surenotwhy

[surenotwhy]

The lie that ruins life

Love is a lie that ruins life. Romantic love is precisely what I want to call out in this post. So I am not talking "love = really enjoy" kind of thing.

"If we fall in love .. "

"I don't think I'm in love with you"

If those 2 sentences are ever spoken to you, run as fast as you can in the other direction.

Whereas with "I love you",

Love can be "I want to sleep with you"

Love can be "I'm afraid of being alone"

Love can be "I don't know who I am without you"

Love can be "I don't think I can find anybody better"

Love can be "I want to feel better about myself by being with you"

Love can be anything, any need, any desire that you might feel towards another person. These are all human emotions and I have 0 problem with them. The problem is when they hide behind "love". The word basically fucks up any concept of reality that might exist, in your own head or while communicating anything to anybody.

If you feel love that's great, if you're looking for it - you're lost and you will forever be lost. It's an impossible expectation, never clearly defined, always on the whim of emotions. Emotions are like, if you mapped the footsteps of a drunk person on a saturday night - you want to find a logical connection between them but there is none. Zilch.

Instead of love, go deeper. Say what you want. It's okay, to say a boring sentence like - "I would like to be with you", "you make me feel good". But be fucking clear! Be a decent human being and introspect and say what you really think.

[surenotwhy]

Sleep more?

I wonder how much people would sleep 100 years ago, and how about 200 years ago? I would bet its longer than we do now. I read somewhere that today in United States adults regularly sleep less than 8 hours a day. Now if 8 hours is the ideal sleep duration, spread that over years and years: how much sleep are we losing? And what are exactly are we doing with that time?

Sleeping more would be nice. I can't speak for other people but I would love to sleep more. So what's stopping me from sleeping more? It's complicated..

My cat

My cat paws me with his claws out if I don't wake up, he's hungry so it's understandable. This is something that can be solved though, I can give him extra food at night and I can close the door to my room. But I will miss being woken up by my cat in bed, purring, which is weirdly comforting.

Morning = Werk

This is the first real reason. My work schedule demands me to wake up early-ish, be present in meetings. How early? 9am is our meeting time, my other colleagues start even early but I've figured that as a time I can get enough sleep.

Evenings = Me time

I definitely feel I'm more of an evening person than morning. I drag myself to do things in the morning, compare it to evening, when I'm inspired and motivated, I cook, exercise, watch, read lol.

But, and this is a big but: I wonder how much of that is because I have to work in the morning. If mornings are for obligations then evenings is the only time I have for all the other shit I want to do. So no wonder I cram everything in the evening. In fact it's often that I have a mental checklist of things I want to complete before a day is over, which often overloads the evening.

Werk + Me time = Stress + guilt

I'm realizing that 9-5 work combined with my stubbornness to [pursue hobbies + be socially active + exercise + eat healthy + work on myself + clean the apartment] is often stressful. That stress and the guilt of not completing the checklist you had, leaks into the habit of sleeping late and waking early.

So is it just a matter of setting realistic expectations of what can be achieved in a day? Before that one more thing..

Do you sleep more when you don't work?

So if work is a hurdle to sleep, I would be sleeping more on the weekends and holidays? I think that's generally true.

How did we end of talking about work so much in a post about sleep?

I'm not sure, but I'm not surprised either. Work is a big part of your day so if the time you spend working is not meaningful and satisfying enough, you're bound to search that in other areas. That said, even if work is satisfying it doesn't mean you don't want to spend time doing other things.

Less amount of work + More satisfying work

This is the key for me I feel. A world of no work would be brutal on me, I would get bored. I want to work and make a difference, collaborate with other smart and motivated people. But at the same time I want to take time off and grow in other areas of my life (especially now that I'm in my 20s maybe that's not the case later).

Working 4 days a week would be amazing. More vacation days would be amazing.

Project to project work in my mind would be more satisfying. When you complete a self contained project you can take time off, and it's an achievement in itself. This is inspired by something I heard from Naval Ravikant - that humans are sprinters - we rest taking long breaks and then we sprint as hard as we can, and I think that's true. Our motivation, inspiration rises and wanes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwHeBvU6oEg

What was this post even about

I know this was a rambling post but I hope it gave you some food for thought!

[surenotwhy]

Privilege & Living in bubbles

It’s June 1st and the curtain of normality has been lifted. American is on fire and we cannot pretend it’s not happening. It’s a world of hurt, pain, anger and devastation. It’s happening in my neighborhood, it affects the places I used to visit, it affects the people I know. It feels deeply personal now.

My apartment maintenance guy came in today to help me replace my bidet. He is black. After a while, he asks me if I was going to the protests. At this point I’m not sure what to say. There’s curfew tonight in my city after 2 days of violent protests. Helicopters have been flying in high risk areas, coastal guard has been deployed. My family and friends sent “stay safe!” messages to me when they got to know what was happening. I said “No..” meekly, while also letting him know I still supported the movement. I wanted him to know I cared. “Scared?” he said to me. I asked him if he’d been going, and he said “I’ve been at the front lines. I gotta do something.. think about my kids futures. What kind of lives they’re going to have”. We talked a few more, then he asks me “what’s this for?” pointing at the bidet. I was a bit surprised he didn’t know. I tell him it’s so my ass is clean. He is curious and wants to see it in action, and I laugh awkwardly thinking of a polite way to demonstrate the bidet. He moves the dial a bit and water shoots out to the opposite wall, and we laugh. I say “Stay safe out there” while he leaves.

This conversation made it real for me. It literally demonstrated to me in a matter of a few minutes what privilege is. I tried to imagine what life must be like in his shoes.. and failing. I felt guilty as I scanned my luxurious apartment, of my bidet, of how comfortable my life was, of my petty little problems. It reminded me of how separated I was from this guy and his reality. Even though we breathed the same air, lived around the same neighborhood, he worried about very different things than me.

There’s a certain responsibility that comes with privilege, the power that it gives us. Whether it be wealth, the color of our skin or our gender. And we all must meditate and accept that responsibility. When as an immigrant from an Asian country I can come and work and live here, there must be certain responsibilities I must accept to the system that provides me with such abundance.

P.S : Unsurprisingly American capitalism was built on the backs of slaves

[surenotwhy]

Black lives matter

What’s happening right now across America is tragic. A black man “suspected of forgery” died unable to breath while being pinned to the ground by a cop. This incident is far from isolated, it's a very stark reminder of the state of racism in America, and how African Americans are treated by cops.

Cops clearly have way too much power right now. If you look at the video it really makes you question if the cops are human beings like you and me. Why do you need to pin a man to the ground after you’ve handcuffed him? Do you really have to keep your knee on his neck? Did you not see how he was already under medical distress (falling to the ground multiple times)? What were the other cops thinking? And the most important of all, Would they have done the same thing if the man was white? I think the honest answer is no.

Racism is real. An average person can be racist in his own private world and that’s fine. You are free to be a racist on twitter, there are laws like freedom of speech that protect you. But it’s a whole another world when a person in power is racist, especially a person who gets to decide who lives and dies. In terms of power think of cops are parents and us as children, there’s a huge power imbalance. And as a society we’ve agreed to have that system, to regulate us and to keep order. But if the system regularly discriminates one section of the population on the basis of race, people who are often the least privileged, then there’s something very clearly going wrong.

There’s a need for systemic change in how cops operate on the individual as well as the department level. Train the cops to be better, give them anti-bias training, train them to practice restrain. If you’re a white cop realize how much power you have by default, realize how easy it is for you to misuse that power, and be wary of yourself when you treat people of color.

Put body cams on cops and make them public, so that we can hold them accountable for their actions. Cops should fear consequences of their wrong actions, they should not feel that have free reign over the most vulnerable.

[surenotwhy]

The problem with pop psychology ted-talks like these

The problem with pop psychology talks like the above are, that they do more harm than good. They usually make you judge your thoughts and feelings, and give an extra layer to your self-doubts. Let me explain.

So the summary of the ted-talk is if you are a person who believes stress is good for you, your body responds to that better than when you think it’s bad for you. Quoting the author herself, in this somewhat nonsensical sentence

“When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage”

My first impression on watching the video was profound, and I am convinced as well as impressed. I made a mental note of it to say that to myself when I was stressed. This is coming from a person who often stresses about things, I’d say overthinking is one of my top qualities. So after a few days of trying it out I didn’t feel quite right. I knew analyzing my stress in a way like that was bringing more stress. I was saying to myself “if i just believe really hard at this moment of time why this stress is good for me, my body will finally respond in the right way aaaaarrghhhh!! c’mon brain!”

Anyways it didn’t really work, and I thought there must be something really wrong with that ted talk. So here are my observations.

TED talks are more entertainment than science

From my reading of “Amusing ourselves to death” by Neil Postman, I knew “Medium is the message”. Throughout the book he really drives that home by looking at various communication mediums - print mediums like books, newspapers, and comparing them to visual mediums like TV. The point he makes is, on a visual medium what looks good to the eye is what gets more attention. And I feel it really holds true for this talk.

The speaker is a great presenter, she’s very good looking, very well dressed, and she speaks exceptionally well. She holds our attention with stories and humor. She’s confident, smiles at the right time, she pauses at the right moment, which makes us feel she said something really profound. Those are all of the things that help her message across. I have nothing against Kelly and this specific video, but this is me trying to remind myself what goes on the in the background. Ultimately that youtube video is more entertainment than science. It is more akin to Margot Robbie teaching Finance, than to a scientist presenting their research in a rational way.

Psychology Research and Replication Crisis

That’s one reason to not take the video too seriously. Another is even if we assume the information is completely accurate at the time, remember that Psychology is a “soft” science, where research is highly contextual and subjective. And it has been undergoing a major Replication crisis. Many popular psychology studies (including power posture whose ted talks had millions of views) just didn’t replicate, or were found to have effect that was very little than previously emphasized. Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow also admitted he “placed too much faith in underpowerd studies“. So that’s more reason to look at what’s being presented with a critical eye and take it with a grain of salt. In the future the research might fail to replicate or have a really low net effect size.

Changing your beliefs is not easy as it looks and You’ll end up tormenting yourself

There should be a big disclaimer when presenting a finding like this, and I believe what I describe here is absolutely the number one reason to not to take it seriously even if it is true. When you watch a video promising benefits like this, it feels as if doing that will fix all your problems. The problem starts with trying to control something that you have no to very little control over. In the book “The Happiness Trap” taking findings from ACT therapy, tries to bust the myth that we have much control over our thoughts and emotions. The same is said by Mindfulness practice as well, which emphasizes separating our thoughts from ourselves.

Armed with the information I an average person, think “okay I just have to think about stress in a positive way, which is the correct way to do it”. First and most devastatingly, it tells me there’s a correct and non-correct way of thinking about things. “What other beliefs do you have that are not helping you? oh maybe your beliefs about work is the reason why you’re not getting a promotion”. Oh my god I have to rework my entire belief structure, I have to find studies like these so I can finally have the things that I want. As I try to micromanage my thoughts and beliefs “Am I thinking about this correctly?” it is a world of stress and anxiety. Lastly when I don’t get the results I want, I feel like I failed to do it “correctly”. It’s a really easy way to place all the blame on your “beliefs”.

Is changing beliefs that simple? I’m reminded that people go through months and years of therapy with a licensed professionals, paying them huge amounts of money and time, before making a difference. There are specific exercises, workbooks, actual work that you put in to change some of your underlying behavior and thought patterns. None of that was done or even presented in this case. Watching the video gives an illusion of knowledge, that somehow by understanding it, just by the simple act of watching it I have everything that I need to change my relationship with stress. I can by sheer will and determination change my belief “If I think really hard positively about stress for a long enough time, maybe just maybe.. “ 

In summary it worsens your relationship with yourself. I want to think of another scenario, where a person say John, followed the advice successfully and thought of stress in a positive way. What if tomorrow a new research comes along which says “Stress is bad, you should avoid it” having disproved the earlier research which John based his beliefs on. Now is John expected to change his beliefs again? Is John expected to regularly follow and keep up with scientific research as to the correct way of thinking about things?

What kind of nonsense is this? When did we come in the business of micromanaging our beliefs about things? /rant

Hope you enjoyed this rant :D Stay sane stay healthy.

[surenotwhy]

One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

[surenotwhy]

It’s strange how much I relate to her. Great great great bit of storytelling and self expression!

[surenotwhy]

Hello neighbor, thank you for visiting my blog :) 

Fred Rogers was a very interesting man. I got to know about him recently in the documentary “Would you be my neighbor”. He has a very comforting demeanor which is best described as “wholesome”. Kind of in the same category as Bob Ross.