December 2021 psychological update

2020 and 2021 have been plagued by Covid-19. So I haven't been able to go home to visit my parents for 2 years. As chance would have it, the start date of my new job had been delayed, so I had been able to go to visit my parents in Asia for 2 weeks, after a 15 day quarantine. 

My father is very old (in his 90s)... so old that he caught bacterial pneumonia infection from choking on food. I know it's bacterial infection because his symptoms improved after receiving a 2 week intravenous antibiotics treatment. The whole time, my mother and my sister were worried sick. They were mentally preparing for the fact that he might not make it. Luckily, he made it out of the hospital alive. Though initially very weak and delirious, he kept improving in terms of physical and mental conditions ever since he got home.

Theoretically, this should be very good news. However, I observed and interacted with my family and experienced very profound sadness. First of all, my mother is deeply deeply fearful of my father dying. So to control that fear, she began mentally preparing for his death. She said things like, "Your father has lived a good, long life. He has supported our family for long enough. He has been an excellent father. I am ready to let him go. I won't be depressed when he goes. We shall celebrate his long life and an uncomplicated death with short, minimal suffering." 

Everything she said pointed to a very healthy way of thinking. However, when dad made it home, my mother complained about the doctor friend who suggested for her to mentally prepare and perhaps actually prepare for dad's funeral. She then planned a vacation "for the whole family", where they drove HOURS to get to a hotel, and tried to wheelchair my dad around in the sun with no shades, where the temperature  was 39 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. My mother was ecstatic she could get the whole family together. My dad (who literally JUST got released from the hospital after an intense medical treatment), my brother-in-law, my sister, and her two adult kids, who were treated by their parents like they were small children.

Throughout the whole visit, my mom babbled continuously. Her words indicated that she was fine, happy, strong, and mentally healthy. Her actions indicated that she was horrified about the prospect of being alone; she didn't trust anybody; she tried to control everyone and everything; she would either give out angry commands (go do something for me and do it now!), or burst into tears at home, then pretended she was totally fine and no such behavior had happened. I think she is officially a "crazy person". She has no desire to go see a psychiatrist, of course. I don't even dare to bring that up. She just becomes very furious randomly. Or she would lie about seeing a doctor but not actually do it. From what I have heard from my sister, my mother goes to the doctors quite regularly for check-ups, but cannot tell a straight story about anything.

Normally I have a ton of empathy for anyone in a disadvantaged position, who feels helpless, scared, worried, and weak.  Unfortunately I have almost no tolerance for lying and deceit. Throughout my whole life, as long as I can remember, my mother is the dictator type of parent, "Do what I say or ELSE!" "Eat whatever it is I give you to eat!" "Go wherever it is I tell you to go!" Outwardly to guests, acquaintances and friends, she is charming, a warm, generous host, who loves to throw parties and welcome friends and families to our homes. Basically, the person whom I experienced as a daughter was a very different person from who everyone else got to see, but at least both characters were very confident, high-energy, and strong. My mother is basically a classic narcissist.

Now the aging woman exposes herself for who she actually is: a woman with intense fear of the whole world and has possesses deep-seated self-hatred. In her prime, she ordered me around to make herself feel good. Now she orders me around to avoid feeling completely out of control. She can say the "right stuff" -- positive thinking, gratitude, positive outlook of life, but she doesn't believe any of it. At the same time, she remains overly self-centered, believing that everyone wants to take her money, or are out to get her. She also expressed deep jealousy of my "youth" -- middle-age is considered as young for an octogenerian I suppose, and practically, your own children will never grow older than you as long as you are alive.

I have always thought of my mother as egotistical and overly controlling, but I never really admitted to myself how much she lies. Her whole life is one giant lie, basically. No matter how confident she acted for all these decades, she never really believed in herself this whole time. What an astonishing pathology.

This is a person that you can feel sad and sorry for, but you cannot actually help her. She constantly misinterprets my words and action from the worst starting point of intentions. She and I possess practically complete opposite world-views and value systems. I believe in reason and logic. She seems to believe that if she acts mean enough and authoritarian enough people will obey her. That's why she still tries to sound mean and angry and order people around even though she actually feels weak, confused, and powerless. She blames me for constantly criticizing her, when she herself is her own worse critic. In fact, I now believe that a ton of things she has blamed me over the decades are opinions that she or her own terrible mother said about her. For DECADES, she externalizes all these terrible intentions to me and my sister. How dare we be such horrible people? The whole time I was just confused. For the life of me I could not understand what exactly did I say or do that warranted such intense furor.

So I read a lot of articles on narcissism, and most of them claim that a narcissist cannot really be treated. It's like watching someone drown; if you tried to reach out to help her, she will just drag you into the whirlpool with her. I kept thinking a therapist or a psychiatrist might be able to help her, but it seems like she prefers to pretend she is completely mentally healthy than to do something about the mental chaos in her head.

So that was my 2021... a family-wide mental break down. Who knows what 2022 will bring?

Meditation: checking-in with what bothers me the most

I have been feeling extremely scatter brained and have been having trouble forcing myself to sit still for 10 minutes a day. Today I managed to do it. I realized that the feeling of having 1 million thoughts going through my brain is just the overstimulation of substances like caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or even carbonated water. My hypersensitivity really means I should just drink more still water instead.

I also still feel like my mother would pop out at any time to criticize and nag. I have left home for >6 years now. I don't think the feeling will ever go away completely. It is really terrible I internalized her anxieties. I feel like I would go a lot further in life if she didn't nag so excessively. I did leave home for 2 years after I got my uni degree, but the masochist in me returned home, because at the bottom of my heart, I am really attached to the idea of home and family. For all of my life I wished for a mentor who would guide me through life, help me understand how to navigate through society. I never had that mentor. I learned through just placing myself in foreign situations.

I don't really know why I get so scared about the possibility of being hurt emotionally. I seem to think that if I don't get hired for a job, if the boss doesn't like me, if I made a big mistake at work,  if I get fired, if I get rejected by a man, then gasp, my world would crumble. The floor below me would disappear and I would fall eternally towards and beyond hell, or something dramatic like that. This is why I am so scared to try anything involving interacting with other human beings. I'm trying to figure out why I feel this way. I'm guessing it's because my mother used to react so dramatically when I made any small mistakes. Her response to my toddler misdemeanours felt like how a more normal person would react to her child setting the house on fire, or shooting someone in the face with a gun. It really seems like her melodramatic reactions over the years have caused long lasting trauma in me.  I recently read that emotionally immature parents are simply unable to feel empathy towards their children's distress. I guess all these years I had been wishing for mother to become a bit better at sympathy is like wishing a blind person could recover his/her sight.

When I meditate I feel a lot of jitter. I am unable to focus with all these jitter going on, so I try to cover them up by drinking sugary/caffeinated drinks. I go climbing, because the intensity of the sport justifies for the jitters that I feel. Actually, climbing brings out a lot of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. When positioned on an inclined, overhang wall, with wind blowing at me, feeling extremely insecure, the sensations feel extremely familiar. It feels just like when I'm about to make a mistake, or when someone is screaming in my face. In these situations, I feel like I'm about to fall. I never actually "fall", but I feel like if I dare to go as far as actually letting myself fall, then my life, as I know it, will be over. And it's not just my life. The Earth itself will explode spectacularly right after I die (cue some glorious Hollywood explosion scene).

It's not just my mother. My aunts, my cousins, sometimes my sister, also let me feel that my mere existence is one big mistake. Everything I do is wrong. I say the phrases that are negative and hurtful to them, I don't perform certain cultural formalities that are expected of me at the appropriate times. Whenever I return home, I feel like I say all the things and shouldn't say and don't say all the things I am supposed to say. I actively bring unhappiness to those who are around me.

Is this true? I have been examining myself. It's partly true. I do tend to point out the negative aspects of what I observe and fail to mention the positive aspects. Why do I do it? I want things to CHANGE FOR THE BETTER, to IMPROVE. But I am the only person in the family who feels that way. The others in the family maintain the status quo by just saying niceties. Floral wishes. They perpetuate old wives' tales and pretend the ongoing conflicts do not exist. By faking a celebratory ambience every time the family meets up, the conflicts are never actually resolved. Everyone still secretly hates each other. People's lives do not improve. Marriages fall apart. People's healths deteriorate (due to wrong beliefs regarding what is good for health). Meanwhile they become more and more intentionally psychologically delusional in order to maintain the mirage.

The last paragraph came out of nowhere. But it did point how how I have felt for a long time. I want to point out things that are wrong (with the intention to fix the problems). They point out I am (one of the) problem instead. If everyone says I am wrong, then who am I to argue with the majority? So something must be wrong with me. It is true that I am wrecking the harmony and the celebratory mood of the family gathering. But indeed their lives are progressively doing worse. The intention of my family (and most organizations) is to sound positive and maintain the status quo. I have a desire to diagnose problems and resolve them, which is not welcomed. For my own sake, it would be better to go along with whatever they say, ignore the errors, try focus on the positive aspects of the interaction/relationship.

It took me nearly 40 years to understand that that most people have zero interest in truths. They are not interested exploration, or finding the best path towards getting what they want. They want shortcuts. They would rather pretend to have gotten what they want than to spend time to find the right strategies / correct paths. They take turns boasted about their limited knowledge, even though they sound clownish in front of anyone with actual knowledge on the topics. It seems wildly absurd to me, but I suppose this type of chest puffing probably was effective before the Internet was invented.

I should try to participate in their charade next time, and see if I get a different outcome than my normal yearly visit.

[p.s. This post definitely needs major rewrite, but I just wanted to get the ideas down into some written form first]

What Brexit and Trump taught me about a different thinking process

I guess I have been super naïve my whole life, but it took Donald Trump's win and Brexit for me to realize how differently some people view the world and how they make their decisions.

I recently came across a series of Youtube videos where Brexit supporters phone-in to a British national radio talk show to describe how they see Brexit will ultimately be good for the UK. The radio host, James O'Brien, asks them rather specific questions that they often cannot answer; for example: name a specific European Union law that they will be happy they won't need to comply with anymore after Brexit. Another example: name specific ways in which Brexit will benefit the caller's life.

The callers usually get stumped when asked about specifics, so they say, "That's not the point" and try to talk about another general aspect of Brexit that they feel would be good for UK, for example, they will save £350 million a week once they leave the EU. The host would refuse to let the caller move on to a different topic. He would ask the same question over and over again, until the caller blurts out something not nice, such as "I just don't like seeing people who look really different from me causing trouble on the streets!!" 

I listened to about 5-10 different conversations, where the host used the same strategy on each caller, always leaving the caller super frustrated. I'm surprised that they would keep phoning in to such a radio host who is known to hold the caller's feet to the fire. The point the host tries to illustrate is that people have very strong feelings about vague talking points they have been fed by propaganda ("we will take back control!"), but they don't have specific facts to back up their claims. For the callers, the facts are "not the point"; the point they want to make is that they feel weak and oppressed in the EU, and that they will "feel better" once Britain is out of the EU.

With Trump, I notice he would just paint a picture of how people kind of feel ("illegal immigrants are everywhere in the US, taking our jobs, committing crimes on US citizens"), and ignore the statistics that are presented to him. Climate change is inconvenient and costly to businesses, so he just says it's not really happening. People who like the same things as he does are totally happily with how he deals with facts (only believe the ones that support his worldview and ignore the rest).

I am the opposite of that. Normally when I hear something counter to my belief, I'm like "oh no! Maybe I am wrong", and start researching the topic like crazy (by that I just mean making several google searches).  Sometimes what I find strengthens my positions; other times I find I have to refine my opinions. Given that the internet contains false information and all sorts of opinions, this often means I have to go through copious amounts of information before I feel comfortable about making a more informed opinion. I understand this is a lot of work, but I used to think other people also feel this way even if they don't do extensive researches. Turns out some people just hold strong opinions and comfortably ignore evidence that don't support their opinions (or comfortable claiming a point when there is an absence of strong supporting evidence). People tend to trust those who appear the most confident, not the ones who are the most knowledgeable. No wonder I always appear weak to my mother, my family, colleagues, and bosses.

I finally understand why it is so difficult for me to interact with my mother! Whenever I present some facts that are counter to my mother's belief, she would just refuse to take what I present into account and change topic on me. Whatever the evidence presented are inconvenient to her, she would just say that's not important, or jump to something else. I used to be soooo frustrated. Now I know about 50% of the population in the world are just like her. I guess I am frustrated because all of my life she kept emphasizing the importance of school, but when I wish to share critical thinking skills with her she is not interested. I guess she just thinks good grades in school = smarter = more respect = more success in life. When it's clearly not the case she just tells me I have turned out much better than she expected already. Soooooo... she expected me to be a failure? 

It has been difficult for me to understand my relationship with my mother.  I guess from analyzing the radio conversations, some people have an opinion that they want to express; they have a story to support their claims, but the story is often not solid enough to be subjected to pokes and prods. Then they get angry that you weaken their house of cards, then the interaction turns sour. With my mother, what I care about are facts, but what my mother really wants is for me to go along with whatever it is she presents to me.

Knowing that about 50% of the world operates this way, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do. I know that appearing confident can get you very far in life. In Trump's case it made him the president of a very powerful country. The Brexit leave campaign sounded stronger than the Remain campaign, so it managed to sway more people. As someone who likes to let data and statistics tell the story, I really have to rethink how I should operate in this world.

New Year's Resolution for 2015

Happy New Year! I have actually wrote quite a few pieces but so many of them have been negative and a repeat of the same stuff I've be going on and on forever that I decided to spare my reader the misery of having to read them.

Going back to 2014's New Year resolutions, I am sad to say I only managed to made some progress on 2 things - took taichi lessons and submitted my work for publication  (currently working on revisions of the said work). Everything else: exercise regularly, blog regularly, get to work on time, manage myself at work better -- all failed miserably.

2014 was not exactly a productive year... going to work at 2 locations on the opposite side of town was the most unproductive arrangement ever. I felt like I did not belong to either labs and was isolated by coworkers on both sides. I experienced my first pseudo-break up. I was terribly home sick. I didn't know if I would still have a job at the end of the year or if I would be deported out of the country. The year ended with me going back to Taiwan and experiencing the exact same fiasco that I went through every year when I meet my mother.

Except this time I've finally learnt my lesson: my chaotic life forces me to keep growing/adapting, while my parents very settled life makes them hang on to their old ways of thinking and routines with every last bits of their energies. They will not respect my personal space or privacy ever, because this concept is non-existent in my household and the society condones it. So, if I still have work to do, be it job hunting or manuscript writing, I should not go home and be in the same physical space as my parents, as they will keep disturbing me to no end. I absolutely must finish all of my work before I choose to fly over to meet them.

Here are my resolutions for 2015 again - many overlaps with last year's resolutions.

1. Regular exercise regime. This time I really need to get it into my schedule somehow. Last year I managed to jog a little bit, but stopped after the weather got colder. Now that I work in a single location (thank god), I can access the gym regularly, and perhaps get a little yoga in, since taichi is not achieving what yoga used to do for me (calm me down + some muscle work out).

2. Wake up earlier. I was achieving this towards the end of the year, thanks to a colleague's tip: use a timer to turn on the lamp before my alarm clock. Works like a charm. I need the extra hour to get stuff done at work.

3. Publish!! I managed to get half way there. I need to push all the way ASAP for the rest of my work.

4. Relationship: bf is behaving, but we still cannot discuss future together. I give up. Just let it be. If future job opportunities arise in other countries, I will just pack my bags and go. My own personalities (tendency to be negative, too much fear in connecting with the opposite sex, stubbornness, tendency to criticize and point out the shortcomings of other people, etc.) brought me to where I am today. If he is not the type to commit so be it. Can't force someone to do what he doesn't want to do.

5. Work: figure out my next step before my contract runs out again. Last year was way too stressful. This means better time management, finish what I have started, and schedule time to look for that next job.

6. Reduce anxiety. I cannot accomplish any of the above if I do not achieve this point. Up to yesterday I have been extremely anxious, especially during the period I spent with family. I clench my teeth while sleeping. My muscles tense up so much my calves and feet cramp almost every night. I often want to snap at people. I breath too shallowly. I cannot sit still for long -- attempts to meditate fail after 30 seconds. Scheduling laundry time drives me bananas. I hope this year I will take everything easier.

Nothing is the end of the world, even if I lose my laundry time, my bf, or my job. I live in a cold country where no one really cares about me, my family only cares if I dress warm enough, have enough food and nothing else, my job is like a joke, and my bf cares about video games and sex more than the relationship itself. My life is utterly absurd, but realizing this seems to help me relax. 2015 will be the year where I work on my mental and physical health. Nothing else really matters any more.

Never ending journey of personal growth

I made an excuse that I wanted to pick up my bike, which was still at the ex's place, to which he heartily agreed. I then mentioned that I had no idea how to ride it back to my place (truth), and he agreed to guide me back. The journey was an hour long and the route was quite confusing, so I was very grateful that he was kind enough to guide me the whole way. We ended up hanging out at a local beach, a short boat ride, and then going for delicious dinner at a nearby hip Asian restaurant. It was such a fantastic day that I felt like I was a total idiot for breaking up with him.

Except the next day it was radio silence from him again. Oh yes of course,  now I remember: this behavior is the reason that I have been feeling crazy the past year.

I think I have a better understanding of why babies + toddlers cry so often. Every new experience in the world can be so uncomfortable and stirs up so much emotions! I think if I have met a few guys like the ex earlier in my life, his behavior wouldn't be such a big deal to me. I would be able to walk away very easily. However this is brand new experience for me. Someone is super nice to me and doesn't ask for anything in return: he must be interested in having a relationship with me, right? If I return the kindness he would like me better for sure? No, sadly that's not always true.

I think I have a tendency to sink very deep into my emotions over any major or trivial incident that triggers a deep reaction/emotion in me. Today I was quite depressed for a few hours, feeling very alone and lost. Somehow I managed to snap out of it a bit later. Compared to stuff happening in the world (Israel/Gaza conflict, Ebola outbreak, Russia/Ukraine conflict, ISIS in Iraq, etc. etc.), what's happening to me is very trivial. The thing is I am alone most of the time, so all I have are my emotions and my thoughts, which can hold me down by keeping me in my bed for an entire day, or chaining me to my desks for hours while not able to complete any productive work. It is very important for me to realize this tendency so I can find ways to try to snap out of it.

The same thing is true for all the big conflicts in the world though. A few sociopathic beings want to be in control of a group of people/a particular region/an entire nation. This thought leads them to acquire influence, money and resources to achieve what they want. They achieve influence by evoking people's strong emotions such that they can't think rationally.... hence they can get these people to give up their lives for some "holy" cause.

Guess what I'm trying to understand and to express is that thoughts and emotions are two huge forces that drive human behaviors and decisions. If I lived in a jungle or on the African plain, then my mind would be occupied by how to stay away from predators and how to acquire food. If I lived in a warzone then I would be preoccupied with survival strategies and maybe how to take revenge on those who are killing my loved ones. Since I live in a peaceful part of the world, I become obsessed with relationships and securing a good job. If I didn't need to work for a living and already have a loving husband, I'd probably still find something to obsess about, like how to make the perfect cupcakes or how to dress like the Stepford wife or something.

Some people think this is sad (the ex felt that way about me). I guess it's how I was raised (must strive for career and marriage). I've been trying hard to reprogram myself, but I don't know exactly what I am supposed to reprogram into. When I was really into yoga, I was a bit turned off by how obsessed people were with achieving that next asana. The whole diet and life style change, which are meant to improve health and maintain sustainable living, became more like expensive fads only rich yogis with a lot of free time could afford. Not everyone is like this, but I've certainly met a few yogis who felt they were better than other people because they have switched to a vegetarian diet and they chant regularly for peace.

I think perhaps the external conflicts in the world in some way reflects the inner disturbances in all of us. I don't know what are the solutions, but I must keep working towards calming my inner emotional storms, by examining all my mental habits and making changes when needed. It is extremely difficult. I would say my battles with my inner daemons, while not as significant or consequential as the wars in the world right now, are just as difficult to resolve.

Seeing an ugly side of myself I've never witnessed before

So.. the break up finally happened. It was like I planted a landmine for the bf to step on. I gave a suggestion that I didn't want him to take (and didn't expect him to agree to), but surprisingly he did, although not without making some derogatory comment first. That became the straw that broke the camel's back. So I blew up and it was all over.

Never in my life have I ever expected myself to perform this kind of unacceptable manipulative behavior. If anyone ever pulled one of these stunts on me, I would totally break up the relationship or friendship and stay as far away from that crazy asshole as possible. Now I know that crazy bitch secretly lives inside of me and so there's NO escaping ever for me.

They say that one of the red signs that a relationship is not good for you is that it brings out your worst behaviors, that you don't like how you act around that person. I always took it to mean that I can't express myself fully, that I feel like I'm walking on eggshells around that person, that I lower myself by acting like I'm always trying to please that person, which was what was happening during the relationship. I was NOT expecting to become manipulative and put someone in a lose-lose situation. I didn't even know I pull such a move until after the whole situation blew up. I never thought I was capable of that, but I proved myself wrong!

The final act was a truly terrible one. Unacceptable and totally surprising. I really didn't mean for that to happen. I realize I so desperately wanted him to behave a certain way that conforms to my ideal of a good boyfriend (say he misses me and that he wants to see me very soon) that I kept dangling carrots, candies and toys at him, even ones that I didn't actually mean to show him. When he refused to behave like I wished he would, I became frustrated, humiliated,  rejected, depressed, angry, furious, I went insane, I threw it all out at him, showing him the ugliest and craziest side of me. Somehow, insanely, I still secretly wished he would ask me not to end the relationship!

He's been very uncommunicative for a long time, and finally he told me what his deal-breaker was. It totally came out of the blue and made me scratch my head in total confusion. Like... this trait is the deal breaker? Not my manipulation, my bossyness, my insecurity, my clinging, my craziness, my indecisiveness, my unpredictability, ie. the long list of weaknesses I really hate about myself? I mean, obviously he doesn't like any of those traits either, but those somehow were not the deal breakers? It really showed how little I understood him, how utterly incompatible we actually are, but also explained why we stayed together for so long. Basically, his complaint was something that I really didn't think was important. I mean, I tried to work on it a little bit, but now I hear it, seems like I could not nearly achieve the level he wants me to be at. Basically I'm fundamentally not the kind of girl friend he wishes to have. But then again if he had communicated it better earlier I would have tried a lot harder. Don't know if it would have made a difference though. In my head I felt like my requests were totally legit (spend more time together, for him to express more that he loves me and misses me), but to him these demands are probably just as foreign. He does not have any friends who act like that and never in his life has he ever wished to become that kind of guy.

It's been a crazy ride. I don't for one minute regret this relationship, but the ending was so weird (we actually both agreed we still want to remain as friends). If I hadn't ended it, I don't think he would ever initiate the break up. In my head, the relationship should keep on progressing, or it should be cut off. Either you like me and you agree to work with me to make our relation function nicely, or let me go. It wasn't until the final talk where I finally began to understand his logic.  He would have been okay with all my craziness as long he kept our meetings relatively short, with enough alone time spaced in between the meetings. It totally made no sense to me this entire time we were together, because he never communicated what he's been thinking. I guess it wasn't necessary, since he had full control of how often we met. He had the upper hand in the power struggle. I was in the dark and put up with it because I was completely being controlled by my oxytocin (the desire to attach myself to him, spatially/physically and emotionally). But of course he also hasn't been happy either, and was relieved about the break up.

Very luckily, I have a group of girl friends who behaved exactly as I wish my ideal best friends would behave - completely supportive, non-judgemental of me, not asking any harsh questions (eg. "Did you do anything wrong on your part"), and totally on my side, saying all the kind words I wish to hear. I love these ladies to death. I don't know what I did to deserve these friends, and not sure how I could have survived the traumatic emotional roller coaster ride without them.

On the other hand, it also makes me wonder: am I just a total control freak, subconsciously aiming to build a social network of friends, family, lover and work colleagues who would behave as close as possible to a certain ideal I wish them to be? Is this what everybody else does as well, only accepting new people who think and behave the way they expect into their social circles, and try to keep out the ones who behave too far from expectations?

I'd like to think I'm more open minded than that, but I guess when it comes to really close partners/friendship, we would all like them to share some common fundamental values with us, along with some superficial expected behaviors. That's an important lesson I learned from this experience.

Choices and Distraction

I get very easily distracted. I had a goal in my mind to finish a particular task on a work day, but I ended up obsessing about the Malaysian airplane tragedy. I felt really affected, because there were about 100 scientists on board heading to a conference. One stupid mistake (mistaking the commercial aircraft as a military aircraft), and their lives are over. It doesn't matter if they were the most talented, hardworking, humble, productive scientists ever existed, or if they were one of those superficial people who are all about playing politics and marketing themselves to make them sound better than they really are, or if they were struggling PhD students/postdocs hoping to do some networking at the conference and secure a job, they all came to the same fate.  It really puts life into perspective for me. Heck, I could have been on that plane if I were offered to study HIV for my postdoc and were given funding to go to this conference in Australia.

Is this really worse than the deaths of the Palestinians in Gaza or Syria? I wouldn't say so. Being killed unexpectedly by a bomb or a missile is just crappy. Does the number of deaths matter? 10s of people dying + hundreds injured and thousands forced to leave their homes are not "better" than ~300 international people dead all at once. It's just that the boundary that made people felt safe (ie. particular nationalities, not living in a warzone) was shattered, all because the pilots wanted to (were ordered to?) save some fuel by flying over a warzone.

I recently came across two TED talks about choices: Our unhealthy obsessions with choice, and How to make hard choices. The first one talks about how many personal choices we get nowadays, and we seem to be paralyzed with too many personal choices that we ignore the big pictures about social issues. That is very true.. every day I obsess about what to wear to make a good impression, but not seem overdone; how much makeup should I put on? Should I go work out or clean my room first? What should I eat? Japanese or Thai food? Should I be reading scientific papers or a good fiction novel? Etc. etc. Sometimes I am so indecisive I can take hours to decide, or I end up doing nothing for the day. The first talk warns about this. Avoid taking these choices so seriously. Just pick one thing to do and go with it. Realize what kind of choices are actually important enough that they require deep pondering.

The second talk is about hard choices, which is also what I am facing. Should I stay in this country or should I go somewhere else? Should I stay in Europe or should I go to another continent? I love how beautiful Europe looks, but hate the difficulty in forging friendships. I miss the familiarity of home (amazing food! Yoga friends!) I know exactly where I can sign up for volunteering, and I miss the multitude of local communities that are sorely lacking here. But I know that I will still have trouble finding romantic partners, and have to deal with the local politics. Should I dump my boyfriend now or later? Right now I feel like I'm in a friends with benefits relationship, and that's not what I signed up for. But I do enjoy the times where I do get to hang out with him. Should I forget about my science career (too much politics, not enough authenticity and collaboration) and just go spend a few months in Nepal or Peru? Ruth Chang suggests that making the hard decisions and how we justify for our choices help reveal who we are. I guess I'm having so much trouble because I don't really know who I am or who I want to become. I'm too afraid of making bad choices. That in itself is pretty revealing of my character.

In the end, if I get hit by a car, or struck by lightning, or suffer a plane crash, or if Russia, US, or China starts a third world war, none of those choices will matter. But in the mean time, since I am fortunate enough live in a peaceful place where accident/disaster rates are low, I should keep on making choices, but not think so hard that I get paralyzed about actually making the decisions. I've made that mistake many times and it's time to cut that out and start being more decisive.

Recent ramblings about opportunities, uncertainties, and social media

I attended a career building workshop recently. I must say that I do not remember ever being in the same room among such vast majority of individuals with so much self-doubt, self-criticism, skepticism towards alternative ideas, and fear of making mistakes.

If you wonder who are these people: these are a group of PhD students. Sometimes I think the purpose of graduate school is to strip students free of all shreds of self-confidence, instill hyper-tunnel-vision into students, and make them forget they are actually highly intelligent individuals capable of doing so many things.

For me, it was very refreshing to hear so many alternative perspectives from people who are not in traditional careers (kudos to the organizers). A lot of the ideas that I took for granted from observing how yoga teachers make a living (using Twitter/Instagram/Facebook marketing to get clients and to sell merchandise) were unheard of for most people in the classroom, who likely had been following nothing but scientific literatures and news websites, and maybe their own personal interests that did not involve social media marketing. Many were highly against/scared of the idea of "branding" themselves on internet. I guess I already went through that mental struggle myself back when Kino first started posting daily selfies in short shorts and yoga instruction Youtube videos online. It's been a few years now and she's been hugely successful, in terms of increasing visibility among the public worldwide, promoting her reputation, as well as pushing her merchandises (books, clothing, jewelry, yoga mats, retreats, workshops). Without a doubt, social media marketing is ridiculously effective if used in the right way.

To be honest, what I took from the workshop for me wasn't to learn how to use Twitter, but how different I felt from everyone else in the room. I guess my own grad school experience, however negative it was, still gave me space to pull myself away from my project mentally and pay attention to what's out there, while many others have been so focused on getting their experiments to work without having any mental space left to ponder about alternatives. Ironically, I am the one who is currently more interested in continuing research while >50% of the room have had enough and are ready to quit academia.

Life is full of ironies. I've been thinking about ending it with my bf for quite some time now. However, because of my emotional detachment from him, he feels less pressure from me and seems happier about the current status of our relationship.  However he still plans his life separately from mine. I'm not entirely sure what to do. I guess I will have to plan my life independently of him too.

It's good to know I have a lot of opportunities but at the same time it is also quite unsettling that I have not established a good support network nor have I convinced someone to go through the journey of life together.

Forge meaning, build identity

Instead of working on my paper, I do my usual procrastination and watch TED talks instead. And then I feel the urgent need to blog about my thoughts instead of working on my paper.

Today I came across Andrew Solomon's talks: How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are, and Love, no matter what. I highly recommend the talks.

Solomon built a career interviewing people who have been through very traumatic events, and learns how they make meaning of lives. He also interviewed those who has children who are not "typical", for example, parents of mass murderer, deaf children, autistic children, Down Syndrome, dwarfs, etc. He also talked about his personal experience of growing up being bullied for being gay.

The major theme identity - personal acceptance, parental acceptance, acceptance by close friends and family, and social acceptance. He learned that many people who have been through adverse situations should to accept the experience as part of their identity, building character and furthering their knowledge of the diversity of humanity. Some parents mentioned given the choice, they want to eliminate the "abnormal" conditions so the kids could have an easier life, but they wouldn't change the experience because they themselves have learnt so much and gained so much compassion. Solomon himself decided to have children after interviewing many of these parents, as he felt that the message he got from these people (and from his own mother) was that the experience of parenthood brings more reward in terms of personal growth, love, and joy that is worth all the worries and anxieties and possibility of loss and kids being pain in the butt.

In more liberal societies in the West, society have come to accept more and more the diversity of humanity, be it homosexual, transgendered,  mentally or physically disabled, as long as one is not causing harm to others. However, in the East, where the group coherence (in the unit of family, clan, ethnicity, country etc.) matters more than the individual, being different -- whether genetic or by choice, is looked down upon. So in that sense, I'm extremely "lucky" that I was not born gay or disabled, not because I think there' anything wrong with them, but that my mother would first blame herself for giving birth to an "abnormal" child and then make sure that I feel like I'm a horribly flawed being better off never been born to this Earth, because I would shame her deeply for not being typical.

So I turned out to be super-typical in the academic sense for an Asian kid (straight As with a postgraduate degree).  Then I run into this strange situation -- I became a scientist instead of a doctor or lawyer, professions that people are more familiar with, so instead of being proud of me, my family don't know what to make of me.. I can't tell if it's because I'm not married with kids yet, or because I'm not making a sh*tload of money, or that instead of living next door to parents, taking care of them for the remainder of my life, I moved to a country that nobody ever thought of ever visiting in their life times, I was met with ambivalence when I went home. I couldn't tell if they were jealous of me, or think lowly of me because I'm being selfish for abandoning my parents to go to a foreign country, or an idiot (for not making money and not getting a husband), or if they just don't give a rat's ass if I get hit by a train or eaten by a shark tomorrow.

Every human being has many identities. I'm (not in any particular order) a daughter, sister, aunt, cousin, niece, heterosexual, animal lover, spiritual, atheist, yogi, martial artist, rock climber, snowboarder, academic, scientist, Chinese-Canadian, citizen of the world, Liberal, postdoc, confused soul, dispensable employee, a failed-vegetarian, cheap foreign labour, etc, etc, but we all have our own prioritization in term of our self-identities. We tend to become friends with those who respect and accept our foremost treasured identities and distance from those who refuse to acknowledge what we see ourselves to be.

I don't think I am the most angry/sad about whether my extended family cares about me or not. I've come to realize I am most hurt by the fact that my extended family pointedly chose to not acknowledge my researcher identity at all - it's what I've been working on the longest and hardest my entire life -- I admit at the expense of not neglecting my other roles as a caring niece, cousin, daughter or aunt.

I guess they purposely chose not to acknowledge my primary identity because they're fearful they won't be able to understand anything that comes out of my mouth, but I feel the hurt nevertheless. I also feel that I can't change this distance between me and my family (and even some friends) if I choose to quit my profession today and pick up a more regular job, like teaching English or becoming a secretary. So it's better if I just carry on with forging my own meaning and building my own identity than to try to please them somehow.

This scientist career is not going so well though. As some big named young successful professors have pointed out, the 21st century is a great time to do science (because of all the emerging novel technologies which are enabling us to make incredible advances and findings), but a terrible time to become a scientist (the system allows very few people to succeed and the rest can bite the dust). It's what I chose for myself so I don't regret it. What I feel bad is the terrible relationship I have today with family, due to my tunnel vision and neglect. Also, the lack of experience in the romantic department also makes the current dating situation difficult.

I went to see a career coach and she told me that I seem to have a lot of difficulties making decisions,  so I avoid making them, which then keeps me stuck in unhappy situations. So I think I need to work on building more identities as contingency plans, and simultaneously take my identities less seriously, since others don't see me with the same ID as I do anyways.

Finally a pleasant weekend

I finally took an entire weekend off. Still worrying about my paper (occupies 80% of my mind lately) but decided I also need to take sometime to enjoy life. The weather was beautifully sunny all weekend and I was able to check out a bit of my gorgeous city of inhabitance. I went to dinner with a bunch of expats which were very fun company, and I really enjoyed myself even with a developing cold (very embarrassing as I as sneezing every 30 minutes). I went shopping for presents as next weekend I go on one of my 3 planned trips abroad. Very exciting! I badly need to hang out with some good friends, get some moral support and new perspectives. Finally found a restaurant with good quality authentic Indian food, and also enjoyed a "Middle Ages" dinner with bf at a tavern (which basically served gamey meats).

Taichi is going well, although I'm starting to not be able to memorize the last moves, since they get progressively more complicated. Classmates are really nice, and I might get the chance to practice with them outside of class next week.

It would be ideal if this coming week my colleague does not try to say something inappropriately criticizing which totally pushes my buttons, and if the boss provides some useful feedback rather just pestering me if I'm done with my paper yet. What's inappropriately criticizing? That's when you mean to be nice by offering to assist someone, but what you say comes off as attacking the person you're trying to help as an incompetent person and may be mentally unstable, or suggest that the person's incompetence could cause mental issues in someone else. I really don't know why she does that but it's bloody annoying. Sigh.... only a few months left at this job, and then I'm home free! (and possibly unemployed).

Savoring the pleasantness of this weekend for as long as I could... Monday morning doesn't happen for another 13 hours.

Absurdity of life

In my previous post, a reader pointed out that my emotional mood swings sounds like the definition of 'Borderline'. I have observed other people to be of borderline personality, but never consider myself to have borderline tendencies. In my "defense", I blame my education to cause me to become this way.

The thing is, after realizing the world has always been a hugely unfair place, that hard work does not always get rewarded, that people who are the most eager to give you advice on life lessons tend to know less than the people who keep their silence, that successful people seem to possess a truckload of tricks and strategies that I have never come across in my life before (since these skills are not taught in school or written in textbooks), that it's my own fault that I buried my head in books for decades and didn't bother to lift my head and take a good look at the rest of the world, I am still buried under my strict expectations my minimal definition of how life should be for a hardworking woman in her 30s.

At this point I should just admit that I got the rules of the game of life all wrong. I wagered all my attention, brain resources, and youth on studying; I put little effort into interpersonal relationships, not with friends, family, or the opposite sex. This blinder approach got me tremendously off track.

So now that I am completely off the expected track (due to a lifetime of hardcore studying and many weekends put to unpaid work and a good amount of volunteer work): mid-30s, no marriageable partner, no stable job, shitty career path, few friends in the city where I live, no family around, pretty much nothing to show for my hard work because none of my friends and family understand or care about what it is I work on, of course I am feeling quite desperate and borderline.

The alternative, which I hadn't considered lately, as mentioned in Zee's blog, is that life is empty and meaningless anyways. I should stop taking myself so seriously and just laugh at the whole absurdity of it all. Look at the situation in Crimea. Look at climate change. Economic booms and busts. Entertainment, processed food, and pharmaceutical industries being super dominant in the world. Hedge funds. Banking crisis. Anusara yoga (lol). WhatsApp worth 19 billion US dollars. Priorities all f***ed up. Yet we teach our children to be honest, moral, diligent and they shall succeed?

I should just be happy I have enough money to feed myself today. Marriage? Forget about it. Friends? Most are not dependable anyways (as I have learned over the years). Family? Their absurdities make funny party stories I guess.

Maybe I should stop worrying about how to get back on track (I'm too far off the mainstream path to get back on it anyways) and just appreciate the funny parts of life more from now on.

Tracking my state of mind - part 2

2 months ago, I wrote about tracking my state of mind with a Reporter phone app. Basically the phone prompts me at random times of the day to answer simple questions like how do I feel and what am I doing, etc. Here are the results so far:

- I think about negative thoughts roughly half of the time I'm awake.

- I'm mostly grateful about my job, sunny days, and being with my boyfriend (so yeah, I ended up panicking and apologizing to him for going crazy, so now we're back to square one ).

- About a month ago I was workign about 30% of the time, but now it has gone up to 38% (working til late in the evening and on weekends).

- I spend most of my time working on my paper and commuting to and from work.

- I'm mostly alone or with my colleagues.

- My top three moods are "Ruminating", "Bleh", and "Content".

None of these results are terribly surprising to me. The biggest surprise from this exercise that I did not realize before, is how quickly I change my opinions and mood about a topic that runs continuously in my head. In the morning on my subway ride to work, I would, say, feel very anxious about my relationship with my boyfriend. Right after lunch, even though nothing has changed in reality, I would feel that maybe my relationship is going fine after all, that I have nothing to worry about. And in the evening again I would come up with some scenario or nick-pick on problems and decide that this relationship sucks and I deserve better. Same with my opinions about work. One moment I would feel extremely grateful about this super interesting and flexible job, and the next moment I would think my job sucks and I want to move to another country.

That's just how my mind works I guess. It makes up story after story, anticipating before anything new in real life changes, trying to protect my feelings and my dignity. It is extremely difficult for me to focus on "now". I am constantly worried about the future and wish I made fewer mistakes in my past.

I would love to go on a meditation retreat, but since I don't have the time right now, this moment tracking thing is the next best thing I can do. One thing I really need to change about my current life: find some friends or even strangers to hang out with, since my colleagues aren't interested in being friends outside of work.

It's how life works I guess. My life is pretty fabulous and lacks a million things at the same time. There are things I'm doing that are kinda fun but I'd rather be doing something even more exciting, so I don't appreciate the good moments every day. The second question I ask myself, after "Am I having negative thoughts", is: "What am I grateful about?" Usually it helps made me step back from my shitty mood and examine what's good in life, even if it's as simple as a shining sun.

Contemplations on human nature, as always

Human beings are fussy creatures. We have endless amounts of desires, many of which seem to just happen to us at random times of the day. We feel famished, we are itchy, we get thirsty, we are bored, we're over-stimulated, we want a hug, we want sugar, we want to be with people, we need some alone time right now; we are suddenly nostalgic and need to call/go home; we suddenly feel spite towards an ex and deeply desire some form of revenge action, etc.

The buddhist tradition recognizes that these desires come out of nowhere and leave again if we can just recognize this happens, sit on the desire, and let it pass. The thing is, the moment when we think we've achieved the awareness and feel good about ourselves, we let our guards down momentarily and let the next desire guide our actions again. At least this is how I've been feeling over the past few years.

Many other religious and cultural traditions use rules to tell people to suppress their desires and behave a certain way in their daily lives according to the books. They are often successful to a point, but of course, people occasionally slip. People usually either lie to themselves and legitimize their actions with some elaborate explanations or feel totally guilty and swear they will follow the "shoulds" from now on.

What I dislike about the second method is that we are made to think that without rules and religions, we would all be constantly committing immoral actions all day long, killing and cheating each other every chance we get. In addition, sometimes the cultural norm is so ingrained that people don't even realize that their ways of thinking only apply within their cultural and not worldwide. This isn't so much of an issue if they spend their entire lives only among those who were brought up in the same type of culture, but it is indeed a problem if they talk about their values as if they apply universally while living in another country.

Currently I feel like I'm seen as slightly too submissive by my colleagues and significant other, but my parents, aunt+uncles, cousins, sister etc all see me as too selfish and not considerate / compliant enough. I think my defiance is a result of them keep trying to tell me what to do and who to be. I cannot be respectful of their ways if they keep asking me to change myself to conform to how they think a person should be. I guess if I could be more charmeleon-like, I could aim to be more assertive in my normal life, and pretend to agree with everything family members say when I do go back home. Sounds straightforward, but I feel like if I can achieve that, I can be CEO or even president somewhere. Seriously.

I know the readers of my blog have kindly commented, telling me to just be myself and forget about trying to please my family. But the issue is not about pleasing my family. I don't think I've ever tried very hard in that department in my life, which why they disapprove of me so much. My biggest struggle has been how my family and some friends can live in North America for decades, have the chance to see alternatives ways of running a family, and still not distinguish the difference between "universal shoulds" (not sure if there is such a thing) and "traditional values that only apply to our culture". I feel like I have been aggressively coerced to submit to the traditional cultural norm for so long that, as I slowly and gradually make my way back up to the surface, like a deep ocean scuba diver, I'm learning about the different levels of "awakeness" -- what is human nature, what is cultural, the range of open-minded and close-minded "ness" among family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. I'm struggling a lot in my relationship because we were raised by guardians with radically different values. I know some people choose to find partners from similar cultural family backgrounds. I guess I purposely avoided that because I wanted to get as far away from my cultural as I can. Turns out whether I like it or not, I am still influenced by my culture and carry traits of it no matter where I go and what I do.

Sometimes I think like would be easier if I were one of those people who never contemplate about the purpose of life, whose sole focus in life is to be the most typical textbook mother/wife within their culture (and the definition of the perfect mom/wife is quite different in every culture). But that's not how my brain works. I fundamentally don't want to be a stereotype, not even a successful one. I guess my fate is to continue to struggle through life, trying to discover how I am meant to useful to this world while being so quirky, and try to connect with like-minded, or at least supportive beings. It's a challenging journey, but I just don't see any other way to do it.

Appearance vs. Essence

I was complaining to a friend back home how I don't like the political aspects of my work place, how I don't like the superficiality I experience everywhere. He reminds me that in the current world, everyone focuses on the appearance of things rather than the essence. If I can distinguish what is for appearance only and what is the essence of a person, an event, or an issue, I would be less frustrated with the world.

My friend is totally right. I have been placing my focus on the wrong aspects in life. Even though I am deeply frustrated that yoga has become this trendy, overly-marketed, money-grabbing overly-hyped activity meant for bendy, skinny, pretty girls, the essence of yoga-teaching is good. Even though like any job, my work involves some politics, some back-stabbing, some ass-kissing, tons of compromises, focus on the wrong stuff (getting grants and networking with "important" people), the essence of the nature of my work is good. I am trying to understand how living things operate. This understanding could help us combat diseases, or just understand ourselves better. It is a lot more meaningful than being, say, a stock broker (at least to me). I should look past the marketing, hype, and frustrations, and focus on the good.

Thanks to my friend's reminder, I will be looking for the essence of events and issues for awhile. It takes practice since my habit it to focus on the bad (the appearance). I am grateful to have such wise friends who can guide me during frustrating times.

The world is against me... or is it?

Things have not gone well this week. Nothing's going right... I got nothing accomplished at work. I don't get the Swedish jokes. The boss, the roommate, the colleagues, my family, the bus driver... everybody gets on my nerves. The weather's gray and gloomy. The air is difficult to breath.  Life sucks. I hate where I am in life right now.

Wait a minute.... Back track... Rewind, and replay. Does my life really suck that bad? Or.... Perhaps it's because I've been so anxious and stressing myself out lately, that I've been walking around looking grumpy and giving off a vibe that it's likely not safe to interact with me? Am I the one who's been avoiding eye contact with others, and not greeting people when I see them first thing in the morning? Have I been wearing a frown on my face, looking all depressed and mad? Could it be me who's been pushing everyone away, rather than people treating me in cold ways?

Either way, I don't like how this is going. I could complain forever about a million things. I could try to come up with things to be grateful for each day, which is useful but only up to a point, and/or I could think about ways to actively improve my life situations.

- I need to go to bed earlier

- I need to cut down the amount of time I stare at a screen (blogging feels therapeutic. Browsing psychology sites obsessively does not)

- I need to take more walks

- I need to do more pranayama and meditation

- I need to try to spend more time with people who cheer me up ( they are few but thank goodness they exist!) 

- I need to actively work on relieving my anxiety. It's good for myself and for the poor souls who have to be around me

- I need to be more aware of my needs.. Do I need to socialize? Do I need to eat better food? Do I need more: Fresh air? Friends? Kindness? Exercise? Pampering? Hugs? Time to myself? Nature? 

- Do I need to be less hard on myself? Less stress? Less workload? Less complaints? Less criticisms? Less negativity? Less stimuli? Less judgements? Less comparisons with others? 

- I need to distinguish my desires from everyone else's desires. Just because others crave a house, a nice car, and two beautiful kids, does not mean I should stress out about not owning these myself, since they were never big on my list of priorities in life anyways.

- Same goes with career advices. I get anxious reading about how all there are not enough jobs for PhDs; how all these PhDs stay as postdocs forever and never get any further in life. These guys want to become professors. I don't. Stop  worrying about my career outlook when I have less ambitious goals than other overly-anxious people. 

- Declutter, Declutter, Declutter.

- Cannot re-emphasize enough: do not be anxious over other people's expections of me or of how they think life should be. Everyone wants different things in life. Some are more ambitious than others. Some handle stress better than others. Some can multitask at a higher level; some are natural born leaders. Stop comparing myself to every single successful person my age. Keep my goals framed within my means and abilities.

- Be happy with what I have and what I've achieved so far. As long as the boss isn't anxious to kick me out the door ASAP, so stop beating myself up.

This list will probably just keep getting longer. But it feels good to be able to do something about the crappiness rather than just feel crappy every day. 

What little things can YOU do for yourself to lessen your crappy feelings about life?

Life recently

Last week I experienced improvements in moods, due to meeting good people, hanging out with good friends, having friends visiting Stockholm, etc. My moods predictably crashes every Monday, when I have to meet with a Debbie Downer colleague at this other office. I really wish I were more immune to the influence of others people's moods. Can you imagine becoming depressed yourself every time you bump into someone who happens to exhibit depression traits? It doesn't seem like the boss or other people in the building are affected by it as much as I do. I don't like to be this sensitive, but pretending I am not affected doesn't seem to actually improve my mood. I notice that prolonged gloomy weather also has this effect on me. Maybe I should count my lucky stars that I don't catch a cold or some other infectious disease any time I come in proximity to somebody who is sick. If you have any tips on how I would very much appreciate it.

I try to savor the moments when I am surrounded by positive, caring people. It seems like when I hang out with certain people, they make me feel welcome and that I belong with the group. At work I feel like an outsider, not really fitting in with the colleagues for various reasons (language, different sense of humour, cultural differences, scientific interests, etc). The expat friends I've met recently all seem to have developed their own strategies for surviving in a foreign country where the locals don't exactly understand why they bother to move to another country. Everyone's strategies are quite different, and catered to themselves. I need to develop my own strategies as well.

Yoga practice has been tough. Seems like I haven't been engaging my abs enough and have been dumping into my low back. Also, because of friends visiting, I haven't been able to go to that many morning practices. I am horrible at managing my sleep schedule so I don't know if I should keep going or if I should take a break and re-assess my daily waking hour allocations.

I do wonder why the heck did I get myself in this situation. I think I'm not assertive enough in asking for what I want. If I did I could have done better with my studies and careers in my own country and not have to move to another continent. Feels like working in a foreign country is something I should have done in my mid-20s rather than my 30s. Younger people are just more tolerant of foreigners I think. I don't feel that life will be better if I move back to my home city right now. The science community is the same as before I moved. I miss my yoga community dearly, but yoga is a hobby not a career for me.

Feels like the strategy now is to try to be more efficient at work. I will feel better about myself if I become more productive. I should also take up any opportunity of socializing and recreation events that will cheer me up. I need all the positivity and cheering up I could get.

Still not mindfully settled

Back to Europe, just in time for the Nobel prize buzz. It was very exciting seeing newly minted Nobel laureates who have dedicated their life to science to humbly describe what they did to deserve this prize. In addition, a public discussion forum was held, with something like 50 prominent scientists, many of whom were past Nobel prize winners, to discuss about the future of genomics. It was a very exciting event. Sadly though, in a lecture hall packed with people (mostly young, bright-eyed students), I knew not a single soul in the room; not my boss, not my colleagues. I found out later that my Swedish coworkers no longer get excited about Nobel prizes. Maybe they got used to it since this happens every single year. They are also not all that enthusiastic about their (science) jobs either, which seriously dampened my uplifted spirits for the rest of the week.

I've only been working at my new job for a little over two months, but it feels like I've been at this for a long, long time. I still feel like I am completely under-qualified and shouldn't have been hired for this job. It feels like I've learned a lot over the past 2 months, but I don't learn nearly fast enough to master my tasks. The coldness and darkness gets to me. I do notice the gorgeousness of the city every single day on the way to and from work (parts of the city looks like a fantasy white Christmas land), but I am also hit hard by a severe sense of loneliness that I don't have anyone close who shares my sentiment. It feels like the people here appreciate the job, health, and human rights securities provided by their government, but they are sorely  lacking in feeling a sense of passion about anything in life.

I am also having trouble dealing with culture differences and socially awkward scientist colleagues and  roommate. I am feeling totally out of place and insecure at the moment. Too many people around me also feel insecure. We can't really read each other's intentions because our background cultures are so different. It's probably just a culture misunderstanding, but I feel like some people I have to interact with every day just seem overly polite about the most casual things and totally rude at other times. If it's one person then I can dismiss him/her off, but I feel this way about 3-4 people around me, which makes me start to doubt myself, whether I'm the one who's acting all socially inappropriate and being impolite. I'm just completely off my center and unsure about every thing I know. It's like I made a huge mistake coming here. But I don't think I will feel any better getting the same kind of job anywhere else in the world.

Hopefully I will be able to ground myself over the Christmas vacation. It's pretty sad that I feel the desperate need to take a break only 2 months into my job, but the perk for coming to work in Europe is that I get an obscene amount of vacation days. I should put them to good use and try to save myself from feeling completely lost and confused.

p.s. I signed up for a hot yoga class, because I needed to heat myself up from the persistent coldness that's with me at all times. Boy did it feel good. Will slowly find my way back to Ashtanga when I get the chance and find the right studio.

Facing uncertainties in life

I only have a few days left here before I head back to Europe. I'm filled with very mixed feelings. The nature parts of Japan provide me with a great sense of peace. Tokyo downtown (Shinjuku, Shibuya, etc.) brings me rushes of excitement and literal headaches at the same time. I quite like my colleagues here. They are more outgoing and sociable than my colleagues back in Europe. However, people here are quite stressed out, whereas coworkers in Europe are a lot more laid back. Since I get easily influenced by other people's stress levels, it is much healthier for me to work in Europe than in Japan. At a social level though, here in Japan people rush to help me out if I am in need of something, and it is very easy to find people to hang out in the evenings and weekends as most of the guys at the office are single. In my European office, most people have partners and children so I am on my own after work hours.

It's not like I get to choose to stay here anyways, but I felt like I made some friendship that I would like to keep, but I have no idea if I'll ever meet these people again. I don't know when's the next time I'll get sent here and how many of the coworkers will still be working here by next year. There is so much instability (not all bad ones) that I'm struggling really hard to stay centered and grounded. All the yoga philosophies and calming techniques that I've been studying over the past 2 years have come in handy to help prevent anxiety attacks right now. The asanas really are secondary to breathing and focusing techniques at the moment. There is so much uncertainty in life, even when times are good. I have a few really good friends who keep reminding me over the phone, Facebook and email to stay grateful and surrender to the impermanence of life. Learn to let go of the control freak tendency and try not to panic when I don't have total control of how my life will turn out... I've done what I can to get me onto a good path. The rest will unravel on its own... try not to be too anxious about it. Definitely easier said than done though.

I have a lot of friends who have stable jobs, are married, have a house and kids. I envy how settled they are (don't need to figure out what's the next country they'll need to move to get the next job contract), but at the same time, I know that I'll be unsatisfied with the jobs and the life that they're living now. I guess I'm greedy and want both stability and constant excitement in life.. I don't think life works quite that way.

I need to learn to be braver about life and about the unknowns ahead of me.

The science of happiness

Did you know Stanford has a Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and that Berkeley hosts research for The Science of a Meaningful Life? I have been going through YouTube videos of Fred Luskin who teaches forgiveness - how to forgive, why practice forgiveness, and scientific findings of physiological health benefits of practicing forgiveness. Kelly McGonigal uses psychology and neuroscience research results to explain and support the importance of meditation and compassion. Sonja Lyubomirsky does research on happiness, and finds that genetics accounts for 50% of your level of happiness (ie. The personality you were born with); life circumstances accounts for about 10%, but 40% are within our power of control (ie. We can change the level of our happiness by changing our thinking patterns and our actions. Barbara Frederickson does research on positivity. She finds that in order to be genuinely positive (rather than faking it), we need a ratio of 3:1 for overall positive to negative thinking at all times. This is because the human tendency is to focus on the negative thoughts, so we need 3 times as much positivity to counter the negative thinking. This is not to say that we should try to eliminate negative thinking all together (is that even possible?) She finds most people's habitual ratios are at 2:1 or lower, which means we all need to work a little harder to generate a tiny bit more of positive emotions in order to stay positive overall.

Now, it may be weird to be conducting research on "the science of happiness", when the ancient spiritual texts and sutras have already laid it out for us, explaining humanity, the sources of human suffering, and how to deal with it. I agree that spiritual texts give a more comprehensive picture of the whole human condition, why we are the way we are etc. By definition of the way science is conducted (control all variables and change just one variable to see what happens), we will never get the full picture of any subject with science. However, what science does provide is a snapshot of what's going on in the modern times -- the fact that at a 2:1 positive to negative thinking rate, most people have a tendency to be a little negative even though they swear they have been attempting some positive thinking. Genetics studies tell me that my pessimistic personality has determined that I will never win the "happiest person on earth contest" no matter how hard I work on it, BUT if I try really hard, I can improve my current level of happiness by 40% regardless of my life circumstances. This is encouraging to know.

The purpose of most organized religions is to teach the simple ideas of compassion, gratitude, acceptance, positive thinking, non-harming, forgiveness, etc. The 2 main tools used by Christianity to get people to practice these ideas -- the Bible (words of God), and the act of praying -- seem to be sufficient for a small handful of Christians only. A large number of religious people accept that God would like them to practice these concepts in their daily lives, but without providing more tools, they fail at achieving true forgiveness and true compassion sometimes, which make them feel bad, so they pray for God to forgive their "sins" and give them more strength, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, so some people chronically experience shamefulness. Amazingly they keep clinging on the faith, insisting that the system is complete as-is. It's okay to keep their faith, but with a couple more tools at hand, such as practicing loving kindness meditation and some yoga, it'll be easier to open the heart.

I find the series of "forgiveness" talks by Fred Luskin particularly helpful, because I am so good at holding grudges. The explanation that all the suffering that we experience are not unique to an individual, but are all common to mankind, is very clarifying. It is also useful to realize that practicing forgiveness helps improve our own physiological health. Holding grudges punishes no one but our own body and mind. To forgive does not mean to never get worked up about others who have done us wrong, but to realize that my sufferings are not uniquely my experience but is part of humanity. No one is obliged to treat me exactly the way I would like them to treat me, not even my family, my best friend, my partner, my boss, or my server. Forgiveness means being at peace with the fact that life circumstances do not always work out the way we'd like them to. With gratitude, forgiveness and compassion in hand, life will be a happier one.

By the way, I think the way Luskin speaks would make him a very popular reverend/minister. However, he identifies himself as a secular educator, which goes to show that it is not necessary to say "these are the words from God" to effectively teach morality.

What is it that you ultimately want in life?

Nobel blogged awhile ago about about his idea of an ideal life, which is to be a yoga bum, ie. get paid big bucks to practice yoga every day and to blog about his yoga practice. Now, Nobel, do you want some third party to pay you to live life however you want, or do you wish you were born into a rich family so you can be a yoga bum, or do you wish you married someone with a massive bank account, or win the lottery, or obtain a large sum of money by some other means (eg. find a bag on the street containing $10 million)? I kind of assumed that you were wishing for the first option, ie. somehow someone out there would consider your yoga practice as beneficial to the world and pay you money for doing it. Hmm.. I don't know about $100,000/year, but for countries with universal health care, I think governments should encourage people to choose a healthy living, which would minimize the overall cost of medical care budget, by providing incentives such as bonus cash for those who do eat healthily and do yoga (and other forms of exercises in general). Yah I know, wishful thinking (but not completely impossible).

I joked that my dream life is to play dress up every day, party lots, and occasionally do charity work, you know, the Princess Di, Duchess Katherine, or Paris Hilton life (Paris actually does get paid to show up at various clubs to party). Nobel pointed out that my concept of a "bum" life is "interesting". I got a bit confused there, and then I looked up the definition of a bum: person who avoids work and sponges on others; loafer;idler. Hmm, I guess I am too chicken to be a bum forever, because I'm paranoid that the world would progress and I would fall behind. I've been an obsessive compulsive knowledge / skills acquisition freak all of my life. I'll read almost anything that's in print. Every time I try a recreational activity I dream about becoming extremely proficient at it. I practice yoga as if the teacher's going to beat me with a cane if I don't try my hardest. I feel like if I don't push myself to my limits, I'm not living up to my life's full potential, and somebody will be disappointed in me.

So now you know my greedy desire for wanting to acquire all possible skills that humans can do and all knowledge of human beings (like in the movie trilogy "The Matrix" where I can upload all of Google's databases and all encyclopedias ever written into my head). Does this make me weird? I think the typical dreams of people are to become billionaires, own multiple servants and a giant mansion, luxury cars, fancy yacht, and travel the world on their personal cruise ship while being served with gourmet French cuisine, or something along that line. My biggest desire is to acquire skills? I gotta step back and do some self-psychoanalysis here.. does this suggest that I'm deeply insecure about my intellectual worth?

I guess we're generally seeking to live a long and healthy life, feel safe and secure, satisfy our senses, feel a sense of control (of ourselves and of the environment around us), connect with other beings (but at the same we like to be better than other people, Darwin's theory at work on Earth), and of course to satisfy our endless miscellaneous arbitrary desires. An ideal life would be to become better than everyone else, have everybody adore and admire you, and have all your endless desires satisfied one after another. Sorry I'm not very poetic about it. I started writing a list of things I wanted: travel, a sexy, smart,  understanding and loving life partner, charity projects I want to do, pet science projects I want to do, and then I realized the list could go on and on forever, because of my insatiable greediness :P  The bottom line is, being a bum forever is not an ideal life for me. Maybe my dream life is to become Superwoman, but without having the responsibility to solve every problem in the world. I would only work on the problems I'm interested in. Hmm.. so a selfish Superwoman then :D

I think my ideal life is to have endless possibilities in what I can do, and to have the freedom to choose to do a subset of them, with minimal troubles and obstacles. I think I've got the first 2 parts down, which makes me a very lucky person. The skill acquisition part I guess is my attempt to be able to deal with these troubles and obstacles. I should also add that I am working towards feeling comfortable about occasionally being a bum. The practice of yoga aids with achieving equanimity, which means I better keep doing it then!

What about you? What is your dream life? Can you narrow it down to a few specific things that you absolutely must have, or are you like me, greedily wanting to keep all possibilities open but have the freedom to choose what you want? Or would you want to be a bum (in a fancy palace of course)? :)