On Choosing a Partner
In my teenage years—in tandem with all the other naïve and absurd thoughts that used to inhabit this mind—I approached every potential relationship believing that it could work irrespective of the circumstances. Likely merely a subconscious response to ameliorate myself from the persistent sting of loneliness, I blinded myself to the glaringly obvious unanswered questions: Have I spent enough time with this person to truly know anything about them? Do I truly know if they feel anything for me in the first place? Have I devoted any time to think about what I actually intend to do with this relationship? Over time, as I became disillusioned by the harsh reality of human nature, whether preemptively realizing the incompatibility or thwarted by the sting of rejection, I became cognizant of this blatant ignorance. I subsequently conformed to the conventional perspective of determining a romantic partner—concocting absurd requirements and exactifying the specific traits that one should possess, conceptualizing abstracted caricatures of others through ideal types, drawing countless arbitrary boundaries and assigning red flags to any undesirable action, and obsessing over the circumstances that precede any form of relationship.
It was only until recently that I questioned these meticulous standards and arbitrary requirements: why should I pretend that I understand this volatile and capricious heart? Why should I act as if I knew with any degree of certainty if a relationship would truly work or not? As if I understood human chemistry, as if I comprehended the intricacies of each interaction? As if I knew precisely the emotional reactions that would ensue? As if I could predict the future—the aggregate outcome of each and every event that would befall us? Why persist in this façade, going against every principle and lesson that I’ve ever internalized in my life? Why make an exception for our natural inclination to believe certain things—our unreliable intuition and our haughty sense of judgment—when time and time again it has proven itself excessively prejudiced and wholly presumptuous? Why do we pretend to know, when, constantly deceived by our emotions and our myopic worldview, we know virtually nothing?
Knowing what I know now about human nature and the human condition, could I be so oblivious to blithely approach any human interaction, romantic or platonic, expecting the other person to be perfect in any conceivable way? To have neither flaw nor fault in character? To have neither scar nor blemish? To have neither trauma nor vice? Insofar as we want a relationship to reflect the same values as we would life is general, the solution is neither to remain oblivious to another’s flaws, nor is it to manufacture absurd standards believing that doing otherwise is settling for less. In the same way that suffering is an indispensable component of a fulfilling life, imperfection is an indispensable component of a fulfilling relationship. It is what gives it color and shape, a mission and a meaning, a story and a purpose.
To give someone the benefit of the doubt—to eschew our spurious preconceptions of relational compatibility, to lay bare the ignorance and whimsicality that resides in our hearts, to be tolerant, sensitive, and empathetic towards another’s deficiencies—is to let our stories pan out beyond the first chapter.
Color
“The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny—it is the light that guides your way.”
― Heraclitus
For a long time now, I’ve made it a habit to marvel at the ridiculousness, the hypocrisy, or the absurdity of people’s character or behavior. I’ve always embraced my curiosity, my openness in thought, and my natural inclination for self-dialogue. Although it has undoubtedly paved many avenues towards many realms of knowledge that I now take for granted in my life, I’ve never sought out the idea that it might be holding me back in some way. Like most things in life, it must be held in balance. It may seem trivial—these internal monologues, these whimsical rants, and these petty frustrations I have with the world around me—but, as I’ve always argued, everything we do in this life is ultimately a trade-off. If we decide to do something, we are equally deciding to not do something else. I’ve completely failed to realize myself that this equally applies to thought as much as it does action. If we decide to think about something, we are equally deciding to not think about something else.
I operated under the presumption that thoughts are an infinite resource, that they are things that can just whimsically come and go, that I can entertain a thought in the peace and safety of my own mind without consequence. But the truth is that my thoughts are ultimately who I am. Although I am not jerked around like a puppet any longer—implying that my actions are not overridden by my emotions—we must remember that humans are not puppets. We are not merely what we do; we are as much what we do as what we think. Even if I don’t let my emotions dictate my actions, I am permitting my emotions to dictate my thoughts. And, by extension, that means I am letting my emotions dictate my character. If it doesn’t waste time, it wastes away the soul.
“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I don’t need to have an opinion about the things that are irrelevant to the mission I set out to do in this life, about people that I have no power or no right to change, about things that I cannot or will not understand. My curious nature cripples me in the sense that it will always capitalize on the chance to reflect upon something, however trivial or inconsequential, however sensational or exigent. But I’m realizing that when I am confronted with something in life, I don’t have to have something to say about it. I have the option to simply move on, to simply walk away and continue doing what I originally set out to do, and to decide that something simply doesn’t deserve to be allotted a role in my life, nor do I have to give it a chance to imbue its nature into my soul.
Is this what my life was meant for? To ponder trivialities, to occupy my mind with the inconsequential, to burden my soul with the manufactured suffering and grief? I may try to concoct an intricate excuse—that these thoughts are merely for fun, for humor, for satisfying my curiosity, but at the end of the day, these thoughts and these feelings are who I am; they are what I intend on presenting to fellow human beings, and they are what I devote my heart and soul into, irrespective of how much is devoted. Even though I’ve done so in a manner that eschews condescension, moral superiority, and insensitivity, I am beginning to recognize that if they are neither contributing to the change I seek to make—whether in myself or in the world around me—these thoughts constitute a meaningless activity.
Confidence
Why is it that we glorify confidence as one of the hallmarks of a strong, resilient character, when it has proven time and time again that it fails us? When we succeed, we do not hesitate to attribute our it to our determination, our resolve, our tenacity. But when we fail, we are all too eager to sweep it under the rug, to turn a blind eye to the fact that we blatantly misled ourselves, and to forget that we shut down all the avenues of truth that were presented to us. Is this tenuous, fragile state of being self-assured and the act of being assertive actually contributing anything to help us understand a situation for what it is, as opposed to merely how we feel about it?
All too often in our culture today, our compulsion to maintain an image of confidence becomes an obstacle to reason and objectivity. Words that indicate uncertainty—might, maybe, perhaps—are conflated with unsubstantiated signs of weakness and a lack of knowledge. On the surface, one might argue that the only situation where confidence is good is when it is conjoined with lucid and rational judgment. But even with sound judgment, how can anyone be so sure? Why be sure when—in this paradoxical, hostile, and chaotic world—it’s nearly impossible to be completely sure from an objective standpoint? And even being justifiably sure on the outcome of our choices, it’s more than likely that our selfish, narrow-minded, and erratic emotional tendencies—shortcomings that are closely associated with any variation of confidence, haughtiness, or arrogance—are inevitably undoing any rational judgment we once had?
Lest we continue to conflate confidence with character, charisma with competence, bravery with bravado, and certainty with success. Above all, in an effort to whittle down and disintegrate this pretense of confidence at its roots, it should be an indication of integrity and humility—not self-deprecation and shame—to say, “I was wrong.”
The Heart
Ever since I started this blog six months ago in December, there’s no question that I’ve fundamentally changed. In everything that I do, I am able to think with clarity in perspective and reason, to hone my words with sharpness in focus and intent, and ground myself in truth and purpose. For virtually my entire life, I’ve been subjugated by the thought of failure and loss, of inadequacy and hypocrisy, and of purposelessness and inconsequentiality, whereas now I have little doubt in terms of what I’m meant to do in this life of mine; I am at peace with the thought of death; I am unperturbed by the notion of suffering and strife. My emotional volatility is generally very low. In the vast majority of circumstances, whether in work, daily life, friends, or family, I am content, stoic, and grateful that I’m able to be here at all, even if to suffer.
But there’s a part of me that hasn’t changed. There persists one catalyst in particular that has never failed, and continues not to fail in instigating a relentless and inexorable chaos within my heart—love. It merely takes a few fateful encounters with a special person, one fleeting moment of eye contact or physical touch, or a couple intoxicating thoughts of possibility as an impetus for this disconsolate, sulky heart to spur it into an irreversible, frenetic spiraling into utter chaos, impelled by quixotic tendencies and an undeniable, ravenous desperation for love. Despite all the progress I’ve made cultivating the mind and however much I perceive that I’ve fundamentally changed internally, I am still far too easily blinded by love. Compared to my past self, while I think vastly differently, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not as if I feel any differently. It’s only now that I feel in my rational mind as if I’m an innocent bystander to this chaos, witnessing the storm brewing in the distance. Do I view it with disdain or with awe? With contempt or with appreciation? With fear or with hope? No matter what I think, no matter how much I try to reason with this insolent and tumultuous heart, I will never prevent the unpreventable. I will nevertheless become helplessly stranded amid this raging ocean, swallowed by this sea, and the feeble comfort of this rationality—viciously wrested from my consciousness by the inexorable pull of this whirlpool of emotion.
Though what is most peculiar is when I juxtapose this chaos with the aforementioned resilience that I’ve recently built up in this state of mind; this acute self-awareness and this ability to at any moment detach—however momentarily—from the chains of my present circumstances combined with a tumultuous stream of emotion creates within me a strange duality of truth. It seems that at the center of the pursuit of a life well lived lies this fundamental ambivalence of human nature, wherein the consciousness seems to be stranded amidst an unceasing tug-of-war between the heart and the mind. It seems that the meaning of life remains suspended in limbo; is it an unending war, or is it a dance with possibility?
There exists no doubt in my mind what I’m meant to do—what I’m supposed to do and what is deemed reasonable. To fall in love with someone I know nothing about? Absurdity. To incessantly envisage emotional intimacy and connection? Delusion. To believe that they just might be the one and only? Stupidity. In my mind, I know with certainty there is a cost. I know there is a risk. I know it will subjugate and oppress me. I know this frenzied desire and unleashed emotion will derail all semblance of rational thought and my life purpose. But the heart remains unperturbed by the fact that I have more important work to do in this life, unfettered by the notion that I might just be making a fool of myself, unfazed by the very distinct possibility that these feelings are all but an elaborate delusion. In the heat of the moment, disoriented and dazed in the midst of all the confusion and the cacophony, desperate and distraught from all the uncertainty and indecision, nothing—nothing feels more right, seems closer to an ultimate truth than the mere prospect of love.
Blinded by love, coaxed by possibility, determined to find redemption, there seems to be no doubt in my heart, either. There persists an irrefutable yearning ensconced within it—an inexorable desire for passion, for love, for chaos. The frenzied rush of sex, the unmistakable warmth of two souls inextricably locked in an embrace, the invigorating sensation of a reckless wander into this war-torn and ruin-strewn battlefield of emotion. If I said, from the absolute depths of my heart, that I don’t long for the radiant warmth of another’s heart, that I don’t yearn for another’s grace enveloping my consciousness, that I don’t crave the taste of soft lips and the invigorating gaze of a lover, that there is no ravenous beast of lust and desire lurking within me, that I am not completely and utterly starving for love, there would be no greater lie to have come out of my mouth.
Have I starved myself of love far too long? Are my emotions indeed delusions? Or are they shrouded avenues towards a greater truth? As much as we try to psychologically detach ourselves from the inexorable chaos outside our perception, as much as we try to understand—relentlessly and meticulously peeling away at the seemingly innumerable number of layers of reality that constitute an ultimate truth—there seems to be nothing more undeniably real and irrevocably true than our feelings and emotions. The pure, unfettered joy of eating when famished, drinking when parched, resting when exhausted, the warm comfort of a mother’s embrace, the relentless gravity of a lover that tugs upon our hearts, the searing pain of smoking hot oil splashing onto our skin, the visceral panic when a large animal charges at us—what are they but atoms scattering haphazardly in space? What are they but players in this nonsensical game we call life? But in that moment before our minds can rationally justify how we feel—regardless of whether we want to feel those emotions or not—we are one with the chaos.
But the more I contemplate this ambivalence between the heart and the mind, the more I am convinced that this ambivalence is the point. After all, if I cannot control my emotions, what am I, but driftwood in an incomprehensibly vast ocean, ceaselessly tossed by the waves and dragged by the currents? What am I, but a ravenous predator in a desperate pursuit of a meal? Or am I the prey of such a beast, merely awaiting an inevitable fate? And if I cannot experience my emotions, what am I, but a faceless and featureless entity, a cog in an incomprehensibly complex machine, an actor in a plotless play? My mind reorienting itself in a state of emotional chaos—should it be akin to a policeman catching a thief red-handed? Or should it resemble a shepherd guiding back sheep that have been led astray?
To fall in love and find nothing—there exists no greater waste of time, energy, and attention. But to fall in love and find love—there exists nothing quite as momentous, visceral, and irrevocably true. And I speak as if I had a choice between them—as if any semblance of reason survived to discern which is which. In many ways, this inability to discern and this revocation of agency in my emotional state has been tormenting my mind for the past month. But after many long days of emotional carnage and the attrition of reason, I’m realizing that perhaps there is no reason to fight. Perhaps the point isn’t to change the way I feel—to shut out these absurd thoughts, to reprogram my emotional disposition, to regulate how I should feel at all times. Lest I forget that my heart has its reasons of which my mind knows nothing, and that the heart, like any other source of suffering and grief, is also an indispensable source of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
I didn’t choose to feel this way, as I didn’t choose to suffer, either.
But perhaps, the point is not being able to choose at all in the first place.
But if I did have a choice, would I still choose to feel this way?
Natural
I’ve always found it particularly interesting that some may find it rational to justify the overly high standards of modern dating culture—the preemptive raising of “red flags,” absurd and arbitrary perfectionist demands in physical attractiveness, characterological traits, and for the entire dating process from start to finish to be free of discomfort or strife. Many still seem to justify it as inherently natural, framing it as a cold calculation innately wired into our biology as a means of carrying out natural selection—to find the best possible partner for reproductive and generational success.
But all too often we forget that within our modern world—characterized by endlessly complex social constructs, caste systems, convoluted norms, and nonsensical rules that arbitrarily determine reward and punishment—very few things we do are truly natural. Since society probably hasn’t existed long enough for us to fully adapt our psychology to it, there are a myriad of tendencies that have persisted in our biology that are ultimately counterproductive to our success within a system that is inherently artificial. Natural selection simply doesn’t work the same way it used to; if one of the main purposes of society is to ensure the safety and prosperity of all its constituents, the implication of this is that the majority of those with seemingly undesirable and counterproductive traits can and will pass on such traits. How do we determine the efficacy of certain traits within this context? Do selfishness, hate, deceit, pessimism, haughtiness, pride, obstinance, temperament, irrationality, and irascibility—all arguably very natural and instinctive traits possessed by human beings—serve to augment or diminish the prosperity within this world that we’ve meticulously designed?
We’ve already decided within the construct of society that basic human decency requires that we are patient with one another, that we help those that can be helped, that we build one another up even despite our deficiencies. We’ve already decided that survival of the fittest—perhaps the most natural process there is in the order of life as we know it—isn’t anything that remotely resembles an ethical strategy; we‘ve already decided that it isn’t acceptable to just leave homeless people to perish and rot on the streets; we’ve already decided that eugenics is wrong—that we shouldn’t just kill off everyone that committed a crime or suffer from a mental illness to forcefully prevent them from proliferating their deficiencies. If we can agree on this, why do we persist in our hypocrisy? Why are we shocked or aghast when we discover that someone has some degree of undesirable traits? Why do we suddenly turn a blind eye to our responsibility as human beings when it comes to choosing a romantic partner? Why do we spurn our coworkers and our colleagues, our classmates and our teachers, our friends and our acquaintances, or mere strangers when they end up acting in dishonorable or detestable ways because of flaws in their character?
May we refrain from using our flawed and unstable notion of what is deemed natural to justify our wrongdoing merely when it is convenient to do so. Human civilization at this point is too far gone at this point—our worldview, our conception far too dissociated from the evolutionary underpinnings of our psychology. The rules of the game have changed—our conceptions of right and wrong, our awareness of humanity's collective consciousness and mutual prosperity, our understanding of role, responsibility, and reward in the intricate world that we’ve crafted for ourselves. We must constantly put to trial our instincts, our intuitions, our feelings; to think that they always act in our favor, to think that our lizard brain truly understands the artificial world that we live in, would be perhaps one of our greatest blunders.
The Fear of Missing Out
The mainstream notion of “the fear of missing out” is fundamentally flawed. When we truly take time to think about it—when we consider the staggering scale and complexity associated with absolutely everything that we could ever do in our entire life—we actually accomplish very little in our lives. Irrespective of the degree of ambition or initiative we have to cross off every item on our bucket lists, we nonetheless exhaust an infinitesimally small fraction of this daunting, infinite realm of possibility. The far more profound realization that we can make is that we all “miss out” equally.
“The fear of missing out” makes no real distinction between variety of activity and uniqueness of life experience; it is predicated on a spurious assumption that having more types of activities is inherently good, as it purportedly allows for more variation in our actual unique experience of life itself. But what if the nature of our experience of life is as much about what we don’t experience versus what we do experience? We are primarily defined by the interconnected sum of all the moments in our lives—regardless if they were moments of happiness or sadness, of pride or shame, of momentous importance or stark inconsequentiality, of abundant joy or woeful oppression—not the moments themselves; this ultimately means that the present act of interposing more variety of activity—by way of sparse and loosely related activities, at that—barely affects that collective sum. We are who we are only because of the incredibly specific set of circumstances that belong only to ourselves.
Virtually every individual who did anything remotely important in this world only did what they did because of the very specific way by which they chose to go about their lives. If we truly believe in a “fear of missing out,” all the success stories we learn about are actually failure stories. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be a failure; why didn’t he feel obligated to travel the world, go to more festivities, or get involved in more hobbies, when he instead consigned himself to the strife associated with leading and advocating for the civil rights of his people? Steve Jobs would be a failure; ninety hours of work per week is certainly going to increase his chances of missing out on all the joy and entertainment he could have going out with his friends or family.
If it doesn’t consume much of our time, it will still consume our attention. However minute and however significant, whatever the aggregate amount of mental energy spent must be less than our total mental capacity. Regardless of how resilient we think we are, for everyone there is an absolute limit; not only do we have to avoid reaching that absolute limit to circumvent the possibility of mental breakdown, but we must be perhaps even more mindful of the complex and dynamic interplay between all that preoccupies us. The mentality behind the “fear of missing out” presupposes that there is no limit to our attention and our energy—that simply cramming our lives with ceaselessly more variety is inherently beneficial. But whether they are larger questions in life—whether to engage with social media, to take on a side hustle or a second job, to get into a relationship—or something as insignificant as worrying about what brand of soap we use, what we will eat for dinner today, or what we will wear to a party, almost everything in our lives has an unforeseeable and incalculable cascading effect that impacts the outcome of our lives and the formation of our character far more than we might presume.
Not only is it that the quality of our work—what we originally set out to do in this world—can degrade depending on what clutters our information space and our perception, but it is also that the things that we decide belong within the realm of our consciousness can shape our character, whether for better or for worse. Indeed, there is great truth to be told in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations—“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts”—as well as in the Bible, in Matthew 6:21—”for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It is a mistake to construe ourselves as distinct, immutable entities navigating through time and space to find our way, when time, space, our corporeal being, and our consciousness are all one and the same—all essential, inseparable components of our universe that warp one another in inconceivable, endlessly complex ways. And to repeat one in a billion of those interactions amidst this incomprehensible chaos—at the same exact time, in the same exact place, in the same exact arrangement of atoms of all the molecules of our body, and all the exact sequences of chemical reactions occurring at every one of our neurotransmitters that constitute our experience of consciousness—would be an impossible task.
Mindfulness matters because it is the only means by which we can take control of this peculiar existence we’ve all been hurled into. If we choose to operate solely based on our capricious, unpredictable emotions, we have no choice but to accept our fate. ”Providence or atoms,” divine will or this incomprehensible chaotic entropy of the universe regardless, we cannot erase the indelible, reverse the irreversible, and change the unchangeable. If we’re not satisfied with the life we’ve wrought for ourselves, that if we’re not happy with the person that we’ve become, that if we’re not content with the product of the circumstances that we’ve been given, there is no one to blame but ourselves, nothing at fault but our own ignorance.
It isn’t about a variety of activities. It isn’t about “missing out,” because we all “miss out” on the opportunity to live out someone else’s unique experience of life, however banal or sensational they seem on the surface. It’s about embracing the vastly different walks of life we each possess. It’s about recognizing that while we don’t necessarily have to be proud of everything we experience and don’t experience alike, it will nevertheless ultimately define who we are and what we achieve.
Forgiveness
We find it all too easy to be haughty, to be disdainful, to speak with a choleric air of arrogance and superiority when we impudently operate by the premise that the people we’re speaking to are intentionally lazy, careless, inattentive, selfish, immoral, or hypocritical.
But time and time again, once we actually take the time to learn the other person’s story, we regret our contemptuous behavior. It is only after the fact—only after we’ve learned that the person we lambasted for being timorous and cowardly had an incredibly difficult and traumatic past, only after we’ve learned that the employee that we shamed for making a mistake on our order has a severe mental disability or grew up with no parents, only after we’ve learned that the ostensibly irresponsible person that never showed up to our appointment got into a tragic car accident—that we begin to commiserate, that we begin to feel remorse.
We are shamelessly quick to assign motives and fabricate narratives to swiftly quell our fear of the unknown, to provide us with at least a surface-level explanation for others’ behavior. But why? Why play this inane game vacillating between contempt and remorse when we can just be a little patient, to take a moment to ask the other person why, to wait things out and actually be presented with real evidence of a certain narrative?
If we latch onto a rigid ideal of free will—that, despite all the chaos, uncertainty, and complexity of this world that we live in, we are all allocated equally difficult circumstances, that we have an equal response to those circumstances, that we all play under the same rules, and thus that we become equally capable actors to carry out our individual desires—forgiveness ceases to make any sense. If we are confronted with any trait or characteristic in another individual that might be considered remotely detestable, why wouldn’t we detest it, if it’s their fault, after all?
But if we do indeed presume that we operate under the same rules and the same constraints, then why is it that we’re not just all the same? Within such a perspective, how do we explain human difference? What is the true origin of benevolence or malevolence that drags us to take certain paths in life? If we predicate that we did indeed choose to be different, then the question inevitably always boils down to what made us choose one thing over another? Why does someone choose to do good over bad, or bad over good? It would be incredibly naive of us to insist that each one of us is granted an unlimited set of options, all of which we deem are simultaneously viable and appropriate. And where do such definitions of viability and appropriateness even derive from, at that? If we were to explain human difference from such a perspective, the logical conclusion would be that there must be some inherent energy within each of our spirits that predisposes us towards a certain path, and, at that point, we’ve come full circle, proving that there is no real choice, and no true free will.
Tolerance and forgiveness is a means of circumventing this absurdity; within each of them is fundamentally an implicit understanding of these limitations that exist within our supposed free will. Just as we might criticize a parent internalizing contempt for their purportedly failed child—the very same child they were responsible for instilling sound character into—it is no different that we might criticize one another for the internalization of contempt at a societal level. If we can agree that this rigid understanding of free will is even remotely flawed—that both the world that we live in and the physical bodies that we inhabit are incomprehensibly complex, impossible to control, inherently unjust in its design, unpredictable, wayward, and capricious—to forgive and to tolerate are the only right things to do. The alternative is the complete and utter destruction of the fabric of humanity—all of us, wallowing in an unceasing pit of antagonism and blame, mired in a putrid miasma of pride and obstinance, and branded with indelible guilt and shame.
Lessons Learned
When there were hundreds of millions of people who lost everything in all the horrific wars of the last century, why do we in the present day lay complacent? Why do we continue to perpetuate hate, intolerance, and violence in our world when they are the indisputable root cause of such catastrophes and atrocities? Why do we persist in this ambivalence about the nature of right and wrong, when, for those that have actually endured such tragedies, there is not an inkling of doubt?
Humanity’s collective internalization of lessons learned is akin to a glacier—a gigantic heterogeneous mass of ice, snow, water, rock, and sediment—inching along month after month, week by week, and day by day, moving so slowly that its progress is virtually imperceptible. On the other hand, if we were to visualize the lessons learned of individuals, it might resemble an avalanche—a torrent of snow tumbling down a mountainside at staggering volume and dizzying speeds. Neil Peart, in the song Mission, wrote:
In the grip
Of a nameless possession
A slave to the drive of obsession
A spirit with a vision
Is a dream with a mission
For a singular consciousness, doubt seldom holds back the most determined of individuals; they become entranced by the very profundity and imperativeness of the task that lay ahead of them. No matter what obstacles may come their way and no matter what radical changes they must make, they will inevitably find their way, whereas a collective consciousness—any form of group, tribe, or society—is bogged down by such obstacles. By nature’s design, every human will be different—different circumstances, and thus different formation of characterological traits and idiosyncrasies that determine the design of each individual’s decision-making faculties, and thus the conception of right and wrong, of what is significant and insignificant, of what is worth changing and what isn’t worth changing. And considering what we understand about human psychology, there is far more likely to be a paucity of humility than there would be pride and intractability in the average individual. For the vast majority of human history, the individual has seldom had the means to overturn the status quo, only able to inch it along.
However, it’s not as though many of those lessons are simply lost generation after generation. It may be that the vast majority of lessons are indeed simply lost in time, but what few remain are those resilient enough to impart some miniscule degree of knowledge or imbue some form of wisdom into our collective consciousness. From a certain perspective, we’ve made immense progress—the gaining cultural traction of the repudiation of racism, sexism, and arbitrary forms of discrimination in society, the rejection of unnecessary violence, or the growing awareness of environmental and sustainability of our existence on this planet. Despite this, we must ask: Are we no longer waging wars and murdering one another on a daily basis? Are there no more victims of corporate or governmental corruption, greed, and negligence? Are we still not on the brink of world war or nuclear war at any given moment?
Within the context of modern society, the aforementioned power play between the individual and the group has been inverted in some sense; the individual—now with equipped with tools capable of mass destruction whether in the form of a firearm, the bomb, or the computer—has the means of inflicting irreversible damage upon humanity, potentially even reversing all the progress made after millennia. It begs the question—have we actually progressed? And if we have, what difference does that progress make when we’re now far more capable of wreaking havoc and undertaking more forms of malevolence than we ever have?
It is also another conundrum entirely—and a conundrum certainly worth bringing up—if we question the value of collective progress; we already seldom ask ourselves what specifically needs progressing, let alone whether or not we need to progress in the first place. After all, to nature, it makes no difference; what are an avalanche and a glacier but water molecules shifting around from place to place? Everything that happens on Earth is an unceasing, inexorable, and self-sustaining cycle of cause and effect, and all is one and the same. Perhaps everything is already in balance. In the same way nature needs predators as it does prey, death as it does life, famine and drought as it does abundance and prosperity, storms and gusts of wind as it does sunlight and gentle breezes, it could be that we need antagonists just as much as we need protagonists, chaos just as much as we need peace, anger just as much as we need kindness, urgency just as much as we need patience, laziness just as much as we need industriousness, deceit just as much as we need truth, evil just as much as we need good, and suffering just as much as we need joy.
Perhaps the question is not whether we can win this battle against suffering—not whether or not we should suffer—but it is rather a question of how and why we suffer at all. The question merely becomes what battles we choose to fight and what sides we choose to take. Yes—the specific act of exhorting the people around us to be just slightly less evil and a little more kind may indeed be what is necessary to maintain this balance, but there is a world of difference between demanding that others be a certain way versus demanding that the universe be a certain way. The former is diligence, and the latter is insanity.
But it may be that in the end, it makes no difference to us. Perhaps the pathway towards change and towards a meaningful and purposeful life, whether at the individual or group level, is in this ceaseless battle to eradicate evil, hate, and any form of malevolence; it is this paradoxically futile, yet valiant, endeavor to achieve the unachievable, to win the unwinnable, to make possible the impossible.
If we go back to this paradoxical notion of suffering, perhaps that is the point of it all—to suffer, even if not collectively advancing humanity as a whole, even if we repeat the mistakes of the past, for it is all that gives us meaning in the end.
Why—why fight a battle is both unending and without victory?
Because—what else is there to do?
Texting
Ghosting has undeniably become a problem. Whether committed within the context of job applications, job resignations, dating apps, or the average text conversation between friends, family, or acquaintances, it seems to elicit the uglier aspects of human nature within social interaction. But I would argue that the issue is less in the act of ghosting itself, but more so in the act of being ignored. In the vast majority of real world social contexts where you aren’t interacting with toddlers, recalcitrant teenagers, or overly persistent peddlers and solicitors, no one is going to be ignoring each other in face-to-face conversations. Virtually no one with a semblance of emotional intelligence can possibly bear the agonizing awkwardness and shame that comes with the act of blatantly ignoring someone who is directly talking to us, and yet, we find it acceptable and commonplace to both intentionally ghost and inadvertently ghost when it comes to email or text—whether due to a technical error, messages getting buried when we’re busy, or simply forgetting to respond to messages. There’s something inherently unnatural, something poignantly dehumanizing about ghosting; this act of temporarily shutting out communication is virtually never a part of our real-life social interactions, yet it has become the norm of our interactions online and through our phones.
All this ultimately elicits the underlying problem of text conversation; it is an act so farfetched and disassociated from the nuances and minutiae that constitute the complex dance that we innately know as human communication. The fundamental issue is that we conceptualize the act of texting not so much as a utilitarian device to optimize barebones communication—a means of providing constant and seamless updates to inform others of certain information, or to arrange the details for events or appointments. Rather, we construe it as a substitutive simulation of conversation, wherein we instinctively superimpose our expectations of face-to-face interactions upon lifeless text. With that gaping void within our conceptualization of conversation, we are left to merely imagine what those nonverbal cues actually were; were they saying something in a sarcastic, aggressive, or gentle tone? Or was it something in between? Or something else entirely? To what extent does our impression of a message change depending on the degree of delay between responses? How do we feel when someone responds instantaneously? After five seconds? Thirty seconds? Five minutes? One hour? Five hours? After entire days or weeks? Or never? What about their particular choice of words or which grammatical structures they deployed, or how much proper punctuation they used? Is our perception faithful to the original message’s author, or is it much more likely that we’re imposing our own perception upon their words?
So is this truly a necessary evil we must endure in order to reap the benefits of the convenience of text communication? It’s incredibly unlikely that we’re all psychopaths, that we’re all cruel and insensitive individuals who simply don’t care about the quality of our conversations, if there’s even a conversation to be had in the first place. No, it’s far more likely that we were simply never taught how to use this ostensibly dehumanizing medium of social interaction in the first place. Our mistake is in believing that it is a substitute for real conversation. Instant messaging—or more broadly, social media in general—is a tool, and it needs to be treated like a tool. And just as we would expect a warning label when we buy, let’s say, a table saw, a tool that cuts off thousands of people’s fingers every year, or any other dangerous appliance, we might expect a similar warning label when we decide to utilize these apps. And yet none of them seem to posit any warning or disclaimer for its users, at least none that are at all obvious. Is that not profound negligence on their part? Because we’ve already acknowledged, whether as a society or through scientific consensus, the extreme psychological damage that excessive social media use can induce.
Here’s a rough outline of what I might propose:
Take all texts at face value. Remember that this is a tool, and not an actual conversation.
Do not assign any negative emotion or unrealistic expectations whatsoever to a message, or lack thereof.
Use video or phone calls when it’s urgent and important, and emails when it’s not time-sensitive.
Make your messages straightforward and goal-oriented. Avoid excessive texting to discuss anything that isn’t about accomplishing a goal.
Always keep in mind that there is a very high likelihood of misinterpretation on both sides of the conversation if the wrong wording is chosen, or if the conversation deviates into complex or emotionally-charged subjects.
Constantly acknowledge that texting doesn’t replicate the nonverbal cues of face-to-face conversation. Do not let your mind wander and play out what the conversation might look like in reality, because it is terrible at doing so.
If you wouldn’t do it in real life, don’t do it. Only say things to people that you would have the courage or mental fortitude to say to them face-to-face. And if we don’t ignore others in our actual day-to-day conversations, don’t decide that it’s okay in text.
Choice
One of the fundamental paradoxes of our lives is the one of choice.
In the contemplation of our decisions—our rudimentary, superficial calculus of cause and effect, our biased judgments of what constitutes a good or bad outcome, and our overweening faith in a stable, predictable world—we often forget that, as humans, we have an absolutely horrendous track record at predicting the future, and an even worse record of making decisions that ultimately contribute to a happier or more fulfilling life.
This is because we forget to factor in our bias for “good” outcomes when we partake in that calculus; by operating by our instinctive preconceptions of “good,” we predispose ourselves towards the path of least resistance, the options that seem to be laden with less suffering and strife. We would much rather prefer it if we didn’t fail; if we didn’t get fired from or rejected for a job; if we passed an exam or evaluation with flying colors; if we didn’t have to end a relationship or friendship even if it is holding us back.
The paradox is that while we implicitly understand that suffering and strife is the only means by which we can grow as individuals and derive any meaning whatsoever from life, all our decision-making calculus is coded to obviate it. We think we know what’s best for us, but the stark reality is that we couldn’t be more wrong. Every single success story that we celebrate consists of failure, of people that made ostensibly terrible mistakes—failed classes, job rejections, ruined relationships, or missed opportunities. But by overcoming these challenges that came their way, they were able to divert space for growth in other areas in their life that ultimately contributed towards their success.
So why is it, then, that we have such an aversion towards making purportedly risky choices? Do we really understand the long-term consequences of persisting on the beaten path, let alone the less-traveled one? And, above all, do we understand how those consequences will ultimately contribute towards a life worth living?
If we value personal growth, if we wish to live a life with meaning, purpose, and success, then, paradoxically, we must learn to make decisions that will likely lead us to failure, in one form or another.
“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”
— Seth Godin
A Certain Vibe
I’ve had a bad history of falling in love far too easily, yet being haplessly daunted by rejection; more precisely, it was the anticipation of rejection and not rejection itself that ultimately sabotaged me in my quest to find love. Throughout my teenage and college years, despite overidealizing the notion of romance and being overly susceptible to the capriciousness of my romantic impulses that wrought chaos in my ghostly and forlorn heart, I never mustered the courage to even make it to the point where I could even be rejected in the first place. I’ll spare you, the reader, from the cringe-inducing details of my many failed attempts that were riddled throughout this epoch of my life.
In 2019, having already decoupled myself from the psychological constraints of school and church that had once mired me in a seemingly perpetual spiral of loneliness and failure, I began to formulate a sense of independence and confidence to take on the world. Having already spent a year working at Paris Baguette—where I had just been promoted to a management position—not only did I attain financial freedom, but it also led me to forming many meaningful and lasting friendships that boosted my social confidence. And with that newfound social confidence, I felt as if I was ready to delve back into this game of romance.
Since February that same year, I’ve had a playlist on Spotify entitled “A Certain Vibe”; what seemed to be a straightforward collection of rap and pop songs ended up becoming a profound manifestation of my volatile, fledgling emotions and ambitions in this quest for redemption. Recognizing the need for change, I intuitively ascribed nearly all the dissatisfaction that existed in my inconsequential life then to my past timorousness, eccentricism, and general inability to fit into nearly any social context. The music embodied an almost vengeful antithesis to my cowardly, socially awkward and emotionally dysfunctional past self. I wanted so desperately to prove that I was past that phase of my life, that I was fundamentally a completely different person
The odd thing, however, is that even when I created the playlist, I wasn’t quite capable of explicitly defining what this vibe even was; it was a collection of songs that didn’t merely evoke distinct, clear-cut emotions, as did most other music I listened to, but it was rather an opportunity to vicariously live a life I never lived. It was a entrancing glimpse into a surreal, unfamiliar world—visions of carefree abandon, of night drives out to the club, of the intoxicating, alluring scent of perfume and cologne, of the strangely sensual lingering odor of cigarettes and alcohol, of walks along the beach amidst a sunset glimmering along the waters, of the blissful sensations of wafting along warm, intimate air and gentle, caressing summer breezes, of the mesmerizing gaze and the captivating touch of a coveted lover, gripped by infatuation, hypnotized by this irrefutable feeling, causing the world around to collapse in on itself. Passion, desire, lust, freedom—all imbued within this paradoxically intimate yet elusive, familiar yet foreign memory.
The more songs I added to the playlist, the more profound and nuanced these emotions became; the more I listened, the more often I would transport myself into the mysteriousness of this parallel universe, captivated by a version of existence that so vastly contrasted my mostly idyllic and solitary daily life. It turns out that by both harnessing this vindictive energy to prove my past self wrong and emulating the spirit of this “certain vibe,” I eventually did manage to end up in a relationship, which ended up lasting almost two years. While I do have plenty of fond memories within that relationship, there persisted the same kind of emotional capriciousness and turmoil that had haunted me in the past. Whether provoked by the minutiae of daily life, the petty instances of misunderstanding, or by a genuinely significant emotional rift in our interactions, there were many moments where I would mire myself in an oppressive miasma of anger, frustration, or jealousy, which typically eventually devolved into old habits of self-pity, apathy, and complacency. I became jerked around like a puppet—a helpless and woeful victim of my circumstances. Despite all this determination and strife to redeem my past self by proving I could get into a relationship, I now realized that I was trying to prove the entirely wrong thing. What I needed to change most about myself was not my ability to fit in, to effectively socialize, to put on a mask of confidence, or to ameliorate my loneliness in particular; no—these were all but symptoms of a larger problem in my life that I had been blind to. The underlying problem was just how heavily I relied on my emotions to navigate not merely within relationships, but the broader scope of life as a whole.
“A Certain Vibe” does not necessarily represent a life solely consumed by relationships, sex, alcohol, drugs, and an overarching hedonism, despite the recurring motifs of such that exist in the premise of many songs in the playlist. Rather, at its core, it represents a fundamentally unpredictable life—one tossed by the whim of circumstance, wrought by torrents of emotion, and thoroughly engrossed by myopic, often selfish desire. The ultimate goal of such a lifestyle is to maximize the degree of sensual experience—if not merely induced by psychoactive substances, provoked by the thrill of the party, aroused by the seductive, inexorable pull of sex and romance. And to achieve such a goal, it inevitably devolves into a game to appease or seduce others by maximizing perceptions of attractiveness—fashion and physicality, wealth and status, charisma and confidence. But not only did one have to possess this laundry list of qualities, but, more importantly, this lifestyle demanded the kind of resilience to endure this emotional whirlpool whose degree of strength depended entirely on the whimsical, arbitrary perceptions of others.
Alas, as I eventually learned the hard way, these were games I was never quite willing to play. This bravado that had once spurred me on an almost maniacal quest for redemption had predictably petered out. Being on the extreme end of the continuum of agreeableness, a life dictated by emotion was untenable; interpersonal conflicts, ruled by emotional impulse, proliferated irrationality and thus unpredictability, often making them both psychologically oppressive and monumentally difficult to solve. Being heavily biased towards introversion didn’t exactly help me either; forcing myself to engage in a myriad of social interactions—often superficial, petty, and vapid, at that—was extremely draining and arduous. In many ways, I envy the unrestrained and carefree abandon characteristic of this life, but I have concluded now that I can neither succeed in nor ultimately find happiness in it; my emotional and intellectual disposition is simply not designed to tolerate the capriciousness and vapidity of such a lifestyle. Despite my past fascination and awe, I know that I will never be able to fully immerse myself in this world—this certain vibe. At this point in my life, I've acknowledged that given the potential I’ve realized in myself, I have far more important work to do in this world than squandering it on this tireless, wearisome search for an elusive soul mate, especially in a world that is continually distancing itself farther and farther from a sound definition of love.
I haven’t fallen in love in three years. And in those three years, I’ve made immeasurable progress in terms of emotional awareness and maturity. But as much as I claim to have adopted the cultivation of the rational mind and eschewed this pursuit of sensual pleasure, I cannot deny the visceral feeling that arises when faced either the daunting, heart-wrenching prospect of true love, or the seemingly insatiable, ferocious sexual lust that prowls within. When I immerse myself in this certain vibe, I can’t help but feel as if I’m on a romantic precipice, on the verge of falling in love again, on the brink of my world once again collapsing around me. I often forget that even if I’ve made the choice to let my mind dictate the course of my life, I still possess the capability to perceive emotions with such profundity and intensity in a way that can effortlessly derail any rational train of thought. I will never be able to extricate this romantic idealist from my inner self, that even despite all my efforts to remain calm in the face of chaos and rational in the face of ignorance, I remain susceptible to this inexorable yearning of my heart. But perhaps, there is nothing wrong with that. Perhaps, there is as much truth to be found in that feeling as there is anywhere else.
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
— Blaise Pascal
Paradoxes of the Human Condition
Happiness cannot exist without suffering, joy cannot exist without pain, learning cannot exist without mistakes, success cannot exist without failure, excitement cannot exist without tedium, yet we balk and groan when we are forced to confront the latter.
It is almost a universal rule that everything in our lives, whether a certain type of food, a certain type of work, a certain type of leisure activity, a certain type of relationship or friendship, requires balance in order to optimize our mental and physical well-being, but our culture, or perhaps even our innate nature, embeds within us a desire to constantly strive for more or better, and never enough.
Cultivation of the mind is the only pathway towards a life well lived, but we are haplessly ensnared in a perpetual conflict with the self, where our rational thoughts are often overridden by our prewired instincts and obstinate emotions.
We have all the answers to the difficult life questions, but we refuse to learn. When most of us already understand the specific factors that contribute to a truly happy and fulfilling life, we constantly sabotage ourselves, often unknowingly, and we become inured to a society whose fundamental design is counterproductive to that quest.
The way we feel influences the way we act, just as much as the way we act influences the way we feel. What caused what? What influenced what? Where does it start? Where does it end? We can decide what we do, but that decision is almost always entirely based on how we feel. And more often than not, we can’t choose how we feel.
Our collective prosperity as a species demands that we cooperate and establish unity, but we obstreperously antagonize, degrade, and dehumanize one another by waging brutal wars and manufacturing senseless conflicts.
Our short-term thinking predisposes us to be hyper-aware of the present status quo and to vehemently defend it, but what actually kills us in the end is what seeks to harm us not in the present, but in the distant future. They are the truly malevolent forces within this world that will creep upon us when we least expect it—those that insidiously lurk far beneath the surface, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
Truth is what ultimately saves us, and yet the natural course of human argument, filled with extraneous emotion, irrationality, and the obstinate desire to win, makes it artificially elusive and notoriously difficult to attain.
We glorify the belief in our own free will, latching onto the notion that we decide our own fate, but our social nature—wired to conform and emulate the language, attitudes, beliefs, and worldview of those around us—becomes the primary obstacle to it.
Suffering and evil are impossible to eradicate, and perhaps even undesirable for us to eradicate in its entirety, but it is often that the very pathway towards a meaningful and purposeful life is by this futile yet valiant endeavor to achieve the unachievable, to win the unwinnable, to make possible the impossible.
Human nature consists of as much a desire to be generous as it does a desire to be selfish. As much as so many of us want to help one another, to show affection, to show that we care, it seems as if we have a profound struggle juggling those desires with the voices within ourselves that want us to be self-serving and merely concerned with our own survival.
We’ve come to a point in human history where most of our technological innovation and progress as a species can be defined as the seemingly perpetual loop of creating problems, then solving those same problems we created.
We inherently hunger for certainty in a world that by its very nature couldn’t be more uncertain. And often in our quest for certainty, we inadvertently generate even more uncertainty.
“But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.”―Soren Kierkegaard