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Month: November 2024

A Small Change of Perception

I began this morning with the headline “How Kamala Harris Burned Through $1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks”, on NYT.

It was an interesting head to a week of what was for me listening to, understanding, and better reckoning the world after Donald Trump was elected 47th President of the United States, and the first of many headlines I’d seen about this on New York Times.

Some might view this as evidence that the media is cleaving towards the Trump administration as the chickens fall in line and loyalty becomes a Sine Qua Non in the era of an evil empire – but I think a little differently, because I feel like it’s teaching me something about reality.

Look in the comments, and you will see how people have responded – people saying that the presidency is “deeply unserious”, highlighting any number of things that they disagree with even as they say that NYT’s “focus” is wrong, that Kamala “tried to save democracy”, and everything in between.

If I really think about it, all of these seem about as valid as saying that Trump is secretly a genetically modified orange with a toupee made of cheese. 

The entire idea of NYT is that it’s one of the most respected voices in journalism, that alongside publications like the Washington Post, it defines the Overton Window – the space of ideas that are acceptable to the public at any given point of time. 

To the extent therefore that NYT’s function is valid for this purpose, I’m more likely to say that these critics are the ones who don’t make sense – That the calls against that validity are the true measure of what doesn’t make sense.

I’ve often heard this idea that in fact a Trump presidency might be a situation where the inmates are running the asylum, but upon further inspection, I’m no longer so sure; it would have been easier perhaps a year, two years, three years ago to look at what’s happening in America and say that truly, the Democratic party was the asylum keeper and that all that was logical and rational should have been filtered through a Kamala, an Obama, or otherwise… But looking into the article, the discourses, and the revelations about the practices of the Democratic Party have made me start to think otherwise.

Now, there’s definitely a possibility that I’m the wrongheaded one here – a victim of a polarized world view facilitated by mammoth social media algorithms designed to manipulate me, bringing me into a world of right-leaning politics, podcasts, and ideas that I should have regarded as anathema before I had even moved forward – but the things in my mind and heart tell me that I actually went a little bit closer towards the truth in the course of my search.

In understanding this election, the events surrounding it, and how to view the world, I looked for many different things, saw many different things, and came to understand the world much better than I think I otherwise would have…

And what I understand now is that there is reason to fear the leadership of a woman who can spend $1.5 billion with impunity, to look suspiciously upon a woke mob that regards legitimate media as illegitimate the moment its lenses are applied upon them, and to not surrender my perception of what the authority is and ultimately should be to a particular party simply because they’ve seemed more reasonable to me.

Perfectionism to eliminate

…And another has come.

We are progressively moving towards the end of the year with each new beginning.

This is I believe the 46th week of the year out of 52, and it’s leading towards the end of the year; Donald Trump is now president, filling up his cabinet with appointee after appointee as people contemplate things; you might believe that we’re at the start of something HUGE, as Donald might call it, world-shaking, incredible.

But I think while that’s good, it’s good to look at something that I’ve wanted to get rid of for quite a while:

Perfectionism.

I am a victim of it, and I can’t deny that it follows me everywhere, making me question myself and whether what I’m putting out into the internet is either good or worth it – I second guess myself frequently, taking down blog posts that I think aren’t great or that aren’t well worded, thinking that perhaps I should rewrite or otherwise.

I think that this is a very negative behavior, because frankly I don’t really care too much about what people think and secondly, it doesn’t really matter what they think – at least in relation to how I think about myself.

So I would like to eliminate, therefore, the perfectionism that makes me rewrite things, redraft things, take wayyy too much time to release things.

This is the next thing to change, and it’s a good thing to shift it in this year of 2024 – even if it is the only lesson that I will have learned by the end of this year, I think that it will have been a worthwhile one.

Here’s to the next!

Creation

On an empty page, the pencil traces the dotted line, the circle, the shape. 

From the movement of the pencil, a million universes appear, timelines splitting into their multiple component parts in a universe of endless possibility as millions more appear, each one a multiverse of possibilities as the pencil moves, tracing by movement, through which, across billions of possible environments, worlds, universes, colors, shapes, and relations.

Look up from the page and perhaps you may see the created universe – Breathe in and you may appreciate its harmonies, the unity of physical constraints, of physical laws interweaving to make existence possible. 

But is that universe truly greater? 

Look down at the once empty page, no longer so empty. I claim that if you look further, there you will see it:

Here lies the immortal beginning of every endeavor, the step not taken – a journey not yet made of a thousand miles as yet untraveled that you can begin, where you are, with a single stroke of your pen.

Here, then, is the possibility of a universe even greater and even more intricate than you may have ever known —

Whether you can reach that universe or not?

That is a separate question — and none but experience can teach you its answer.

Your Teacher’s Thoughts towards the person he likes (but he doesn’t know?)

The feeling of love for someone is not something that you just go right ahead and deny. I don’t think it’s something that you should be shy about:

That you like a person. Somehow after the years have come to pass it becomes true that somehow or another your ego doesn’t really take that much occupancy. You can admit honestly that you like a person even if you realize that there is no expectation of a return.

On my part, I don’t know; even as a teacher, I really like a couple of different people here and there, but I realize clearly that there might not be really an expectation of a return, and that’s okay, that’s just how I am – it might be strange to think about, but even your teacher might have emotions, and so too might the rest of the world.

It is a little unconventional to reveal your emotions, especially in a world like this, but to the person I do like, I like you, but I realize that I should not put you down, I should not bind you, I should not stop you from being who you want to be. If we come together, it is because somehow or another, through the millions of possible pathways, and somehow through the conversations, we liked each other, and that is enough for me and is an act of fortune, not of planning or otherwise.

In the past, I would’ve been afraid of saying that I like a person or I wouldn’t have been so honest with my emotions. Nowadays, I don’t know if it’s because I’m old now, but I think it’s okay to say that I like people and I’m not too afraid of saying that I do because that’s just what it really is – an expression of emotion and a reality that I wouldn’t deny. 

__

Why do I even like her amidst the hundreds of people who have expressed their affection, their emotion, their wishes that we spend more time together?

I don’t know, I just really like the look on her face, the way that she talks to me, the way that she interacts with me. I don’t really care about her age, honestly. If anything, her age makes her look a little bit more romantically. I don’t know, it’s just that even when I think about what I’m interested in; I think the maturity just adds to the mystique and the interest that comes along with it. The feeling that maybe the person that you’re looking at has a kind of maturity that you’re not exposed to, things that you don’t know about, secrets that lie beyond your imagination – It’s kind of fascinating to me, even as I acknowledge the only reason I have not found someone else: nobody else has captivated my soul more.

I realize in many ways that I am meant to be a teacher. But somehow, this role seems sometimes overly limiting.

A teacher too is human. A teacher too has emotions. A teacher too can love people. A teacher too can hate people. A teacher too can be captivated by a feeling of infatuation. Let it pass. Ignore it, but follow along with it.

As I am, I know fully well that people rely upon me, yet I realise that I have my own feelings. Is it too wanton or too selfish for me if I simply just throw out how I genuinely feel?

This can be a teaching moment that even if someone is your teacher, they too can have emotions and feelings. They too can be unsure about life and can love another person for reasons that seem stupid to you but rational if you were to take the perspective of the person that you love and respect. 

There is this weird idea really that the physical body transcends the boundaries of the known, and I’m not super attached to the idea that physically speaking we are tied to a particular age or physical state of existence, which is one of the reasons why I privilege this idea that maybe even someone older is okay – That even if she has ideals that seem deluded or misinformed from my personal perspective, I can be open to what she says and what she thinks. 

It is a little weird to share your thoughts on social media and even on a blog because that raises questions about who you are, what you privilege, and what you like. But anyway, that is just a personal reflection that eventually people will come to understand. 

But I am okay with that because at the end of the day, I prefer that people interact with me as who I am, not somebody who is different, not somebody who is divorced from his true self, not somebody who is trying to play a role.

As I think about who I like, there is naturally a sense of distance – the feeling that somehow a person is probably laughing at you just because of how far apart you are. How many stages of life that person must have gone through relative to you?

For me, I think it’s kinda cool that there is that kind of difference and distance because it shows that there’s something to learn.

Maybe it is just a weird quirk of my personality that I like someone who is so far ahead of me. It is a little weird and it is not something I would have known or even experienced before. But I don’t know, the reverie of the days has made it possible that this would come to pass. It could just be a crush, but who knows? We never do know, and life is complicated.

I don’t really like those who have not gone through certain experiences. And I’m sorry if that’s something that you like and that’s something that you want more in your life. Because I cannot deliver that. The part of me that believes in the future wants someone more than that – someone who has been through a broken world, who has had their entire life and their ideals broken before, but somehow chooses the ability to go on and push on. That is just how I am in this weird, strange moment of reverie.

Though I am your teacher, as I am to many others, I do not know fully what I want. Yet, this is my expression of vulnerability to you, my student. I know that I am teaching you and I know that I am asking you questions that will change your life, transform your existence, and make you regard your older self as a shadow of what you once were.

But I too am human, and that is the truth.

The things we like but are not good at.

In this world, as we pass through, we may realize that there are some activities that we deeply and truly love – little skills, hobbies, and occupations that pique our minds, hearts, and souls when we participate in them as an act of pleasure. 

As we pass through the tides of time, though, almost inevitably we come to realize that simply because someone we enjoy something, that doesn’t mean that we are going to be good at it. In fact, that’s an understatement. 

Why are we talking about good when actually we can be horribly, devastatingly, and world-changingly catastrophic at it? 

Here the realization inevitably comes, almost as if it were the common heritage of humanity:

Just because you like something, that does not mean that you will be good at it. 

One might argue that a true passion is such that even if one isn’t good at something, that the passion should stay. 

Even if you are a horrible dancer, that does not mean that you should despise dancing. 

The words of an eternal Malay proverb come to mind, “Tidak tahu menari, memarahkan lantai.”

They resonate through the core of our beings and remind us: 

If you dance horribly, that does not mean that you should blame the floor. 

In other words, our lack of skill is no justification for our preferences, which are shown superficial if being bad at them is our grounds for casting them away. 

After all, are we not like the fox, that declared the grapes sour, purely because we could not reach them? 

In a way, this may be true, but a reality is that in this world, skills are not necessarily their own reward, and imagining that they are is to neglect the realities of our universe in lieu of something all too idealistic, rarefied, and divorced from both the world and the way it supports, facilitates, and grows skills. 

From a purely psychological perspective though, the idea that being good at something can enhance enjoyment is well-supported by research across multiple fields. 

When people feel competent or skilled in a task:

• They experience greater intrinsic motivation (Self-Determination Theory).

• They are more likely to achieve a state of flow (Flow Theory).

• They feel rewarded by using their strengths (Positive Psychology).

• They expect to succeed, which increases motivation and enjoyment (Expectancy-Value Theory).

• They activate the brain’s reward pathways, creating positive reinforcement (Neuroscience).

• They have higher self-efficacy, leading to greater confidence and satisfaction (Self-Efficacy).

However, it’s not just the case that competence makes an activity easier or more manageable and contributes to the sense of pleasure and fulfillment we get from it – we live in a society that rewards it, and so provides the conditions for its continuation: 

The truly skilled of any domain find opportunities as a result of their success. People who are skilled in languages can become language teachers in the same way that people skilled in the cello or the piano can become master performers or instructors. Across almost any domain, this is true…

But what is also true is that attaining such levels of skill is inevitably a hard-won battle and is not guaranteed either. 

To muse a little, talent is a relative measure, and the world is a competitive place – To become distinguished is not so easy as being able to play at a certain fluency on the piano, or create pieces that resonate with the universe at scale. It is a matter of shining, differentiating oneself, and showcasing that one is both immeasurably better and immeasurably more relatable than those around them, or, if neither of those, than immeasurably more competent in the relevant area, in a way that others would universally accept.

There are many reasons why a person can lack the talent that they need to move on to the next level. 

Discipline, a lack of the talent to generate in an hour what someone else can bring forth in 6 minutes… better training, resources, facilities, for others that one does not have. But on a personal note, I am agnostic about these things. Because if one lacks talent in a certain way, how could one confidently distinguish between the reasons? Do you really lack talent, and hence you’re unable to do something? Or is it because you don’t have the discipline to do it? If you think down to it, it’s not so clear-cut or easy to distinguish – and what’s worse, it becomes the foundation of excuse-making, malingering, and eventually a blame game that converges in a blaming of everything except oneself on account of an abandoned quest towards one’s end goal.

As such, I think it’s not a question that’s worth addressing. 

What I do consider worth addressing, though, is the fact that there is a natural order to things – A timeline over which people pursue things, and over which the binary determinant of whether a talent will flourish or die is made; a timeline I’ve known all too well over time. 

There are many things out there that I like, but I’m not good at – Things that I’ve tried to learn, but have failed in the process because I didn’t allocate the time necessary, or because I didn’t have the talent.

I’d like to think that I’ve learned some things from my failures, but probably the most immediate one is this. Whatever it is that you do, do with all your heart and your soul. Distribute it over the course of time. But remember that discipline is good for you. In the moments when you don’t feel like doing things, discipline will keep you. Passion on the other hand is separate, and it’s true that without it, the journey would be hard to sustain, and ability difficult to procure. But therein lies the benefit of looking back at the things that we try to strive for, to reflect upon them, and to push forward, realising why it is that we wanted to do certain things. I have plenty of reflections on my own life that I’d love to share, but I suppose those will come at a later time.

It’s My Fault

When I think about life and all the things that I want to accomplish, I realize that there are many barriers that hold me back. No matter how I look at myself and everything in between, there’s an inescapable reality that comes to mind: “Somehow or another, if I look at any part of what I see, I can conclude it is probably my fault.”

Whether this is true or not, it’s the feeling that I carry into life. If I didn’t do something, then I think it is my fault. If I did do something and it went wrong, it is also my fault. Almost everything that happens in this lifetime and to me is my fault.

It’s a strange, liberating but also potentially harsh way of looking at the world – this idea that somehow or another you are responsible for everything that you experience.

Trivially, this cannot be true for the simple reason that external affairs and things aren’t totally in control, But it’s definitely a liberating one. Like you, I am just another human being. I might have talked to certain people that you may find difficult to reach. I may do things that you may not expect, or otherwise consider conventional.

But like you, I am human and in many ways I am weak.

Across countless occasions, I can remember the ways I planned but did not execute, seek after things but did not cross the boundary as mistakes stretch out across time in the proof of time gone by, but things not done.

I look at all of that and I accept it.

This is all very different from what I experienced when I was a younger person. The idea of failure was unacceptable, and I would do everything in my power to fight against it. Now I’ve come to realize that the world is a lot messier and more complex, and that the standard that one should expect of oneself is a lot higher. In many ways, I need to step up my game.

Does reflecting in this way change anything that I would do and that I intend to do? I would like to think so – the alternative, I suppose, would simply be to just continue in old patterns even as a metamorphosis proceeds, a skin sheds and something new comes from within.

What it yields though is a separate matter. I write this at the dawn of new beginnings in world history with many new friends, memories, reflections, and bonds that I can call genuine now compared to the last year, but with many more things that I realize I need to do.

It remains to be seen whether they will be done, but I will try to do them all in a timely manner and look forward to showing you what is to come!

Mensa – A Small Reflection

Today I thought I’d write a brief blog post on Mensa, the organisation that I’ve been a part of for the past couple of years. It’s been a long time since I really thought about this, but a lot of things have really changed. 

As Carl Jung once said, “We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about ourselves or our lives. If we had, we would know everything–but at most that is only a pretense. At bottom we never know how it has all come about. The story of a life begins somewhere, at someparticular point we happen to remember; and even then it was already highly complex. We do not know how life is going to turnout. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only bevaguely hinted at. The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a youngmedical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated.”

I joined Mensa when I was a teenager of 17. Insecure, lacking identity, and wanting to try something new. 

Imagine my joy then when I took the test scored a pretty decent score and ended up joining the Society, finding it to be a safe harbor for myself in a strange world.

I thought it was a natural thing to do – to find myself a spot where somehow I wouldn’t feel so alone, to be in the presence of people who were the brightest in the world, who could change that world and make it a better place. There you see, a whole bunch of pivotal assumptions, many of which I learned were wrong:

First of all, I realized that Mensa was definitely a place that gathered people. It wasn’t necessarily a place where the feeling of loneliness would disappear. After all, a person can be alone but feel completely at home, yet live in a sea of people but feel lonely and longing for the connection of kindred souls.  

I learned quickly that Mensa was not a place of the brightest; instead, it was a collection of strange individuals here and there, some of whom liked puzzles, others of whom just enjoyed attending events – it was then that I realized that the idea of intelligence was not necessarily the same as intelligence. In its inchoate form, it manifested as an ennui, a disillusionment, and an unhappiness in a crowd that I was now a part of – but that I realize was not filled with what I consider even remotely transformative.

Secondly, I realized that Mensa was not for changing the world; indeed, that didn’t align with how everything was set up anyway, given that the very bylaws of the society themselves say that the society as a whole has no opinion. Still, I was there, just spending time thinking that it would be interesting and that I would find some meaning inside from the people around me – Only to find disappointment, although I should say, that that disappointment was the fruit of my own expectations. 

The last of these realizations is something I came to only recently and that took more than ten years to realise… But I think it is quite important. 

Like anything in life, Mensa is what you make of it – your expectations, the people you encounter, the conversations you have, and the moments that you share with others. All of which subsist in an infinitely collapsing probability wave function bearing enormous possibilities. That’s not unique to Mensa; that’s true of everything in life. It’s just that Mensa was one of the places where that lesson was learned – an academy in which multiple ridiculous premises came together to form and fashion an arena for the competition of my ideas with the reality that surrounded it.

There are so many other things I’ve discovered about Mensa. Dramas, fights, wars over things that seem apparently meaningless. Holiday gatherings one after another, friendships, meeting people. Realizing that not everybody holds the same image of intelligence. Realizing that you’ve found a safe space to talk about intelligence. Realizing that you can talk about anything and just have to bear the consequences in the many forums that the organization sets up. For those of us who are lucky enough to score in the top 2% in a local test. 

Mensa is not a place for changing the world. It never has been and perhaps it never will be. If it does change the world, it is not because of the society in itself, but rather it would be because of an accident and people who came together either by an act of chance or an act of god. 

Despite all of the self-doubt, contemplation, and everything in between, it has become a kind of home and a home that I appreciate, a place where there is more to discover.

It is for that reason and for no other reason that I continue to take joy in it. To enjoy the friendship of those whom I’ve met within it – For in it I know; there is more to go.