whether or not they open it. The heart will always be there, beautiful and ready to dissolve as it meets the sugar. But only after it’s been uploaded to Instagram, of course.

(The author is a computer science student studying in the United States.)