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.

Realignment of priorities in life

Recently I've been entertaining the thought that we live in a simulation... like the movie "The Matrix". Our lives are just a test, each individual with certain set of parameters (physical attributes, mental/emotional attributes, personalities, tendencies/potentials/ambitions, and a small degree of free will. If we don't actively fight our pre-programming, we go on an auto-pilot mode, but we have the capacity to be more aware of the autopilot mode and choose to behave differently. We each have multiple aspirations, but it's a struggle between self-discipline, wits and the autopilot mode to see if we achieve what we want to achieve.

The autopilot mode would be to either conform to the society you're born into (Western, Chinese, Muslim, African, etc), and/or to conform to your base desires, such as eating too much, not exercising, drinking too much alcohol/caffeine, smoking too much, procrastination, not trying hard at achieving anything, being too greedy / selfish, etc.

As an adult, it's very easy to get into routines and weeks/years later, you realize you're straying afar from your aspirations, using while in a society-approved state, such as working a job you hate, spending all of your efforts just struggling (rather than mindfully dealing) with family/kids instead of self-actualization, drinking/medicating all the years away, etc.

For me it's working. While trying to get work done, I neglect to be social, to exercise, to eat healthy, to develop a solid social circle, to clean my home, to interact with family, etc. When I look back at my science career I have barely achieved anything. Instead I have spent years working on my bosses' not well-thought out projects, forever trouble shooting rather than making progress, reinventing crappier versions of what's already around, and being unhappy the whole time. Doesn't help that I have a defeatist attitude, unstable emotions, shitty interpersonal skills, and a pessimistic outlook.

It's time for me to realize that given my limited intelligence, it's difficult for me to achieve big leaps in science. I need to refocus and re-determine specific goals I want to achieve in life, specific experience I want to have, and realign myself towards those goals. The type of things I wanted from a younger age (stable career in science, marriage) are simply not working out.

One tendency I have is to value everybody else's opinions over my own. My mother keeps begging me to find a life partner, so I am convinced that I cannot be happy unless I do so. Totally not true. I tried really hard at my relationship and ended up making both me and the boyfriend (who fundamentally never wanted to put much work into a relationship) really unhappy.

I learned a lot from the boyfriend too. I think he is very smart and more disciplined than I am, but because he was never raised to be ambitious, he truly isn't. When he sees rich people in nice cars, wearing nice clothes and eating at fancy restaurants, he gets angry at them, at not being born into a rich family, instead of pondering what he can do (eg. switch careers, side jobs, investments etc) to achieve that wealth. It's one thing to actually not care about money and be happy with living a hippie life. In Sweden it seems like many actually desire an urban life style that require lots of money, but they have been brought up to think that they shouldn't care about money, so they don't actively try to work towards their desires. Perhaps that's why alcoholism (self-numbing) is such a problem here. I can tell he's working hard to achieve a certain routine that's accepted by his society (which is supposed to be one of the most free in the world, but instead people totally conform to a few narrow social norms). Life is full of irony.

Another of my tendencies is to avoid following the conventional way of being. Everyone here dresses in a similar way, for example leather jackets and Converse sneakers. While I love both of these fashion items and would like to own both, I've been actively avoiding them since I feel like I would be wearing a uniform. This tendency to not conform is probably the reason why I haven't been very successful at my career or social life.

I need to work out all of my tendencies, how each of them are shaping my goals or hindering me towards my goals, realign my goals, and then work towards those base on the skills that I have. I don't think I'll have a good career in academia because I really dislike kissing ass and jumping through pointless hoops to get to where I want. I have to decide what I am willing to do (compromise/sacrifice) in order to get to where I want to be. Also I have to figure out the list of things I should stop doing (eg. fulfill a boss's randomly thought up projects; do whatever an acquaintance ask of me) because they make me really unhappy.

Now that I have a clear short term goal (tabulate the list of skills I own; can obtain; cannot obtain; realign my priorities in life), I feel like my life has a purpose again :) The next little while should be fun.

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.

Realization of the day: I actually love drama!

The weather has been absolutely fantastic. 30 degrees celsius, with cool breeze, dry air but not uncomfortably dry. Almost perfect weather, really, I try to enjoy it but have only been partially successful.

I tried but couldn't work at all the past week. Every day I had my computer scripts open in front of me, but I either jump to play sudoku, 2048, or I read up on articles after articles about relationships. How to handle break ups. Rocky relationships: should I save it or end it? Pursuer-distancer relationships. On-again-off-again relationships... Are they healthy? How to choose a romantic partner. How to let go. When Enough is Enough. X way to practice self care. N signs you are dating someone emotionally unavailable. When I felt like I had absorbed adequate information from reading, I went to Youtube and found a gazillion videos on relationship issues with even more info. How to behave to not push your guy away, to make them feel safe to commit in a relationship. Why are guys typically the distancer and women the pursuer, etc.

I've been reading Zee's blogs and in this one post the description of the girlfriend sounds pretty much like me, except I am 100 times more psycho than that. I wanted more time with my ex-bf and I wanted him to say he wanted to see me asap. In Zee's case he broke up with his girl friend because he felt his freedom was being threatened. In my case my ex mentioned he had become more mentally prepared with the idea of seeing me more often, but I broke it off anyways, because he didn't express that he missed me badly.

To be honest I am an intense person and subconsciously I actually enjoy the big drama that I ultimately created during the break up. Except I wanted to do these when I was in my 20s, not now. The videos kept saying, you shouldn't waste time on emotionally unavailable men and should instead date a lot until you find the right guy, and then be super patient and employ techniques ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP on him to lure him in, make him want to settle down with you without making him scared of commitment. F*** that! Dating the wrong guys is NOT a waste of time!  I totally wanted to serially date guys who are totally not suitable for long term relationship, to experience the soul-embracing passion, followed by earth-shattering heart breaks. Learn from my own experience and mistakes which characteristics makes a guy suitable or unsuitable for long term relationship rather than being lectured by some completely rational, wisdom-filled online relationship advice videos!

Unfortunately, my mom made it her primary mission to prevent me from experiencing that by constantly lecturing me that studying is a lot more important than dating, frequently advising me how to deal with rape situations (If you ever encounter a rapist, don't struggle and just endure it. It will all be over in a few minutes and you will still be alive). I seriously had the impression that my virginity would be taken by a rapist before I got the chance to meet and get to know someone I liked. Because the world is full of rapists! Your dad could be a rapist; your uncles could be rapists. Every man has the potential of being a rapist. In my 20s she switched her propaganda to "Forget job hunting and career development. You need to to find a husband NOW and get married or you'll be single and unwanted forever after you turn 30".

Since her teachings completely clashed with what I wanted in my life, I froze with panic at the prospect of dating anyone, because I did NOT want a husband at that point. I had no idea how complicated relationships could be, and that dating someone did NOT mean the relationship would advance to the stage where both parties would want to get married (mom always bragged about how every guy who courted her wanted to marry her at the 6 month stage). Oh and, every guy could be a potential rapist!

The drama relationship I've always wanted got postponed until my mid-30s instead, at the point when I am soaked with anxiety that if this particular relationship does not work out, I am on my way to becoming an old wrinkly spinster lady who eventually dies by being eaten up by her 100 cats.

I have no idea how my mad research on relationship skills led to this blog entry. I was going to talk about our communication problems, but of course communication issues are the root cause of pretty much every break up (duh!!!).  I guess while I have been analyzing what I did wrong, what my ex did wrong, whether or not I was more wrong, etc., I realized, while formulating this blog entry, that the universe had sent me the right person for this trial run (maybe 15 years too late, but better late than never, right?). This is because I am horribly lacking in terms of relationship skills, so that if I had been dating a guy who'd make the PERFECT husband for me, I for SURE would have messed up just as badly as I did this time, and would be crying for months or maybe years, doing everything I can to try to get him back, fail miserably, and slump into severe depression.

In this case, my ex and I had lots of chemistry, but we weren't really right for each other, but I treated him as Silly Putty and tried super hard to mold him into my ideal partner. He kept pushing back and putting up resistance until I got so frustrated that I had to drop him. I have been struggling so badly because I really did a ton of things wrong in this relationship (as I learned from the articles and videos), but hey, he's not the right guy anyway. But then I really miss him because of course if I didn't like him that much I wouldn't have bothered trying so hard for so long.

The drama has been a fun ride. I just need to end my emotional turmoil now so I can fully enjoy the last week of hot summer here (I don't know for sure but I'm treating it as such), before it becomes cold and miserable again. The days are already becoming shorter and I better treasure the rest of summer. Winter is coming (Game of Thrones quote)!

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.

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.

A world ruled by money

I watched the Olympic Gold medal men's hockey game on Sunday -- Sweden vs. Canada (Canada won the gold). I cheered for Canada but the way Sweden played it really seemed like they gave up half way through the game. As my Canadian friends all cheered all over Facebook at 5:30am Pacific time, and the Swedes sulked in disappointment (not a single bad word or criticism mind you), I couldn't help but feel something was off.

The broadcast of this hockey game in Sweden would be equivalent to the Superbowl in the US... 70% of the entire nation probably had their eyes glued to the TV.  I was therefore interested in the types of commercials they would play. I was expecting usual brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, maybe something Swedish like Volvo or IKEA or H&M commercials? Nope. Instead, there were endless commercials from online betting websites.. I counted at least four of them in total, shown repeatedly at almost every commercial break. I think it says something about today's sports.

Next, I found out one of Sweden's major players was disallowed from playing the gold medal game a few hours before the game started because he was tested positive for pseudoephedrine usage. Um, that's what I used when I have a stuffy nose. I think losing a key player right before a game can certainly significantly affect morale. I was chatting with a friend about it and she said the IOC, FIFA and all the major sports organization committees have always been corrupt, so what else is new?

I think what's new is how much MORE money is involved in the sports games compared to before. With online gambling, new riches in Russia, China and Latin America, there are even more cash at stake associated with the outcome of each game.

I guess many people just accept the fact that the big players in the world shove money around and control almost all aspects of our lives -- our food choice availabilities, our entertainment options, the news shown to us (and the biased angles), our shopping habits, our relationships. I guess most of my life I've been kind of avoiding the entertainment giants.  I barely purchase any music; I rarely watch Hollywood blockbuster movies (I prefer artsy indies); I don't often watch much sports, nor do I play video games (an industry that is surpassing movie industry in terms of size and amount of money to be made as I've been told).  In other words, I've been a total loner for most of my life. With my new relationships (friendship and romance), I learned that most people demand entertainment to be as available as tap water, heating system and electricity. They want it cheap, they want lots and lots of it, they want high quality, and no-hassle total convenience. These as-a-matter-of-fact desires fill the pockets of corporations with billions and billions of dollars, at the expense and negligence of so many other things in the world that I think are more important.

People think rich is rich, doesn't matter if you are a millionaire or a billionaire, since most people cannot imagine themselves ever to be in that position, having so much cash lying around. I've even heard people say that they wish they could become a millionaire so they can give most of the money away, because being a philanthropist makes them feel good. Um, if you give most of your money away, you can do it once and then you're back to where you started, ie. not rich any more. As to the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire, well, if you are a millionaire, you can live comfortably and have nice things around in your house (or, if you live in Vancouver, you can't even afford a house, LOL). If you are a billionaire, you can start influencing the stock market, business deals, the media, and politicians. So there IS a huge difference in terms of how much money you have at the super rich level. Money = Power  = Influence when you have enough of it.

Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong time period or I just don't belong in this world. I'm sure there are similar minded people out there but they sure are hard to find since they are such minorities. If they weren't, then this world would look very different from what it is right now.

I act like such a mouse most of the time because most people dismiss my opinions so easily, which makes me think I'm always wrong, or at least my opinions do not matter. It's tough to have the whole world against you every single day. My mother would say I should just stop having opinions and agree with everyone else all the time. That should make people like me better. But it's the worst advice to give to your child. Then people say you're a push-over and have no personality. The only way to survive being the oddball is to be quirky and charismatic I guess, so that at least you're somewhat entertaining and fun to have around even if people never agree with you.

Struggling with authenticity

I realize this is supposed to be a yoga blog, but the past year's obsession has been blogging about how I feel about my life and my family instead. The thing is, many people start to do yoga for exercise benefits, and then fall in love the spiritual aspects of yoga. You will commonly hear that people say yoga helps them uncover their "authentic self".

For the first year I started yoga asana classes, I indeed felt like I was re-discovering myself, becoming aware of my tendency to hold my breath, various tensions within the body, my weak lower back, my samskaras, my ruminating thoughts, my tendency towards negative thinking, and so many more details about myself that I had never been aware of. I felt like I was in paradise practicing yoga among friendly, supportive, authentic teachers and students, learning how to be a better person, all while being pampered in a fancy studio, complete with saunas, massage rooms, yummy herbal teas, and gorgeous heated classrooms smelling of calming, healing essential oils.

I took it all for granted, thinking people are nice everywhere, and moved myself to Europe for my career. On the plus side, I landed in a much larger institute and am exposed to much bigger scale of scientific research; I found a bf I really get along with and who seems to enjoy hanging out with me occasionally. On the down side,  I'm finding it quite difficult to make friends here. Lately, the inauthentic boss and colleague are really getting to me. It seems like the boss and the toxic colleague are all about pleasing people by the means of pretending to know more than they actually do. I feel like I'm being alienated in my lab because I am too uncomfortable to go along with it.

The struggle with family and with work colleagues are about the same thing: being ask to behave in a way that makes me feel extremely inauthentic and uncomfortable. At home, my bossy and insecure mother wants me to shower her with praises and obey her every request (she orders people around non-stop all day long).  At work, my boss wants me to say yes to everything he asks and to suck up to him, even if I don't actually know how to do the things he asks me to do.

My mother has tried to shape me into a people pleaser my entire life. She "buys" friendships by showering people with gifts and praises. She was still trying to hint at me how my cousin is so well brought up because she knows how to say the appropriate phrases at the right situations to please people. Seems like the single most important value in this world, for my mother, is the ability to please people, which is a complete clash with what I view to be the most fundamental value that I can't compromise: being authentic and not tell lies. This fundamental clash of values seems to be what causes so much misery between my mother and I.

This article "Dare to be yourself"discusses exactly what I've been struggling with the past years. Whether I like it or not, some of my mother's teachings have rubbed off on me after living at home for almost 30 years. While I tend not to bribe people with presents and praises, I do try to follow people's suggestions and have a tendency to not voice my own opinions. This behavior, also known as being Miss "Goody-two-shoes", seems to piss a people off, achieving the opposite of desired effect.

At the moment, asana practice isn't helping me discover my authentic self, which is why I've greatly reduced my practice and instead blog about my life, trying to understand what I am doing wrong. I'm trying to examine my darkest sides, and experimenting with behavioral and thought changes, to see if I can be more at peace with myself. Right now I feel like I'm digging into the bottom of the pit, discovering the worst aspects of myself (selfishness, self-centeredness, lack of compassion, fear of confrontation, the list goes on). I hope I will climb out of the pit soon. Until then, I apologize for this dark period of sh*t digging.

Back in Europe

Feeling relieved to be back in Europe. I mean Europe still feels foreign to me since its culture is very different and I don't have good friends here, but after this trip back to Asia, it is confirmed that "home" feels more foreign that any strange place in the world. Taiwan is great. People are friendly and food is inexpensive and delicious. I could live in Taiwan, but I would have to seriously minimize my interactions with family. I have never felt so distant from my family and relatives before. They probably always felt this distant to me but I just never realized it. Everyone does what they're supposed to do: you're "supposed" to take your little cousin who's visiting from abroad to places so that's what they do. It felt like it was what they felt were expected of them to do and that they weren't actually happy to see me. Being the difficult person that I am, I found it impossible to put up a cheerful front.

I learned that my mother raised me the way she did because she (and most other adults in Taiwan) assumed a million things about children. Parents feel like their main job is to tell their kids to study hard and make sure they eat, because kids don't like to eat or study. They also assume that once kids finish university, they will want to find a partner and settle down. Out of curiousity, I asked my 80-something year old father what he would want to do with his life if he were only 30 years old right now. He said, "Get married". My mother took that as a complement and was ecstatic.

Therein lies the great divide between my western upbringing and my parents' traditional Chinese thinking. My dad interpreted the question as, "What are you supposed to do when you are 30?" Either that or he has never given any alternative thoughts as to what else he could have done with his life.  I mean it's great that he is content with how his life has turned out, but the times are different; even if I copy his life path right now I will not end up with his stable job and family later on.

People didn't seem interested about my life in Europe. I mentioned that food isn't as good as in Taiwan, and that seemed to be all they needed to know. Instead of asking if I like my job or life abroad, they just assumed I will be able to find a stable job here and they joked that I might get married and live permanently in Sweden. I don't like people making assumptions about me without understanding my situation and my way of thinking, which makes our interactions quite unpleasant.

It will be another year before I have to interact with them again. I hope I can adjust my mindset better for the next encounter. I wish my family was more loving and supportive but that's just not the way they are. Have to figure out a way to be okay with how they are.

Looking back at the past year

As I look back at my blog posts this past year, I have been struggling a lot mentally, despite my best efforts to grow out of my negativity. For me, the toughest part doing this whole personal growth thing, was that I kept reaching home to friends and family for empathy and support, only to be given   implications to "grow up" and "be more independent" and to take responsibilities for myself.

And with this "tough love", I have indeed grown much stronger emotionally. I have realized this is what made me move to Europe in the first place -- the fact I have very weak emotional and social support back home. It is a huge personal failure on my part. I have false assumed that once a good friend, always a good friend; that family should automatically be supportive and care about my well-being. I guess I was never a very good friend for my peers. With family, I guess all my uncles/aunts and cousins have enough family problems of their own that I end up as the least dysfunctional family member whining the loudest. I've been pretty retarded not realizing how much effort my cousins have put in to erect a false image that they are leading normal, happy lives. I seek them out for help, naïvely assuming that the image (stable careers, responsible husbands, happy kids, vibrant social life) is not in congruence with their inner psyche. Everyone else is desperately trying to suppress their emotional baggage, burying them as deeply as possible, while I on the other hand, have been aggressively digging through all my emotional crap, showing everyone and asking them to identify the contents for me. This hit a lot of nerves and that's why I've received a lot of cold, unsympathetic responses.

I'm not trying to say I am better than my extended family. I'm saying I just now figured out that I have been asking the wrong people for help... I'm asking people who have more garbage than me to help take up some of my junk. Of course they would refuse.. I would refuse too if my plates are totally full. This whole time I had thought that it was all about me... that they dislike me because I'm bratty, spoiled, immature, not lovable, etc.

I am lucky that my chosen field of study allows me to move to another continent at my will. Just like I did in India, while immersed in a totally foreign culture, I get to examine which of my values were culturally ingrained, do not serve me and can be let go, as opposed to values that are universal to human kind (or simply unique to this particular culture I'm immersed in) and should be treasured. I get to interact with people with other types of problem upbringings and see how they manage to partly function professionally. This sounds kind of horrible, but it's reality that most people in the world carry trauma. Some are more damaged than others. Some are less good at hiding their trouble than others. As much as I like to complain about my roommate and some of my co-workers, I see they are still able to master some aspects of their work lives, solving problems I'm not so good at solving, dealing with issues that I try to avoid/suppress myself, presenting themselves confidently in certain situations that require it.

All in all, 2013 was psychologically a very challenging year for me, but a lot of growth and maturity happened. I learned that I shouldn't depend on my family any more. It's good in that I will take more mental responsibility for myself from now on. The sad part is that this could only happen when I put up more physical and mental distance between myself and my family. The hard truth is that my extended family have never in their lives felt close to me. I'm the one who had been clinging on to them the whole time, the way my mother had been clinging onto me emotionally the past several years. It's a good thing I'm sorting out all my mental garbage just in time for a new year to come. 

Need to be stronger mentally

Came home to a stuffed bag of recyclables, empty pizza boxes, a fridge full of expired food items (and no, I do not live with a guy). I never imagined I would be sharing an apartment with a messy roommate in my 30s. My bf does not like to make plans more than two weeks ahead; my roommate serves as prime example of how not to live life (working weekends on her own initiative while complaining about how much she hates her job/life -- once you have completed your higher education you should have the option to choose a job you like, or at least try out several jobs and pick the one that bothers you the least).

They say you should surround yourself with role models and people who are better than you, and that is precisely what I have done for years. My social circle consisted mainly of people who have better personalities, are better cooks, more disciplined, more self-confident, more good-natured, more athletic, more inspiring, more caring, more compassionate, more organized, more charming, more patient, more intelligent, but at the same time are tolerant of having me as their friend. My nature is not competitive; I just want to spent my entire life bettering myself and learning from those around me.

Because these people are better than me in so many ways, it's easy for me to get along with them, whereas my friends need some patience, compassion and consideration to hang out with me. The past year I have been under in a very different type of challenging situation. My social circle consists of people who are much more negative, more prejudiced, less considerate and compassionate than what I'm used to. It's been extremely difficult for me to stay positive and content under this situation. I guess what I dislike most in other people are often a reflection of what I dislike about myself, so I am shown in a magnifying glass how unlikable my own negativity, inconsideration, subjectiveness, and messiness can be to my friends and family back home. It's a useful lesson but so tough on my psyche. Oh well, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger I guess.

In a way I've been leaning on my friends back home a bit too much. It's time to learn to stand up on my own, hold my own stance, and try not to be influenced by the negativities around me. I'm not strong in this area but it's time for me to work on my weak mental aspects. It's the only thing I can do considering the alternative (finding another place to stay and finding a more outgoing, organized, domestic bf who is just as considerate and intelligent as the current one) are no easy tasks.

Also, I should work on expanding my social circles. I really could use more friends and a more compassionate support network.

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.

Revisiting spirituality

Based on my blog posts, I've been progressively becoming less and less spiritual the past year, to the point that I declared life is meaningless in my most recent post.

I came to this conclusion because I realized that whether it's social science, hard core biological or physical science, spirituality studies, religious studies, health-freaks obsessed about either raw vegan diet or paleolithic diets, political fanatics, whatever you are passionate about, if you keep looking for evidence to support your beliefs, you will find them everywhere. The moderates will be able to find evidence that support either sides of a controversial; the extremists will completely ignore the evidences that contradicts their beliefs and blow up the ones that do support their claims, "See? Just as I told you, this research entirely supports my point of view, and therefore I'm right; you're wrong!"

More rigorous scientists will try harder to avoid these biases, but researchers are humans too. It is still human nature to be a bit blind to counter-evidence and over-emphasize the evidence that supports one's theories. In addition, we are pattern hunting machines. We will see patterns even when there are only random stuff going on.

It was a blessing to go back to Michael Stone's teachings to learn more about psychology and how it related with spirituality. Stone talks about four different kinds of personalities: schizoid, borderline, narcissistic, and depressed, in a way that made me understand these four types of personalities much better. We all possess some fraction of these four qualities. It's just that someone who is more heavy-leaning on one of these traits would display certain obvious behaviors during meditation and silent retreats.

When I started yoga I was depressed. I ruminated on and on about how I was wasting my life away doing my graduate degree which wasn't going anywhere, but I also couldn't quit because I had no idea what else to do with my life. Yoga provided me with a distraction. It made me more aware of how I felt in the body when I was anxious and how a yoga practice would calm that frazzled nervous system. My teachers were charismatic, charming, compassionate, beautiful people. My classmates were like me, open-minded, curious, and slightly lost in life, all thirstily drinking up all the teachings. Tension in my body were released and I was hanging out with like-minded people who are mentally in the similar space. My yoga studio was my paradise, my safe haven. I embraced yoga and its community like my own family.

Here in Europe, my job contains more "stuff" for me to work on. It's more challenging, fulfilling, meaningful, and my bosses act like supportive cheerleaders, rather than my enemy who acted like she regretted hiring me, but couldn't fire me because it would look bad for her among her peers, and it's impossible to find anyone who would do the same job for less salary than PhD students. So career satisfaction went up, but community support went way, way down. I live in an apathetic society now. Also, I've been acting like a vessel, absorbing whatever negative emotions people around me expressed. They complain not about me, but about aspects of their lives in which they deeply dislike. For whatever reason, I empathize too much and feel just as stressed and neurotic as they are, and I don't know how to block off their negative energies.  I tried to offer suggestions to alleviate their stress or hint at them to take up yoga, but yoga is not a big enough fad here so they have not taken up my suggestions. I wasn't very aware until now that allowing friends to vent their negative feelings to me for prolonged periods of time can be as energetically draining as having them complaining about me.

I guess subconsciously I have been trying to fend off all the negativity by setting up a psychological wall, ie. becoming more apathetic (socially withdrawn, wanting to disconnect from people). I don't really like it, and wish I could be more attuned to the positivity in people. I will keep looking for them I guess. Maybe I'll have to eventually move back to Canada.

According to Michael Stone, meditation will help with grounding, so I feel more connected with my inner self and the stronger buddha so I can deal with life's challenges. I will try because I don't know what alternative options I have.

Chaos in today's world and in my mind

Recently I have been fascinated by the whole Miley Cyrus phenomenon.  I kept flipping back and forth, between thinking that she's in control of what she's doing (following Madonna, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera et al.'s footsteps in using sexuality to catch attention so she can sell albums and transition into an adult market), or if she is a train wreck about to break down (like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan etc).

This piece written by Mara Wilson, the child star in "Matilda" and "Mrs. Doubtfire", helped me understand better the need for Miley and seemingly all child stars to go through this rebellion phase, because Disney forces their child stars to remain cute and innocent for the fan base when in reality they have been fully exposed to the ugliest aspects of the adult world (sex, drugs, porn, politics, power struggle, lies etc) by working long hours in the entertainment industry.

So why am I so obsessed about pop culture stars' acting out phase? Because at 33, I am really confused about life myself.

We've got a financial system that is completely unsustainable; we've got disproportionally large number of psychopaths holding power in high position political offices, financial institutions, and mega-corporations around the world; we exploit third world countries to keep the every day things we own cheap and abundant; there is an overabundance of porn on the Internet; our food sources are pretty messed up; terrorist activities and shootings seem to be a frequent occurrence now despite the billions (trillions?) of dollars put into flight security and global data surveillance system;  global warming and environmental pollution are only getting worse; the world seems to be moving towards the extreme (extreme right wing in Europe and North America; fundamentalists rising in the Muslim world); the education system cannot keep up with rapid changes in the world and the needs of the modern businesses/industries; and we're supposed to tell our children to behave, act appropriately and courteously, study hard in school, and they will have a good life?

To be fair, this simplistic message is just what my mother taught me all my life and made me resentful today. Maybe other parents have more intelligent values to teach to their children (fend for yourself, as this world is chaotic and unfair?)

I do believe wholehearted that Steven Pinker's conclusion that the world is less violent and probably today than it used to be hundreds and thousands of years ago.  I am probably more likely to encounter violence in my every day life 300 years ago than today. However back then there were no televisions, no 24-hour news channels, no internet, no Twitter, and therefore people would only know about bad things happening around their neighborhoods, and not received up-to-the-minute updates about wars happening half way across the world, or radioactive leakage in another continent that could harm the locals and eventually make it to our neighborhood.

As someone who grew up extremely sheltered and who wanted to dedicate her whole life researching cure for cancer and/or work for charities, I feel pretty disillusioned about the flaws within the field of science and NGOs.

I guess this is why so many people turn to escapism - excessive partying: sex, drugs, music, obsession with appearances and pets. Others turn to spiritual pursuits, which is what I did for awhile, but it also felt more like escaping than waking up for me.

I think my biggest issue is that I don't feel my parents or my family are proud of me, since they have no idea what scientists do and don't think highly of the profession in general. My mother associates level of success with the amount of money one makes. Rationally I know her values are wrong, but I'm still saddened to have parents who ignore current economic climate and expect me to make lots of money some day because they encouraged me to get an advanced degree.  Also, over the years, I focused too much on my studies and not enough on establishing solid friendship with a social group with similar, more healthy values. I just didn't know the importance of socializing. Now I am among people who either keep to themselves and their own social circles, or among overachiever girls who are just as confused as me. Some of them are still in their pursuit towards becoming a professor/group leader, which is not a problem in itself, but what scares me is that they also seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to get there, just like how other leaders got to where they are today.

It seems that I am surprised by a lot of the happenings in the world because people are a lot more selfish than I thought they would be. I don't know why I assumed people are less selfish in the first place.. maybe because I've been taught I should be more generous? To cope with this I should really be less concerned about matters that don't affect me immediately and focus on my own life, but I find it difficult since my work requires me to think out of the box and ponder in terms of big pictures.

One way to cope could be that I aim to be less emotionally tugged by all the external stimulants. Right now I'm like a rag doll, where every provocative image, every piece of sensational news, every slight insult by someone I come in contact with invokes a strong feeling or reaction from me. A wise friend encourages me to remain an observer, to not judge if these provocative events are good or bad, and to not react to everything that's happening. I think it's very good advice for me but I find it difficult to achieve.

Back to Miley Cyrus -- she's pushing boundaries of social norms, experimenting with herself and the system. Parents and the more conservative populations  are outraged, but I think it's interesting that her performance at the VMA wasn't censored (she mentioned herself that she thought there was a chance it could). I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be censored, just that it wasn't. However, the word "molly" was bleeped out. Why wouldn't she experiment with how far she could get if she can get away with it? There does seem to be a huge disconnect with the governing censorship system and the public opinion -- breasts can be exposed but nipples are somehow a dirty thing to show and can damage innocent children's souls (remember Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction caused a huge uproar). Movies with extreme violence can get a PG-13 rating, but nudity is automatically rated R and swear words need to be bleeped from radios and TVs. I do think that the broken censorship system sends the wrong message to children, especially when kids are inclined to try all the things that authorities forbid them to do.

I'm only concerned that public opinions can get to her eventually. People are just not nice these days, especially when they can express their judgements anonymously on the Internet. I'm certainly guilty of judging people too quickly, especially when I come across something unfamiliar and radical to me.

My homework for next little while is to judge less, react less, and rein in my over-scattered thinking. I direly need to center and ground myself.

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.

Self-care strategy #5 - Don't take everything personally

So many times I get really worked up if people make a criticism of me or if they don't like me. I feel like I am not good enough, likable enough, smart enough, agreeable enough, that I lack social skills, patience, understanding, humor. I cringe when my flaws are verbally exposed by others.

I need to remind myself that nobody is perfect. Even those who seem effortlessly charismatic on the surface may feel insecure deep down. Overly charming people are either people pleasers or can be quite arrogant. People also assume a lot of things, especially if they come from a more homogenous culture. When they say, "This is how we always do things in my family/culture/country", I have to struggle not to snap back that "I didn't grow up in your family/culture/country and you have no idea what kind of (flawed) values were taught to me when I grew up. Your values do not universally apply to everyone in this world."

Decades of biting my tongue when others make quick judgements and criticism has made me seem overly aloof. I want to appear to be a warmer person but I think I have to allow myself to process everything that has happened to me rather than feeling bad when people say that I'm an adult now and can just suddenly make the switch to be totally confident and pretend my upbringing is over and does not influence me now at all.

When people make naive judgements I guess I need to  remind myself that they are lucky they grew up in a more conventional environment, but it also makes them understand less about the shadows and darkness in this world. It makes me more sympathetic to the less fortunate people. It feels burdensome but I have to find ways to accept my knowledge and experience as gifts.