Look how far we’ve come

When I can finally say I figured out how to be happy and fulfilled in this life—this oppressive and absurd existence I’ve toiled against for all these grueling years, ravaging my heart and eviscerating the essence of my soul, driving me to the brink of insanity—people will still tell me that I’m “wasting time.” 

How is this supposed to make me feel? 

I’m just frankly astounded that despite the monumental amount of progress we’ve made as a civilization, many of us still feel obligated to use an ideological bludgeon to shame others for merely finding their way in life, for merely wanting to derive a modicum of joy from this existence. I have no issue with discussing the best way to live our lives—that is the purpose of this blog, after all—but when we impulsively inject it with contempt, presumptuousness, and ridicule, it becomes an irredeemable injustice. 

When we boast about all this money, all this productivity, all this success, progress, and stability we’ve accrued, there persists a disconsolate void within all our hearts—an inevitable consequence of our neglect of simply asking what all this is even for.

April Fools’ Day

This is a day where we partake in the act of poking fun at the instincts pertaining to our sensibilities, of pushing the boundaries of what we believe is real, of testing the limits of our conceptions of absurdity—how each of us would react when presented with something ostensibly outrageous yet remotely plausible.

The only problem is that we live in an era where “ostensibly outrageous yet remotely plausible” can be used to describe an ever-increasing number of events, many of which covertly bridge this gap between impossible and normal; mass-produced, widely available handheld devices with more processing power than the most powerful computers of yesteryear? AI that is capable of programming, complex problem-solving, perfectly mimicking human voice patterns, and composing music and creating art that is virtually indistinguishable from the world’s best artists? These likely would have been interpreted as April Fools’ jokes merely one decade ago. 

But perhaps the greatest absurdity of all that in the face of such momentous change, we refuse to change. Bound by our anachronistic industrial-age thinking, we so desperately want the world to stay a certain way. We were always taught to demand proof. To demand evidence. To demand a guarantee for our effort invested and know that there will be a reward merely because we followed the directions as per the manual. But there is neither proof nor evidence, neither a guarantee nor a manual; the only certainty we presently have is in the undeniable realization that our society is at the cusp of revolution.

For most of us on April 1st, we blithely choose to laugh when we are presented with shocking news and evidence that directly contradicts our beliefs. But for every other day that we’re presented with such news or evidence, we neither laugh about it nor come to terms with it; we shove it under the carpet and neglect it. 

Our future depends on our willingness to eschew these emotionally-charged beliefs that cloud our judgment—these conceptions of absurd or outrageous, of plausible or sensible—and by doing so, we can honestly and lucidly confront things for what they are.

Maddeningly difficult

“Mindfulness is healthy, it's professional, and it allows us to be our best self. 

It is also maddeningly difficult, particularly in a culture that prizes busyness over just about everything else. 

But mindful isn't the opposite of busy.

Mindfulness demands intention. Mindfulness is the practice of simply doing the work. Without commentary, without chatter, without fear. 

To simply do our work.”

— Seth Godin, The Practice

Reasons not to drive a car

It is far more expensive than taking public transportation, utilizing taxi services or ride-sharing apps, driving a motorcycle instead, riding a bike, or just walking. 

• Unless your job demands that you transport materials or people on a frequent basis, it is shamefully energy inefficient (you’re moving a three-thousand pound plus object across miles to merely transport yourself, perhaps one or two other people, or maybe some groceries) and greatly contributes to a variety of environmental problems.

• It gives you an excuse not to exercise. 

• It requires a great deal of attention and can be a prime source of stress due to traffic or car maintenance issues; you could spend your life far more productively elsewhere. 

• Perpetuates car-dependent societies and abhorrent city design with countless roads and parking lots that require endless maintenance, incur massive debt, and degrade the beauty of the places we live in.

• It endangers the lives of other drivers on the road, animals, and pedestrians. 

• It endangers your own life. 

All this so I can make my life maybe 10% more convenient? So I can shamelessly destroy the environment and the places that I live, partake in a profligate waste of energy and resources, and potentially kill other people in the process? No, and no thank you. I’ll continue to live my “inconvenient” life. 

Those who continue to drive cars are not necessarily at fault, as this problem to a large extent runs deeper than personal responsibility; after decades upon decades of indoctrination and manipulation by the automobile industry, it has been thoroughly ingrained into the structure of our society and woven into the fabric of our culture. But at the heart of this conversation is not one that specifically pertains to our car dependency; it is but my earnest hope that in whatever it is that we take for granted in our privileged lives—be it how we get around, how we make a living for ourselves, what we consume as forms of nourishment or entertainment—at the very least we can be honest about the consequences of our actions.

Some paradoxes of the human condition

When 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, we balk and groan when we are forced to confront the latter.

When virtually everything in our lives requires a healthy balance in order to optimize our mental and physical well-being, our culture inculcates within us a desire to constantly strive for more or better, and never enough.  

When cultivation of the mind is the only pathway towards a life well lived, we are ensnared in a perpetual conflict with the self, where our rational thoughts are often overridden by our prewired instincts and obstinate emotions.

When most of us already understand the specific factors that contribute to a truly happy and fulfilling life, we constantly sabotage ourselves, often unknowingly. 

When our collective prosperity as a species demands that we cooperate and establish unity, we obstreperously antagonize, degrade, and dehumanize one another by waging brutal wars and manufacturing senseless conflicts. 

When we are hyper-aware of the present status quo and will do anything to defend it, 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.

Writer’s block

Whenever I think that I’ve run out of ideas, that I have finally completely exhausted what I have to say and thus have nothing to write, I like to juxtapose two ideas in my mind—the first being the countless times in the past three months that I’ve felt this way, and the second being the staggering amount of writing I’ve done in the same exact period of time. The more I realize just how much I’ve actually accomplished in this time frame, the more it belies this sense of writer’s block. These feelings persistently creep up on me, attempting to sabotage my work and my consistency, and yet, time and time again, all the evidence points to the inevitable fact that they are a mere illusion. 

Regardless of the degree of resistance that I feel—this subconscious balking, urging me to give up and go back to my idyllic, apathetic, and purportedly easy and carefree life—I realized that if I merely sit down and put my mind to it, I often spontaneously find myself in a state of flow. No matter how much I previously felt like I didn’t want to read, exercise, or write a blog post or reflection, once I dispense of the resistance and galvanize myself to just move forward, I end up always putting my heart into it. 

There is undoubtedly still this subconscious component of my mind that is trying to get me to capitulate, to pull me back towards what it believes is safety and stability, to accept defeat and realize that all my ideas are hackneyed and banal, that I have nothing to contribute to this world, to convince me that I haven’t actually changed all that much in these past three months. 

I won’t fall for its tricks. I’ve heard enough of my own excuses. 

I know who I am, and I know what I’m capable of.

At a crossroads

There’s nothing inherently wrong if I decide to consign myself to being a cog within the system, but I will inevitably force myself to live with the incessant thought that I am squandering my potential and renouncing my duty in the face of exigent crises.

I won’t be deluded any longer. They cannot hide the truth from me. I will not occupy my consciousness with vapidity. 

They want me to think everything’s okay, that I should just enjoy my life, carefree, to bask in the pleasures of modern society, for the price of my soul, for one-third of my life.

No, and no thank you—I won’t have it.

At this point, the thought of a meaningless, banal, and selfish life is more repulsive to me than death itself. 

I’m going to change the world, or die trying.

“Don’t take life too seriously”

This is a phrase that is incredibly easy to say for the privileged, the ignorant, and the oblivious, and simultaneously a phrase that is incredibly difficult to say for the victims of sexual assault, racial oppression, devastating wars and conflicts, cancers and other diseases, or any other form of abject and unjust suffering that could have likely been prevented if everyone took things a little more seriously.  

No—not every one of us has to necessarily directly do anything about it, as we all have our own roles to play within the societies we live in. But let it nonetheless imbue our consciousness with a certain kind of desperation, imparting upon us a reason for all that we do.

God’s will

What I never understood about the notion of God’s will or any one of the many permutations of it, e.g. God “speaking” to us, God “answering” our prayers, God’s “calling” for each of our lives, is that no one ever seems to provide a viable tool to realistically disentangle truth from the incomprehensibly convoluted web of circumstances within this world. The battle for truth, purpose, and the meaning of life is very far from being as clear-cut, black and white, and straightforward as some people make it out to be. 

While our lives are filled with blessings in disguise, with oppressive trials that turn out to be the source of our greatest lessons, they are simultaneously riddled with misfortune in the guise of blessings, with ostensible miracles and joyful prosperity that in actuality causes us to let our guard down, to relent in our vigilance and foster in us a deep sense of complacency or dissatisfaction, enabling our very own downfall. There are seemingly ruthless and heartless perpetrators that turn out to be victims of unimaginably dreadful circumstances, and purportedly benevolent and altruistic heroes that turn out to be parasites, exploiting the systems we operate under and undermining the fabric of humanity. 

And the most confounding notion of all is that the majority of events or individuals are arguably neither, occupying the uncomfortable nebulous lacunae not only between absolutes, but even between our specific categorizations within the spectrum. The reality is that all the things that exist or occur in our world possess a degree of nuance that we often cannot foresee.

Certainly, not everyone is going to interpret each message from God lucidly and unambiguously, that is, if he is even sending any message to begin with. Plenty of people in the past that claim to have communicated with God have been led astray, and others may have actually communicated with him and lived a life indeed according to his will. The question then inevitably becomes: how do we distinguish a delusion from God’s will? How do we know that these curious thoughts that seemingly wander into our consciousness—these purported answers to our prayers, these words that call and inspire us to do something—are willed by God, by Satan, or, better yet, by ourselves? Is there something inherent to God’s message to us that allows us to be certain it is indeed him? And if so, why is he only sending that message to certain people? And why do we think that the only way he communicates is by directly inserting himself into our consciousness? As I posited in my reflection on prayer requests, I refuse to believe that God is so naive and unjust to arbitrary pick and choose on a whim who he will and will not choose to “speak” with. 

“Don’t make it seem God has done something when, perhaps, he didn’t do anything at all.”

Thinking on the fly

I have a bad habit of replaying past interactions in my mind, whether they were casual conversations, high-pressure job interviews, or tense work proposals or presentations. It seems my mind is inherently desperate in some way to redeem myself, to undervalue my contribution towards a social interaction, to want to fill these lacunae with elusive thoughts that had entirely crossed my mind in the heat of the moment—a poignant question I could’ve asked, a specific and germane memory I could’ve shared, an intellectually stimulating idea I could’ve extrapolated on, or anything that would have likely contributed so much more to the conversation and my ability to get my point across. 

Is it my preference to thoroughly think ideas through before speaking, or is it merely self-doubt? Or is it solely a matter of practicing this form of multitasking between the flow of conversation and the flow of thought? My intuition tells me that it’s likely all the above.