Jar of Keys Sena Chang ’24 explores the concept of mindset—one of the six competencies in ASIJ’s Portrait of a Learner—through a personal essay.
The keys I have collected far outnumber the doors I have opened. At age seven, cherubic eyes may widen at the sight of a stuffed animal, or perhaps a multicolored lollipop. Yet somehow, my black irises did not follow this unsaid tradition; instead, they lit up at the sight of old keys, rusty and worn out from years of use. My delicate fingers served as a harsh contrast to the jumbled keys placed in them; for years my affinity for old keys would persist. Any one of these keys may have been passed through the hands of several family generations, yet its unique teeth perfectly grab onto the keyhole of only a single door in the world. In retrospect, perhaps it was this knowledge that ignited fireworks of glee through my veins whenever my eyes caught
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THE AMERICAN SCHOOL IN JAPAN
sight of a key. It could lead to a lace-covered palace, the Louvre, Lincoln’s house—the vast possibilities extended exponentially. Tied to the deepest chambers of my heart was an eternal connection to each of these keys—only when I discovered the rich histories engraved into these individual keys did I finally let go.
I have found one hundred keys, and each has led to another door I have yet to open.
my mason jar sent me swerving right and left on my homely railroad; its jagged, unique edges that have passed too many fingers for my mind to comprehend clashed with the monochrome, linear backdrop of my life. Back then, there stood an answer next to every question; when I asked my keys where their houses lay, they just replied in a foreign language of ridges and curves. It was perhaps an innate behavior, this obsession with perfection.
It was my obsession with orderliness that sent me on the very edge of chaos, a word foreign to my dictionary of seven years. I had been cruising along a railroad track repetitive and predictable, its linear path stabilizing my agitated young mind. Yet the keys housed in
I was at war at five years old. I was at war with a deadly creature that threatened to snatch me from my dreams and wreak havoc. When the clock struck nine, its spindly fingers would reach up from underneath every so slowly, creating an element of dreadful suspense. It
