when i look hard enough

when i look hard enough at the things in my mind, the questions beneath the fog crystallize but i realize they have tied themselves up into crazy knots, all interlinked with each other.

now, the question is, if persistence will eventually dissolve them, into...

no backup

when was the last time i was truly alone, with no help nearby? where there is no safety net, no backup? completely at the mercy of the gods, fate, destiny?

i fear and love these moments. (more fear than love though).

i think, in those moments, and even short as they maybe for most of us, bring about a kind of wisdom that words can never describe.

learning aimlessness?

strangely, i almost feel pressured by myself that i'm supposed to write something a bit different - afterall, this is a bit of a different experience. i'm by myself, in a dimly-lit guesthouse, in the middle of lhasa, thousands of miles away from the nearest person i know.

but, really not much is coming to mind. my pre-trip angst seems to be eons ago. only a few days ago, i was fretting and agonizing over the smallest details.

so there is this certain calmness washing over, a realization that i have no real plan for the next day. perhaps there's also a bit of boredom and some uneasiness that i am supposed to be finding something to do. but perhaps, it really is ok if i don't find that "something" to do. perhaps.

it is a feeling i really am unaccustomed to. no meal appointment. no yoga timetable to check. no business contact to get in touch with. tomorrow, all day, i can wander around aimlessly. i can think aimlessly. i can be aimless.

perhaps when i am aimless long enough, i end up finding something a bit more about myself. but perhaps, truly, there's nothing to be learned from it, and i am looking too much into it. it's simply a state of mind, just like all other states of minds?

will i get inspired?

(i'm not even sure if this is going to work)

i've had a lot of friends telling me to get inspired on this trip - which, frankly, i never had in mind. it really is a journey to a place that seems extreme, difficult, and forbidding, and that in itself was already good enough.

that being said, i wouldn't mind being inspired, since writing hasn't gotten any easier.

will try to open up my brain, my heart, my soul, my consciousness, my neurons, and see what kind of things float in...

plans do change

oh, yes they do.

the perfect trip

there is no perfect trip. it's not possible. i need to remember to be glad that i even have this chance...

the road paved with good intentions

good intentions are nice, but never enough.

sweating the small stuff

i was explaining to my colleague that now she had been promoted to a manager, she had to step away from the small things that used to concern her, to start looking at the bigger picture - there were just as many things to do and to worry about, but the priorities would change.

of course, small details were still important, but now, overall strategy and direction would take on much greater importance, and often, at the expense of other things, the day-to-day operations, and we had to, to a large extent, place our faith in others we had hired to do their jobs. we need to check on them from time to time, but we really have to be spending our time on "higher level" things.

a bit like any journey of spiritual progress. a lot of people are very satisfied at the material level, once in a while, they yearn for something a bit more, but we'd rather pre-occupy ourselves with day-to-day real things of the world.

if i'm serious about another level (it's probably neither up nor down - just different), i have to spend my time on self-reflection, at the expense of things at the material level.

i have to stop sweating the small stuff.

peace of mind

at the end of the day, whatever it is i'm doing, is it going to help move in the direction of having the peace of mind?

even if

even if, even if, i could do anything i could, there is still the constraint of my time here (and with that the usual uncertainty of its length).

so, at the risk of stating the very obvious and sounding silly and greedy, i can't have everything. there's still a matter of where the time goes, as even in the unrealistic hypothetical situation, there is still the limitation of time.

if i devote more time and energy to something, something else is going to get less attention. over the course of five, ten years, the difference is going to be tremendous. the question is, how much will that difference matter to me?

strength of a belief

sometimes, i wonder how strong a belief has to be, for us to fully trust that things happen for a reason, and there is supposedly always a non-negative perspective to be taken.

afterall, i really know nothing

there is sometimes the sobering realization that i've moved away from certain people: certain friends, former teachers, people who i used to think the world of. i no longer see things the way they do, and there's a sudden sense of alienation with my former self. it almost seems that i may have changed enough that i no longer recognize some of the core things about myself.

i'm not them, and i can never really know or even imagine the trials and tribulations they faced in their lives, but sometimes there's just the feeling they could be happier, if they were not still stuck - stuck doing the things, repeating the same mistakes, they have been doing for five, ten, twenty years. perhaps the longer a person's stuck, the longer one will go on remaining stuck.

yet, i know, it's not my place to say anything. who am i to tell someone "if you do this, you will lead a better life?" everything i've gone through, they probably have, multiple times even, and perhaps one day, there will be some young guy who thinks he's figured out everything, and tells me smugly that "if only" i would change a particular habit, my life would be turned around. and i'd just laugh.

in almost all cases, it's better to stay quiet. afterall, i really know nothing. my life "experience" is pretty laughable. so, the only thing to do is to make the times together with them as enjoyable for them as possible.

the view from the bottom

i always thought, the view from the top is much more scarier than the view from the bottom.

(well, i'm scared of heights too.)

when everything is going smoothly my way, i know i) it's not going to last, or that ii) i'm in the wrong lane. i'm never very good at dealing with the sense of impending doom.

when everything is at its absolute worst, while i don't know if it will get even worse, i also know i) it's not going to last, or that ii) even if it lasts, the human mind has proved itself time and again to be remarkably adaptable.

but, what about the feather that breaks the camel's back?

all the more fun to see what exactly that breaking point is, and to see if those stories about human resilience are actually true. if it does get broken, then, we get to see it if there's either a comeback story, or a cautionary tale. it will probably still be of some use.

where does the bigger picture start?

one of the current issues in physics is where classical physics ends and transitions into quantum physics. the rules change dramatically, and everything we thought we understood no longer holds true.

in this entry Gleiser uses the sand dune analogy - look at if from afar, we see the flowing patterns, that are still visible as we look closer. when we look close enough, suddenly the individual grains of sand appear. yet, as the viewer, there will be a range of distances where we can switch between the two views - depending on how we're focusing our eyes.

when do we rise above our day-to-day dilemmas and focus on the larger ebbs and flows of the humanity?

we are merely grains of sand (if even that), but i think, there is definitely another level of beauty. once in a while, when we're lucky enough, we transcend our mundane existence and manage to have a peek.

delayed satisfaction

i'm all for delayed satisfaction, but what if there's only the neverending delay, without the satisfaction?

will i be kicking myself for not doing something else? for not cashing in earlier?

how bad is the delayed part of the delayed satisfaction? can i get used to it? will i grow to enjoy it? can it eventually become satisfaction in itself?

the problem with faith

every now and then, i see a version of this story either forwarded around or posted in blogs - "malice of absence" - the story where a religious student goes up against an atheist professor and outargues him.

the crux of the argument is even for the atheist, it is necessary to take science on faith, as it is impossible to know and prove everything. we are placing faith in scientists that we will never meet, so why should we take issue with the religious who are placing faith in a god that no one can prove or disprove?

the most significant difference is that the god-faith is unchanging - the holy books are not going to be re-written. the interpretation of such are based on the religious leaders in power, and one only hopes they have the best interests of humanity in mind. science, on the other hand, does change all the time. every few decades, a major scientific "truth" gets overturned. science-faith is not absolute and is evolving all the time.

faith is often so badly abused today, and self-reflection drowned under a sea of noise. faith is precious, and should be used sparingly and in special occasions, rather than a safety blanket for us to wrap ourselves around.

zero wins

to this day, i wonder why i ever wrestled in school.

my earliest memory is my dormmate jeremy jumping up and down on the black wrestling mat, yelling "come on!". we were taught some very rudimentary rules and told to simply go at it. neither of us knew what the hell we were doing, and we were simply flailing about and exerting a lot of effort pushing against each other. but i remember thinking it was pretty fun, and in particular i enjoyed the fact that i was competing against someone my size. and i vaguely (and quite possibly mistakenly) recall that i had held my own.

this memory stuck, and in my second year of high school, i tried out out for the team. wrestling was one of the few official team sports that did not require prior experience - any other skill sport, my classmates had been practicing for years and i did not stand a chance. moreover, the coach informed us that the simple rule was that if you didn't quit, you made the team. i couldn't believe my luck, and perhaps because of that simple rule, i "made the team" for the remaining three years of my high school.

but, it was not that easy. in fact, i often wonder why i lasted more than one season, and still came back. i was truly a terrible wrestler. i had no sense of how leverage and control should work. my first year, i must have wrestled in perhaps ten or fifteen matches, and i won exactly zero matches. zero. every time i went out, i took a beating. even today, i can't fathom what had been going through my mind and why i kept going. perhaps i couldn't bear the indignity of quitting? but wasn't getting beat down every single time worse? wasn't it unbearable to be known as probably the worst wrestler on the entire team? i really have no clue.

losing in wrestling isn't like losing in any other sport. as the loser, i got my face dragged across the mat, my body twisted into positions that my yoga teachers would have trouble imitating. all this, in front of tons of people. sometimes a few dozen, sometimes a couple hundred. the loser doesn't just hit a lot of missed balls or runs a bit slower than the other guy. the loser in a wrestling match is at the receiving end of a very public beatdown, and gets physically abused.

there is nothing quite like it - two boys, in skimpy singlets, crouched in a wrestling stance, standing toe-to-toe in the middle of seemingly giant circle. you know all the eyes are on you, and there's me, the mat, and my opponent. there's no one to save me. there's no backup plan. shit's happening right now.

(the first win, did come, finally, in my second year. i was terrible, but i suppose there were even more terrible wrestlers out there. more interesting things later in my short-lived wrestling career, but more on this in future.)

so yes, i kept at it, even when i had zero wins. it might be something to laugh about now, but it was no trivial matter then. it totally sucked. losing was the worst feeling ever, and losing in such spectacular and humbling manner that was simply part of the sport.

and damn am i glad i kept at it. wrestling has taught me more things than i could ever list. it wasn't even that hard work pays off, because it didn't. it was that failure really was ok. sure, losing a bunch of wrestling matches is incredibly silly compared to any real life challenge, but to a fifteen year old, having zero wins seemed like the end of the world, but look, the world actually did not end.

and now i think about it, that was perhaps the first time i realized that what other people thought of me was probably less important than what i thought of myself.

rain or shine

usually, deterioration creeps up on us and it's already too late.

on extremely rare occasions, improvement creeps up on us, after we've kept at something for a while, rain or shine.

consistency is boring, painful, demoralizing, but one of the trusty methods that actually work.

there's always wastage

i'm deathly frightened of wastage. if i had the choice, i'd try to make every minute of my life productive, by my traditional definitions anyway. being productive involves doing things. sitting around, meditating, day dreaming, or staring at my laptop for hours would not fit in this productivity definition.

i just don't want to fall behind in life. fall behind who? my millionaire banker friends? my ultra-smart friends who are on the cutting edge of researching the cosmos? my spiritual friends who have realized the nature of the universe?

of course, no matter how fast i race ahead or how far i fall behind, we do end up the same place eventually.

but the nature of the current quest necessarily means there will be lots of hours spent staring blankly into space, getting caught in looping dead-end unconclusions. it's a cost of cajoling things out of apparent nothingness, a cost of doing business with the mind.

litany against fear

from one of my all-time favorite novels, Dune:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

seriously? believing in myself?

one thing that is not lacking in the world is information, and with that conflicting opinions and data. even if we can agree on the end goal, getting there faces the same myriad of choices. go hard, go soft, stand firm on principles, be flexible when the situation calls for it.

advice is always nice, and people who care about me will be offering lots (just like i love offering mine). there is no easy conclusion and all the options sound equally bad (or good). if there was an easy conclusion i wouldn't need advice in the first place. in these instances, well, not doing anything sounds like a fine idea.

sometimes, to remain sane... there's no choice. i simply have to believe in myself.

yes, it's the standard line proclaimed from every self-help book and i don't believe in believing in myself. but at times, it's the only way to stay sane. this is not even about achieving some impossible goal, not even about going against any odds, but just to function somewhat normally, without going in the death spiral of paralyzing self-doubt.

seriously? what if my actions run the risk of hurting someone, knowingly or unknowingly? well, yes, still. because i will never know if i'm avoiding hurting them in the short term and harming them long term. or hurting them in the short term and helping them in the long term.

morning, no excuses

if i really want to do something, i have to do it in the morning.

if i'm serious enough about it, there's just no excuse.

things will always come up at inopportune times.

greatness

for all the economic and evolutionary assumptions about self-interest and selfishness, people still yearn for something higher, something to transcend, something intangible and beyond whatever it is that we understand.

those singular moments of greatness - when suddenly something in us gets moved - great beauty, great love, great selflessness - we know there is something that is beyond logic.

nevermind that it maybe evolutionary beneficial, nevermind it may one day be replicable by computer algorithms - i know it's something that has no bearing on my material life and yet, nothing in life could be greater than those moments.

no fail, no win

if i take a thousand pictures, some of them will turn out ok.

if i kick up into handstand a thousand times, a few of those times i'll be able to hold it.

if i write a thousand blog posts (which i can't even imagine at the moment, since i'm running out of things already), a few of those posts will actually mean something.

but the increments every time, every drip, are so infinitesimally small they're actually invisible. and i won't ever know when the nice picture/handstand/post will come. but over a thousand times, they will come, since, well, statistically, they have to. and i'm not even talking about the outliers, i'm just referring those singular personal wtf moments we strive for. all but the most enlightened have a complete disregard for winning, so let's stay at the mortal level at the moment.

no fail, no win.

of course, the moral of the story isn't to mindlessly fail, as sheer effort without thought makes our progress really, really slow. however, sheer thought without effort goes absolutely nowhere.

the moral is remembering to fail. and, that's the nice thing about many things now. i can fail, fail often, even fail anonymously if i so prefer. the tools are generally damn easy to find now. the only hard thing is finding the fortitude to fail, and the determination to live through a thousand of them.

authenticity

true authenticity physically, mentally, and spiritually is probably one of the hardest things, ever.

and we're always looking for those truly authentic people, especially the ones who are truly thoughtful - who are authentic because of the deep thought they've given to choose live their life they're living, and have examined every angle in depth.

and there are so, so few in the world.

so why aren't more people authentic? perhaps simply because it's not convenient?

why am i not authentic, in the sense i'm unable to fully follow all the things i believe in?

five years

if you do something long enough, suddenly, something people thought you had no business doing, or simply not qualified to do, suddenly, it becomes very normal that you're doing it. in fact, people start assuming you're an expert.

interestingly, when you started, everyone just gave you really funny looks (and sometimes demoralizing comments).

five years of dedication might be a reasonable time frame to become reasonably knowledgeable about something. i don't have a lot of five-years left, but there still are a few. still have time to acquire a deeper knowledge in a couple more new things.

perhaps one more thing to remember is the beginner's mentality - having the curiosity to find out more about the things we already think we're experts in.

digestability

the hard task now is to recreate the building blocks, step by step.

when faced with an issue now, the temptation is great to simply rely on big all-encompassing explanations of karma, everything happens for a reason, the universe works in mysterious ways. the problem is like the mother teresa effect: "if i look at the masses, i will never act. if i look at one, i will."

if i ever want to communicate any of these things i have somehow understood, i have to break these massive principles down into digestible morsels, little stories that will somehow make people think.

i have to start somewhere. what are some instances today? i chatted with my friend dave whose dad slipped on some steps when he was hiking half a year ago, and has since been paralyzed shoulder down. walking across a bridge in central, i wondered if i'd see the beggar i had seen perhaps a year ago. looking at the new ferry terminal, i wondered when it would itself be considered a piece of relic.

the struggle

at times, everything can be summed up as the constant struggle between self-interest and higher ideals.

where did it come from?

a lot of realities are just not fun. poverty, injustice, unfairness in the human society; factory farming; destruction of natural beauty to feed the world's need for resources.

but i'm not exactly thinking about poverty when i'm devising a plan to make my rich client even richer. i'm creating wealth, and one, we're born to be self-interested entities, and secondly, by creating wealth i'm creating more job opportunities, and also more wealth to give to the needy for that matter.

and i'm not exactly thinking about the steroid-juiced cows howling for dear life when i'm enjoying that perfectly marbled steak. i am at the top of the food chain after all, and i'm allowed to eat anything i want. and the animals were long dead before they arrived on my plate.

and i'm definitely not thinking of oil spills, leveled forests, giant mines amidst pristine wilderness when i'm playing with the latest i-thing from apple. just because i don't use or buy that new thing isn't going to change a single thing.

i'd like to think we're not quite as extreme in defending our views, but i'm pretty sure we don't have the mental capacity to spend every waking moment understanding the impact of our every action. take my cellphone - is it even possible to trace how each component came into being? who assembled it, was he/she exposed to all sorts of pollutants? were any rare earths used, did they have to uproot entire villages and blast ugly giant holes to obtain those?

can the starting question be as simple as, where did it come from?

surely, there will be many out there who have no sense of curiosity and will simply consume and simply not care. but i think, with information just a couple clicks away, there may be enough curiosity out there to do some digging, to solve that little mystery.

but perhaps that's one way to start thinking. take our favorite possession. how much do we know about it? how did it come into existence? where did they get the raw materials? at the expense of what? are we ok with it?

either obvious or nor worth thinking about

i wonder, if i will ever reach a point, where things are either "intuitively obvious or not worth thinking about".

strangely, by repeatedly pushing myself to understand things, and to explain them back to myself to the best of my abilities, i suspect i am beginning to understand a bit more about intuition. i remain of the opinion that trustworthy intuition are heuristic shortcuts that have been honed over trial and error.

sixty seconds

if there really were sixty seconds left, what would i be thinking? for a moment, imagining i'm just lying down, waiting for the painless end. (a luxury that is pretty unlikely for anyone, but well, i can dream)

there would be nothing left to analyze, nothing left to remember, nothing left to look forward to. there might be a lot of things that i'm still supposed to do, but there's simply no time now.

if the sixty second limit is a certainty, then, there's no point not to try to enjoy these sixty seconds. nothing matters afterwards anyway, and by extension, whatever i think in these sixty seconds won't matter in the least.

perhaps... i would simply marvel at the fact that i was ever conscious of being alive in the first place.

funny, if it was any longer than sixty seconds, things actually get a lot more complicated.