once upon a time...

i could do this and that.

i achieved this and that.

i aspired to be this and that.

once upon a time, i sat around, reminiscing what i had done, achieved, and aspired to once upon a time.

when i'm alone

once in a while - there's the feeling that i am this random single entity in a nameless ocean.

i can't even put a finger on the feeling.

there's a bit of helplessness, i'm by myself in the world, and it really is only myself. absolutely no one cares what i do or think.

there's a bit of the fear of the unknown, i have no clue what the heck i'm going to do and how to survive the rest of my journey. the only thing i'm sure of is there's certain death at the end of the journey.

there's a bit of awe, i am no different from the rocks at my feet. after all, going back to the food chain, i'm only made up of sun, water and dirt, and i'm simply an interim phase for these trillions of atoms. and this particular combination i call "me" is attempting to contemplate such matters.

there's a bit of exhilaration, that i really am free for those moments. absolutely no one cares what i do or think.

perhaps, in those moments, i find out a little bit more about myself.

path of destruction

the earth is going to shit. we might not yet be at the point of no return where the vicious cycle of warming starts, but it can't be far. simply, we aren't going to change our habits, no matter how much the scientists and treehuggers scream and yell. sure, the bluefin tuna is going to be extinct soon, but before long it will just a memory, just like well, everything else that stands in the path of human consumption.

it strikes me that i'm involved in this every single day. maybe not to the same degree as certain people, but sure as hell i'm involved. BP seems to be some distant tragedy - and i'm doing my part to make sure the demand stays high for oil and energy. i have things to buy, and society needs to progress.

on a cosmic scale, this is nothing new. if greenhouse gases don't get us, some meteor will get us (and the rest of life on earth) eventually. and if not that, in about 5 billion years, the sun will consume us when it becomes to a red giant. so we can relax.

so the human race will die off anyway. arguably if we do destructive things to the earth, it doesn't matter! it might speed things up a tad, but we're not likely to see it in our lifetimes anyway.

the problem with zooming out so far nothing seems to matter at all. so why bother about anything? frankly, i can only be bothered about things that affect me right now, or in my foreseeable future.

there are two really large obstacles to the environment problem.

one, the effort we exert on an individual basis has essentially no discernible effect. it is difficult to care.

two, short term enjoyment almost always trumps long term considerations. it's so far off we can deal with it later (until it's too late).

whatever solution the environmentalists come up to solve this very human psychological pitfall will similarly apply to us.

path to where?

one of the key strengths of religion is to provide us with a pretty clear path, goal, and result.

- obey the commandments, the scriptures, the yamas and niyamas

- we'll be on our way to being saved, achieving enlightenment

- we'll be in good hands after we die, either in heaven, nirvana, or at least reborn as something nicer

what if there is no result? how does that change things? the "path" leads absolutely nowhere?

the result, i.e. the moment after death, is the one instance in our lives we aren't likely to be conscious of (at least in our present state). meanwhile, we can still tread the path and look at the flowers along the way.

so whichever path we're on - what happens when we find out that the goal is going to be taken away from us at the final moment?

does that still sound like the right path?

the right question

what is the right thing to do?

what is the compassionate thing to do?

to accept that the second question as the "correct" question, one has to accept that compassion takes precedence over personal gain. and to understand the basis of compassion, one needs to understand one's individual role in relation to the wider world. to understand each of our roles, we need to deeply consider and reflect on the nature of our existence.

seeing compassion as the backbone of our lives - this has personally been (and still is to a certain extent) counterintuitive. and if i want to do this with resolve, i have to fully convince myself about this, one step at a time.

what do other people think of me?

am i more concerned with what other people think of me, or what i think of myself?

or, what other people think of how i think of myself?

are the greater goals for myself simply an indirect attempt to improve what other people think of me?

strangely, most of the time, most people spend quite a bit of time wondering what other people think of ourselves. the remaining time, i seem to spend it on thinking of how other people compare to me.

too little time, way too little time, i spend thinking of how i think of myself.

walking away

is really hard. the usual choice is between something comfortable/long-lasting/boring, vs. something exciting/unpredictable/risky. we're forced to choose between what we know well, and something else that is no more than a bit of faith and hope. one of these will have to be sacrificed.

if only we knew how they'd turn out, our decision would be a lot easier.

what if you were in a situation to place a bet on a machine? this machine has two paths to take, and the pay offs you are concerned with is maximizing the value it has to mankind, over a span of fifty years. this machine is liable to break down any moment too, but you're not too concerned with the actual well-being/health/longevity of the machine, it's just a machine afterall. there are lots of other machines in the grand scheme of things.

how would you bet on this machine?

sometimes, there's isn't anything to understand

perhaps, there are somethings to be accepted, not to be understood.

but isn't the search for understanding where we learn to be wiser?

but when our intellect is not there yet, our life experiences insufficient, or the circumstances just not agreeable - there simply isn't much of a choice.

running in storms

before the age of treadmills, the great runners loved to run in the storms - while they were training hard and improving, their weaker opponents were skipping practice and going nowhere.

in real life we don't really have true opponents anymore - the only benchmark is ourselves and our ideals. and since we're so good at moving targets and rationalizing them, we do so, and we end up skipping practice. we first skip a couple sessions. then a couple months. then a couple years.

which is ok of course. until it's years later, and we are so far from our ideals, and we realize we haven't even really tried. and we wonder what the heck happened.

respect

sometimes, all we wish for is respect. sometimes, we live our lives trying to get other people's respect.

the nice thing about other people's respect (or disrespect) is fast and visible. if i'm being treated like a nobody, that's probably a sign of disrespect.

self-respect, however, is much harder to locate. there's no instruction manual. but if i think long and hard, i'll see the outlines of it. so it's the exact opposite: self-respect takes too much thinking to understand, and has the tendency to hide under the louder things in life.

but a lot of times, we seem to want to place our desire for other people's respect over our own self-respect.

running out of ideas, part 1

ok, i have one hour to write this entry. what do i write about? i have no idea. remember that article about good ideas coming to you when you're bored? there's probably some truth to that. i am too damn busy with absolutely nothing of importance, and i am totally out of any ideas. nothing. this is happening way too frequently. no one is emailing or facebooking me so don't even try. but isn't this being bored thing just an excuse? people push through things to get their shit done and "unable to be bored" seems to be worst excuse ever. yes, it's probably an excuse. but i still need to find something to write about. i could explore the big questions, but i don't have time to think and digest. that takes like half a day. i need to come up with something to fulfill my daily quota. doesn't this defeat the purpose? just writing something to fill a quota? anyone can write to fill a quota. well, no, the secret to success is constant practice right? so this is my daily practice. but i thought you already surrendered success. oh right. the secret to something is practice. that makes a ton of sense, thank you. i can't believe this, you're actually writing on how you're running out of ideas? that's possibly the worst idea ever. you're trying to be reasonably good, not filling a quota. sure, but what the heck am i supposed to do when i have nothing to write about? it happens, calm down. the more you're trying to think of something, the less these things will come. relax man. ok. if you chase too hard after the girl, she's going to run away. so, give chase sometimes, other times, let things be. sometimes, it's ok to let the mind take a random walk.

watching the highlights

some people wonder why anyone would sit through almost 2 hours of football, for a potentially 0-0 match. why not just watch the highlights, the best part? and save all that time and grief?

the fans shake their heads, saying that these people just don't get it - the nail-biting 90 minutes of anticipation is the experience that counts.

funnily, we like to judge everyone around us by their highlight reels too.

downward spins and upward spirals

bruce denton, a legendary runner in "once a runner", has a fascinating take on the extreme labors of training and progress. he remarks that some people think progress is a ladder, some others see plateaus, whereas he sees them as geometric spirals. each spin of the circle takes a different distance upward. and some spins even take us downward, just gathering momentum for the next upswing. sometimes we work and practice to the our limits and see no gain; other times we amaze ourselves with no idea as to what happened.

we never know how long the dark hours last, the ones when we are pushing ourselves to the edge yet nothing seems to be happening.

it indeed is likely that it's a momentum-gathering phase - to let our spirit soar higher and freer.

唐太宗百字箴

耕夫役役，多無隔宿之糧。織女波波，少有御寒之衣。日食三餐，當思農夫之苦。身穿一縷，每念織女之勞。寸絲千命，匙飯百鞭，無功受祿，寢食不安。交有德之朋，絕無益之友。取本分之財，戒無名之酒。常懷克己之心，閉卻是非之口。若能依上所言，富貴功名可久。

i was 11 years old when my school teacher made us memorize this. i only remembered the first two phrases, but glad to have rediscovered it.

all the nice gadgets we have - phones, laptops, high tech sportswear, i do forget someone actually made them. as the recent foxconn suicides have reminded me, things are not as nice, clean, mechanized as we might think. workers are treated like machines, in claustrophobic factories doing the exact same thing, every single day.

knowledge is always the first step - at the very least, find out what we can about the people who are making our new toys. it's not so easy, they aren't exactly having a lot of free time to go around blogging about their experiences.

career things

ignoring the problem of the illusion of freewill, and avoiding the "things will happen the way they're supposed to" for a moment...

frequently, i find myself at crossroads about which career path to take, or to work towards. have alluded to this enough times on this blog to bore even myself, but evidently it's something i still struggle mightily with.

so, i seem to try to make the most sensible move based a variety of criteria, ranging from current satisfaction, future satisfaction, money, lifestyle, etc. i try to peer about five years ahead, since beyond that time horizon, things get so fuzzy it's not worth spending too much time to ponder such. (i also contradict myself in every other entry by spending an inordinate amount of time contemplating things on a much, much longer timescale)

can i make the right move but the wrong overall direction? but my short term moves have presumably incorporated elements of the longer term direction? but my life directions so malleable anyway that i should just stop guessing and go with this mythical "feel"?

in figuring out my career, and since i'm not in school anymore, supposedly no longer bogged down by frivolity, do i:

- think of my dream job and work towards that?

- think of with whatever skillset i seem to have, what would i seem to be the most successful at?

- think of whatever i'd like to learn, go find a job somehow in that area to learn something new?

- think about what the world needs with someone with my kind of skillset?

- and how do i balance all this against monetary concerns? what is "enough" anyway, do i take into account all future liabilities that have a decent chance of occurring?

- stop questioning and appreciate that i apparently have the luxury of choice? it's not going to last anyway? but how does that help me make my choice?

no money no talk

my friend shared a line from a TV drama with me the other day: "you have no money, you have no power, but you have an opinion?", which is another version of "no money no talk".

some apparently true things in our world - when you have money, power, fame:

- you get more money, power, fame (and you won't get corrupted because? but well, it isn't so bad to be corrupted is it? to enjoy the good life?)

- people listen to you (usually because these people also want to have money, power, fame?)

- you have more leverage to save/change the world the way you would like to (and your way is the best way because - you have money, power, and fame?)

sleepless people

beggars in spain: a story about a group of genetically engineered children who did not have to sleep. not insomniacs, but people who genuinely just did not require sleeping.

this is one of the best science fiction stories i have ever read, and i remember thinking this was the coolest thing ever. i imagined what i'd do with all the extra time. it was probably early 1990s when i read it, and i really wonder what i thought i'd spend time on.

fast forward twenty years hence, we do have a lot of extra time. rather, things that took a long time to do before can be done in an instant. so, in theory, we have a lot of extra time. of course, we've managed to totally stuff our free time so we feel we have less time than ever.

the brief moments we have free time, what are we doing with it?

i mean, really, what exactly am i doing with it?

can we find a way to string a bunch of these little packets of free time to have something a bit more extended? and what would we do with this?

everyone has their story

i'm sometimes excited, angry, sad, happy, and everything in between. i have all these reasons i'm in one of these moods. i also have all these non-reasons i'm in one of these moods.

i have all these different stories about myself, all terribly banal, but all very exciting to me.

and pretty much the same for the almost 7 billion other people on this planet.

if we look hard enough, of course we'll have some kind of common ground.

for some, i don't need to try very hard and it turns out we have lots in common. or at least, we can both live with our differences and not go nuts over them (for the moment).

well, really thankful!

reexploring

the issue is how to keep thinking about these things that might never get resolved. why the effort?

how to keep exploring and reexploring when the temptation is that i understand it enough already?

the trouble with these concepts are they aren't built pyramid-up, they're all intimately intertwined.

well, if i really understand it, can i make the route simpler for others who might have similar questions?

clichés

it's astounding that pretty much all of the things i'm beginning to realize (and writing here), are in fact clichés that have been repeated a billion times over. you know, the usual. be kind, don't hurt anybody. be nice to your friends and family, and enemies too, if possible. live in the present, cherish the moment. money is not everything. there are probably a dozen others anyone could rattle off any moment.

when do clichés become "real", rather than just meaningless and overused sound bites? why do they sometimes elicit some deep realizations, and other times they sound overused and annoying?

the karmic explanation is, we'll be ready when we're ready. which is not very satisfying.

this "realness" seems to be a function of how deeply entrenched these things are in our daily lives, and like most things, is largely a sliding gray-scale. it seems to be a combination of understanding how these clichés apply to different aspects of our lives, together with the level of self-awareness of our daily actions.

so, part of it returns to how willing we are to put our own lives under our own personal microscope.

hard.