The ability to change your mind.

I have found myself increasingly comparing myself to a machine, and it probably has been my responsibility for a ton of misery made for me and solely by me.

Why?

Because in every approach I take, I wonder to myself if it is the most efficient way. I neglect what brings some manner of actual self interest, self investment, because I’m scare that it will be inefficient; and I conflate for me, this fear of inefficiency with inadequacy.

The problem, I’ve found, is my choice to pick my own metric of efficiency in approaching new situations and habits and learnings, even if it may be because I see this is the metric that is popular perhaps to others around me, without considering the cost of such a choice: consequent feelings of self-failure, inadequacy with the experience of measuring up to more efficient ways, and especially, the single fact that working this way, I’ll always feel lost against a real machine.

Because, I’ve found, a machine may carry out some part, an output or a way or designation of undertaking towards a output, but that’s not the same thing as conflating it with protection against the unknown. It cannot be the same thing, as a person might not choose to do things as efficiently in the way he’d compare himself to a machine, but this opens himself up to the chance of possibility; across time, he does not really ever know if he’ll choose to do differently and question his choice and courses in a later context or environment.

On the other hand, a machine carries that output, of course, perfectly: well, maybe, but that is in a vacuum. It’s on paper.

Everything goes perfectly until the rules of the game change completely, because the form of efficiency only takes itself seriously under one particular constraint, one particular instance of circumstances, localized in that moment in time. A person isn’t that; I realized that through our inefficiencies, precisely because we are that way, we are really able to take ourselves through different environments and courses and manners of action in a way that may not be perfectly suited to the place or to the time at hand, but that variation paves the way towards things which a machine really doesn’t keep in mind.

That is because, as is self obvious in the words themselves, machines don’t have a mind, so they have nothing to adjust their outlook to, like a rearview mirror. There is nothing to change. And when a machine holds nothing to change, that also really means there is nothing that can let them choose something new and abandon their old ways of doing things; somethjng actually mechanical and isn’t capable of deciding for themselves with real, actually real, independency. With nothing to be changed, something that is wholly mechanical can seem with an illusionary way to commit itself wholly, but it can’t be meaningful commitment, when there is no mind to change to begin with. It’s nothing.

I’ve found thus, that I can’t compare how I choose to do things with the criterion of a machine, despite how it may look on the surface, with society so valuing outputs in a way that examines ways retroactively, in a backwards-facing manner, simply looking back in an attempt to find whatever ends makes or re-creates the ideal designated output wanted.

The process, instead of being valued then by such a form of society, is ultimately and sadly neglected; it becomes a way among ways, measured against whatever is ultimately looked at as ‘necessary’ or ‘prudent’ to achieve whatever output necessary. When I want to eat a prune, I don’t want to see how I go about getting it; I google these answers to find the easiest way possible.

It’s the easiest fucking way possible. There’s no corners to cut because there are no corners. Without corners in a life treated as something smooth without edges, efficient ways takes a straight line to goals and destinations without thinking to pause or to consider that it itself really wants to, if the choice is the hypotenuse and the right angle, take the rectilinear corner towards the coffee shop, and not judge itself for wasting time or for conserving time.

What this means is that efficiency, while saving time, minute fractions of energy or other short term resources, ultimately robs of us of our ability to decide for ourselves.

When I decide to go ahead and measure myself by some way that is more efficient, I’m really also, without my even being aware of the fact happening in front of me, choosing too to neglect that opening, and too soon foreclose that possibility that maybe I want to take the long way.

The chance to take the long way is the chance to decide, something that output maximizing doesn’t care about, can’t, in fact, care of, since it goes the way that matters to that outcome. But because I failed to see this, I also couldn’t reach the simple fact that planning, for example, the perfect ice cream place to take a girl I like suddenly matters less when I go there and she is in fact sick, from the cold weather, or the place is overcrowded, and the outcome of that delicious and thoroughly researched split suddenly becomes meaningless, and suddenly doesn’t matter anymore.

Then, in this stupid hypothetical scenario date, I can decide to change my mind and take this imaginary yet regardless beautiful and wonderful woman to somewhere else instead, like a peanut aisle or a cookie store.

My preferences change because I’m a human, and therefore by nature a little bit fickle and unreliable, and in judging my actions and outlooks overly too far by the misnomer that says that the process is a consequence of the result forecast, something I will lose myself with every time to in a comparison to an actual machine or program with strict designations precisely aimed at such a thing, like a robot crane arm manufactured by white coat engineers in a desert designed to carey out the execution of moving barrels of oil.

Machines are predictors and maybe accurate weather vanes at finding and meeting a target, but when we adopt that same mindset, we lose our capacity rather that we have and machines don’t: the nomer of volition, which means that with our minds and the fact that we can look forward and also look backwards, when a freak storm hits or something obsoletes whatever makes one thing efficient and another not, we can choose, again, through our own understandings and significations, to go another route again, even if it is another square in a circular world.

I cannot win against a machine. But a person is not one. A machine always goes the easiest way because that is its nature; that is its programming. So do we program ourselves to learn that the path of least resistance should be the norm we set ourselves against, and learn to naturalize ourselves towards?

That can’t ever, ever be the case so. Whatever we map as efficient, that will wear down when the map no longer becomes what the terrain really is, because the terrain is mutable by nature and the map, once set, isn’t. The map loses itself to time and nature, and machines continue to try to find that path of least resistance, a stone settling down to the bottom of the pond only, while a human learns to embrace the value and virtues of suffering, and can know that difference between what is water and what is virtue; while so, the stone only sinks.

Even if things at the moment make it look important that one does things by the most efficient way possible, that is only at that moment, and other people do not include what matters more than what they can only see, and that is something self-awareness can be referent to: the human prerogative to do what is optional, and only just so. A mechanical and purely robotic being survives by its efficiency. We, solely in spite of, and perhaps, only simply and solely as reason because we are otherwise.

Choose the uncertain instead of the certain. Abandon certainty back for uncertainty. That is what I can risk.

Risk stepping off without knowing for sure the future by certain absolute knowledge now, back to the uncertain, for real risks within life’s confrontations.

Do not try to be one’s parents. This is a lesson I’ve continuously had trouble with, especially compounded by my mother’s belief that ‘we are all a family,” and continuously mingling boundaries and treating individuals as constituents of a whole, a Chinese cultural artifact, to speak this having grown up alongside a person of this belief—this makes it especially hard, especially as one grows and learns one’s parents benefit most FROM one not being their parents, that one has more to give them that way, and that to continue to try to be one’s parents as role models eventually leads to even greater suffering and ultimately, ruin.

It is hard personally, for me, to take this lesson inside me. “Do not try to be one’s parents.” To let go of one’s own parent’s cultural and upbringings’ conditioning that they know best, to see firsthand the suffering that I’d brought onto myself trying to be like them, so see firsthand that it was not working and navigate the sense of despondency and inner helplessness after, was not empowering.

I think that one’s mom and dad should be a guidepost into adulthood and independence, but at a certain point, I was doing actions that were not my own, and I was castigating myself for things that were beyond my control. I still am doing so. To reject the lessons of my parents for my own instincts before they had taught me how to act, otherwise, feels extremely wrong, especially knowing the Chinese addendum of raising one’s family in compliance with harmony—to accept disunity and differing lived-in-realities between individuals as an aspect of life was such even more disconcerting. But suffering is suffering, and one can only accept the paltry coinage of parental (or any greater authority in one’s life) for so long before the suffering noticed in oneself, induced BY oneself, wanton and unnecessary, of acting out the same rote social rituals begins to override validation.

My parents, I found, were people that did not always know what was best for themselves nor me, but fervently told themselves that they always had and did and do. Perhaps another more spiritual man might call this ego. But this is the way it is for me. I realized that I did not have to maintain this illusion to do well and succeed. This was an illusion of overadmitting one’s credit-a failure of investors pre-economic meltdown of 1929, and a failure of myself from the past. By overextending my line of credit in the present, I could not BECOME that greater credit eventually in the future, no matter how much effort or trying that this took–this is no reality. Rather, letting go and allowing the credits of the past to flow into the present: for one’s self-esteem defense systems to not be propelled constantly by overextension, but by past lines of credit–such was effortless, which ironically took effort, because it went against everything that I had seein in my mom and dad and thought was the reality of growth.

In truth, experience, the simplest of teachers, the always present, absent leader, experience then taught me that growth does not follow projection and then “catching up,” like a hook shot latching onto a target and pulling oneself along (Zelda!). In truth, one constantly finds oneself “catching up,” because the target one has chosen to latch onto is the future and the future is only a possibility, not a certainty; unlike the Legend of Zelda, imagine the target constantly changing, oneself constantly choosing to change the target, AS one gets pulled along.

How can this be a true projection of REAL growth? I learn that despite my mom and dad thinking that by faking it until one makes it, repetition will lead to persistence, persistence, belief, belief, persuasion-but this is only a half truth that only deludes both parties involved. Nominally, true growth does not follow; simple, experiential lived reality has shown me that the suffering of constantly experiencing the indeterminacy of being in the air, of playing catch-up, of falling behind and not knowing, is nothing if not the told-to-you delusion of semblential growth. Real growth needs no effort in reality, as it comes AS one says it, as it is lived, out of the expression of the past choosing to connect itself to the present.

The reality of growth is no jump to a probable future in forsakement of the past, for so it is more something that makes sense: growth is effortless, because it is one choosing to admit one’s credit in the past, truth and truth and truth, unbroken in a continuous catechism borne of one’s own past INTO the current, allowing the future to make room for itself, as uncertainties cannot be relied upon for contingencies for growth.

There is, I’ve seen, no need to fake-it-until-you-make-it because what is made itself is let go-I can already see my own reflection to be expressed by the road I’ve taken, truths that can be denied by others, but continue to be known by oneself. Growth in truth is merely a continuation, as I choose to volitionally coopt it from my own lived-in-life, as the past, in expression WITH the present, a current.

Even if I don’t see them reflected in the outside environment or situation, here are values nevertheless to help me through such situations and remind me of becoming myself:

1. Serenity.

To take a pause and wait for the right answer to come as it does. Stillness in dispersal and in quiet energy. Falling down into repose when expending energy into performing is the opposite way of course. Choosing my own, default, response when an ideally appropriate one suits. When i must be very quiet and very still inside, to know myself.

2. Faith

within intuitive uncertain knowing. Rather choosing to live inside imagined hypothesis and scenarios, unbidden knowing, defaulting to my own ordinary before seeing it first. Faith, to me myself, is not a leap of faith but rather a retreat back into my own knowing, consulting my own gut, which is where real bravery is truly resting in repose. Faith in gut in so much as knowing is mysterious.

3. Repose. To lie down and choose to die in lieu of anything else involving internal and emotional dishonesty. In uncertainty, in fear of not being enough, in solidarity, in pain in loneliness, rest.

There’s power, latent and deep and not kinetic, but potential energy in choosing resting in wait in alternative to choosing in action without knowing.

There is bold, yet unspoken, quiet energy, rock-hard stability given away in waiting on, in the practice of relaxing into, when intensity, sharpness, and unsure-ification strike and dismantle fucking hard, to continue to rest then on support for the unerringness of one’s own response to such demands.

4. The models to rely upon in need in the valley (energy in lack, attraction in gravity and inward void) of the univetse in lieu of the mountain of the world, and the child looked upon as the sage, in alternative to the beady adult, the stellar man, the warped and distinguished powerful matured individual begotten.

The Tao fellows refer to the child as a reference for the distinguished sage-in the beginning, before any other culturally received and conditioned sense of distinction, letting every kind of betterment and culturally receptive claim to becoming, fall loose. Rather look to maturation, in replacement look in the default start, the intuitive proceedings in obeisance not to “better” alternative “inward.”

Respond to life outside not with unknown and perhaps not necessary maturity, but clear, intuition-derived clarity and truth, inner living moved outward,

or in the simplest thing to speak into, model oneself before one’s learned behaviors, into immediate disclosure of self.

Rather modeling oneself after another outside of oneself in regards to fear of insufficiency and combating it with pride, be immediately childlike; what is the default imperative? What emotion, what feeling, what caution, and restraint bubbles forth as it comes? Take it, move it to the outside, submit to reversion back towards the beginning.

5. Letting go. Rather conventional letting go, the sensation of others peeling away as one draws on one’s own imperatives. It can be icy, it can be sweet, letting go of nonintuited answers and bittersweet assurances in substitution of oneself and taking on anxiety and fear in real time is hard. Submitting to one’s priormost sensativities and engagements in environmental temptation to be “better” is a fucking brutal volition to take.

Letting go instead of drawing in to “who I ought to be given this and that” is conscientious. In real time, with regards to sharp feelings and emotional uncertainty of behavior and self-worth, draw into oneself. Always back into oneself. That’s why it’s a fuckin’ practice and not a changing easy pill to become a better person in every situation, because that’s just not reality.

The option in lieu of letting go and drawing onto the environments’ cues and cultural values ‘to be’ and ‘to model after’ lead one after to have the wanted without really wanting it oneself.

The option alternate “solving” emotional uncertainty and fear outward with meted relaxation inward is uncertainty, more, in looking for the “best optional circumstance,” the dictations of being a capable fellow or a smart, relaxed person in a particular situation. Who knows that? In self-reclinement, letting go.

6. Faults and mistakes are not bad to hear and not bad to take and not bad to give. It is a part of knowing oneself. Nosce te ipsum-a reflection of all ones’ goods and bads. To not know the bads is to not know the goods, to not know the goods isn’t much better than regarding one’s reality as a complete stranger.

Shame is not being able to divest these manners of mode and weight to other people. Fear of divesting mistakes within oneself for ruining one’s own self esteem to oneself is a greater protraction of shame, a crippling form of incapacitation of the way in which one deals and bears witness to one’s own reactions to foolish and castigative behaviors.

To bear repeating; faults and mistakes are not bad to give, they are not bad to take, and they are not bad to take. Giving all oneself, as a function of intuitive-self-knowing and measuring the given response, is a form of receiving wounds rather than recognition, and in so and such, receiving vulnerability in turn rather than authority and permission in turn.

6. Value values and difference. They may feel constraining but that comes with the grain of being born an individual with individual life and individual receptivity to changing circumstances and to others’ words and behaviors. Permitting difference feels outwardly wrong and exposure-like, naked and unbecoming, especially when values themselves seem misaligned to the situation itself, that isn’t forthcoming nor simple-or simple, yet excruciatingly fucking demanding.

To value difference is to admit to being alone in essence. But the notion of sameness to an estimated proximate or universally seen identity is a damn illusion. Embracing it is a fiction taught by fiction, in books, literature, and movies, if not to speak of marketing and media at all. To not base a first date after Hugh Grants’ performance, read scenarios in Harry Potter, or the brooding allure of Edward Cullen or Gatsby, to resign oneself to dissimilarity, is bringing everything loveable on.

To be oneself is fucking lonely and tiresome. But it’s also easy and painfully bitter. It’s sexy and it’s absolutely revilesome. To keep so in changing spaces is a continuing practice, a long sequence of being. To remain and to remain and to remain is bravery itself; is unknowable, ordinary, nothing speakable, nothing to talk about. Nothing special can be special, if the case is that speciality is itself overvalued as excessive.

Only a middle distance runner knows how important his (his and her) role is, and it is a mark of world weary truth and unspeakable, nothing-much-confidence. To aspire to that isn’t so similar to aspiring at all. Sometimes loneliness is there, at the same places as truth.

I have read a lot of self help books. My aim in reading each was to learn more about myself. But, as one of my teachers told me quite angrily before, “stop trying to project yourself into everything you read. Stop trying to ask, ‘what does this say about me,’ stop trying to infuse secondary, tertiary meanings onto everything. Read to read. Listen to music to listen to music. Go for a walk to go for a walk.”

Obviously, his advice went horribly in vain. Instead of heeding his caveat, I chose instead to reread a fuckton of self-help labeled books aiming to see if my intentions were messed up, and I tried to correct my intentions or have the right ones. I put myself in a bubble, like Sandy from Spongebob, trying to fix my intentions and alleviate myself of some mysterious fault; continuing the strange Spongebob thing, I was in a bubble insulated from reality at larger, and running on a treadmill from one book to the next, and back, rotating between people whose books or knowledge I had hoped would provide some panacea for my emotions or motivations.

Ultimately, I was running on this treadmill of anxiety not to go anywhere, but because it felt good to feel like I was going somewhere. The propensity, the sheer energy to move all this time, to expend all my energy running, came partly from my ADHD meds I’ve been taking, and the other sheer impetus came from insecurity that I was a bad person; having made different choices than other people and not seeing anyone around me commit to the same path I was on, a part of me was desperate for validation that I was doing the right thing, that I was OK being on this path.

In retrospect, the only one to guide me is myself; in a situation where no one else shares one’s metrics, I find that one becomes most influential, yet least stable; I often forget I am a person, and as people, our identities are interdependent on others and by our own actions. I’m reminded of the novel Ender’s Game, the titular children’s book that shows just how awful adults are at making children’s reading lists (usually about genocide as the theme; middle school teacher love genocide. Maybe the kids are going through a phase because of puberty, or maybe they’re fucking reading the Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler’s List, and Ender’s Game. in America, the lessons of the Weimar Republic are conflated as lessons for 13 year olds. Learn about the Holocaust in the morning, play lacrosse in the evening, google “Jennifer Lawrence boobs” at night; middle school fucking sucks).

The book notes how solitude can lead to self-reliance within oneself, notably in that instance Ender, but the fear and respect that his peers see him as ultimately does not clash in that book with the way he sees himself, with his own goals and ends. his identity as a leader was cultivated deliberately by others and fostered—he learned independence and self-sustenance through the pain of loneliness, of no one else sharing his values and pursuits. I find that in today’s day and age, everyone wants to be either be a leader or wants their kids to be in ‘leadership setting camps,” as if everyone could be a leader. It feels good to be ahead of the curve, the motivation makes sense, but they fail to be aware that leadership is not something everyone should want, since such an identity comes from so much self-doubt and internal pain, but most importantly, from loneliness, which is needed for the independent identity which conveys that sort of respect.

The problem is that I am not as badass nor as determined as Ender, and loneliness physically hurts me, and ironically fuels the drive to read more and learn more about myself to abet my self-perceived emotional ‘problems’ (loneliness is not bad, but it is if one thinks it should be eradicated). The problem with my actions is that in being insecure about my identity and not having conviction, I wanted to go to a book written by another person, and read what others told me as as learning about myself. This is stupid and obviously bullshit.

I was simply asking everyone but myself, every other, from Eckharte Tolle to Mark Manson and my Buddhism textbook, to figure out something about myself. What everyone told me I should be was different, and all I did was get hella depressed, eat a lot of ice cream, play a lot of video games, and try harder. In terms of efficiency, efficacy, and respectfulness, 0’s on every front. All my actions did was make me depressed and more insecure. My original insecurity was feeling inadequate because I treated a girl I cared about like she didn’t matter to me when she did, and tried to cover it up by acting like someone I wasn’t. Instead of moving on though, all I did was try to cover up the emotions coming from my actions by thinking I could abet disappointment and guilt with an insightful passage to tell me what I did wrong, or whatever.

The bottom line isn’t that there is a bottom line; that was my mistake first. Ultimately, me trying to learn about myself and my faults through what others tell me about myself, is fake and spurious, and I was making myself extremely self-absorbed, unhappy, and slightly fat from eating so much vanilla ice cream to compensate (binge eat it from Trader Joe’s! It is delicious). I thought I could listen to my Buddhism professor, or Mark Manson, or some other reputable author to tell me who I am and what my mistakes are. But I was incognizant of my own interpretation, and my own decision to decide what to do. I got a lot of advice from others about myself, and every failure made me try harder, because I was being ignorant of the fact that I was turning to others and not to myself to tell me who I am; of course I would be depressed, of course I would feel like shit and be extremely needy. That is the dumbest idea ever; I did it for maybe a month and a half.

Other people have proven me wrong all the time. But my inability to accept that wrongness is what drove me to seek security from others; and the opposite fact is also true; when I am the one who proves myself wrong, I was most OK with myself. I am the only one culpable for treating myself and others like shit. That isn’t so bad. Ultimately, the consequences caught up to me. And that is fine too. I want to say I felt like Sisyphus climbing up a wheel, but really, it felt good, it felt like I was making progress; the worst sort of feeling is when one feels like they are losing progress.

I was acting like a chicken with its head cut off, and it was from going to everyone about myself but me. I was, and probably still am, afraid of loneliness; but what if I am wrong? Then I am the only one who is wrong, and I don’t want that exposure to being wrong, I want to blame it on the theory instead-i want to say Eckharte Tolle was wrong, the Power of Now is stupid! Buddhism is wrong! Nah, because this: everyone can see the responsibility that I am avoiding is on me, whether I like it or not. I was also extremely arrogant for choosing all that energy and effort and self-pain instead of a bit of admittance, a bit of sole exposure as making mistakes like any human being. Wrongness is not worth avoiding a little pain from truthfulness and responsibility, which takes a lot of energy to avoid.

It was stupid. There’s nothing to be wrong about.

Jeffery

https://markmanson.net/meta-awesomeness

This made me aware of something that was already in my life.

Realism: calling out myself and my faults is funny, and calling out others, is the reality of it. Not aggrandizing myself and aggrandizing others. Nah. Admit I am uncool. And admit others are too. I lessen myself, and I lessen others. Knowing I’m not awesome, as he says, weirdly made me more awesome. I did this not through some intention to actively share myself, to be willingly vulnerable, as he says in Models. Nah. I just took therapy, what women construe as “honesty” or “wisdom” was just taking reality from therapy.

I think it is counterintuitive, and I’m too sensitive and want to concede to the conventional.

Mark Manson says self awareness means “the ability to reflect on your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a third person perspective.” I sure as hell suck as that. And I think knowing I’m an idiot will eradicate my self esteem, so I call myself smart instead; but counterintuitively, that strange word rearing it’s inconvenient head again, being aware that I am really a nincompoop feels a lot more liberating, simply a lot better.

I can reflect on my behaviors as shitty and not reprehensible, yet also human and deserving of forgiveness and tolerable. But it was achieve not solely through me, but through my hard work, through therapy, and interdependently, because of Sheryl and because of myself.

Next, Mark Manson says that vulnerability means “Vulnerability is being candid about who you are, not hiding yourself or trying to impress others, not covering up your flaws or weaknesses, admitting your mistakes, sharing yourself unabashedly. Vulnerability without self-awareness is little more than a verbal stream of emotional vomit.” He’s not wrong there.

My emotional vomit is vulnerable, yet fucking sordid. It needs to be, as it is, just slowly and awkwardly, being mediated and balanced out by my real, and candid, efforts in therapy to come to terms with my Asian American identity, my entitlement, and my disdain and relationship with my parents. These things cannot be disguised through spurious campus reflections.

He then says of this, “You need self-awareness to take responsibility for your flaws and problems, to incorporate them into your identity in a positive manner. Vulnerability with self-awareness gives others a crystal-clear access to who you are and what makes you unique and interesting.” I see. Me trying to be “me”, alone, without therapy, is stupid; independence is truer than dependence, but in truth, I am interdependent, both myself and who I am from the work of others, a coming to terms from a dialogue that mostly involves me frowning a lot and my therapist calling me intrusive.

Would I call myself confident? Not really. Not at all, in fact, I don’t think I have ever once called myself confident, although others have, as I remember it, called me wise, insightful, and honest; I never felt like any of those things, although I tried to.

I’d probably call myself nothing, in fact; in that, maybe my Buddhism teacher would like me a little bit. Anytime I call myself anything positive, it’s spurious, and tends to lead to me deluding myself; calling myself negative things, such as a fool, does not work, it’s just pretty true. The only thing I call myself is me. For me to be called out as myself, is really, what brings me the greatest joy.

He then goes on to say, which adds verbiage to a truth I experience of myself, “If you’re able to achieve these two qualities simultaneously, you will introduce your psyche to multi-layered emotions.”

I too, noticed that when I got back from therapy, the lack of understanding I knew of myself, that indescript incohesiveness, laced with a simple hint of vulnerability from being candid for a moment about myself with my Lyft driver, truly allowed me to, as I like to phrase this, go “meta,” or multi-level. I notice my normal, or perhaps not normal, but intuitive, truly me modus operandi was saying things like, “Yeah, I’m not so great. I tend to get really arrogant and say a lot of big words,” and laugh, truly, at my own bullshit for being true and for being such a klutz. But I’ll also say the same things of others, and only smile, because it is not as honest or as true as what I can say in reference to myself objectively, as said, “reflecting on your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a third person perspective.” That objectivity of space in awareness of myself was wrought from being a totally lame, incomprehensible, value-less, bad, and shame-wracked version of myself in therapy. It took work. It is taking work. Part of it is ADHD, and part of it is myself, but it is simply the way I am, as myself.

“But a person with self-awareness would recognize this pattern, notice the being in love feeling, notice the fear of being in love, and notice the sabotaging behaviors caused by the fear of being in love. This is necessary if you’re ever going to turn your emotional baggage and neuroticism into a bonus instead of a penalty.”

Yup, I noticed this of myself. I recently got into a relationship, and I immediately realized, sardonically, feeling humorous about my sadness or sad about the humor, “I wonder how soon I’m going to sabotage this one myself.” And it was true. But what I found helpful from this was that the point was to “turn the emotional baggage and neuroticism into a bonus instead of a penalty.” That correlates and aligns with a truth I noticed: that the bad is often the exact same strength in the good.

Then, he says “This self-awareness is nice, but if you’re unable or too afraid to express these realizations to your partner, then your partner will continue to perceive you as a neurotic, relationship-sabotaging (son of a) bitch. But if you work up the cojones/ovaries to tell your partner, “Look, I’m a bit of a headcase when it comes to commitment, and I only get like this because I like you so much. I’m sorry if I push you away. I’m going to try not to, but just know that I have some issues and this is what usually happens.”

Ho–Lee Shit. This is exactly it, at least in my life. My failure was nonexistent; I simply did not be vulnerable, and took something true, my self-awareness about my sabotage, about the boundaries making me insecure, and I tried to be invulnerable, put my guard up. I knew and lacked the cajones, or whatever the hell, to make this vulnerable: to be candid about who I am. I failed to relate it, and that made me deal with everything on my own, in terms of my growing self-awareness but failure-of-vulnerability, instead of letting her know who I am.

It wasn’t flaws I had to cover up, I’m coming to see; it was my inability to be vulnerable and candid about who I am that did not allow her insight into what was going on, that was unattractive and lame of me. What was lame was me being unable of myself to share my mistakes and admit them, and as such sharing myself unabashedly. Admittedly, it is a hard step to take, and I am only human, only a deeply flawed, emotionally chastised man. I’m taking little steps.

The best that I can do is move on, and realize, for myself and for others, that faults and flaws as I perceive them in myself are not worth covering up, not when vulnerability, as I’ve seen it myself, to my own, stupefied bafflement and chagrin, generally leads to responses of openness, of respect, and of direct elicited attraction from others. Once again, it is a consequence of me and my inability to come to terms with certain faults of mine in myself, namely, my sexual truths, and my issues with time management and boundaries for schedules, ironically both aspects of having ADHD. That’s fine, everyone goes through that.

All I can do, as just myself, is be sensitive to my own feelings, to respect the feelings she had instead of lacerating her for my own emotional protection, and hence, leave it be. The best wounds aren’t wounds at all, just parts of oneself.

Here’s a general maxim I’ve found true: in general, the lower your GPA is, the more likely you are to be interesting. Not because GPAs mean anything in and of itself. But the point of being young right now is to take a lot of risks and fail a lot. A high GPA usually shows not taking a lot of risks, playing it safe. Not a lot of suffering, doubt, or pain. What’s there to talk about over beer, then? It’s the disappointment in realizing you were the dumb one, disappointment in yourself for not knowing better, that makes it fun to drink with or hang out with. It’s only when the high GPAs are a reflection of low GPAs, or some other failure, that are really worthwhile. Like my environmental professor at FSU who has a 4.0 because he failed college the first time, in his 20s, setting up warehouse parties for Daft Punk in the 90s. That shit is lit. And it was a choice; it was volitional; it was a trade-off; it demanded a choice between oneself and convention, and that choice was reflected in a failure on conventions’ part, on the abandonment of college.
A 4.0 in his 40s though. Also, he doesn’t give a fuck, he knows what he wants, and he wants to teach environmental science to a bunch of overzealous buff tank tops who are vaping and looking up Fortnite guides in between slides, and he’s fine with that.
As a rule, old people are cooler because they’re more comfortable with the ways in which they messed up when they were our age; people our age replace sincere, honest mistakes with emotionally bloated hubbub because emotions tell a story and honest mistakes don’t. Sure, but where’s the story you and I were leading up until now? We’re already in our 20s, in the Middle Ages, we’d be fucking dead. We messed up when we treated our sisters like shit, we messed up when we let our moms dress us up in stupid Polos instead of manning up and walking into Abercrombie and Fitch ourself, we messed up when we pretended like we knew how to put on a condom when those things are slippery as hell.
A high GPA, as I see it, tends to be indicative of someone who chooses not to deal with pain-pain that irreparably comes with picking one’s own choices, because people are gonna call you out for wearing all black like you just watched Walk the Line, I know because I’m lazy. If you don’t suffer all your life, it’s easy to focus on being respectable-because your grandparents’ illness doesn’t bother you, your lame friend group that doesn’t make you happy doesn’t bother you, your crap diet doesn’t bother you, your dependency on your family’s income doesn’t bother you, your inability to hang out with people not in your socioeconomic bubble or ethnic group, doesn’t bother you; what’s the point of even grabbing a beer together at happy hour, then? To bitch codependently about the GMAT? Cmon, dude. The pains not a big deal, the suffering’s only normal, but those things just mean you made personal choices, and THOSE are what make IPAs worth chugging-let me hear about those.
A high grade point average means nothing in and of itself; I think a Buddhist might correctly say it’s empty. What’s the point of a GPA? To say how you fucked up, how you are a human being. At lower (“lower”) tier schools such as FSU, a high GPA might mean some self-doubt, since everywhere you see, others are partying and it’s not supported. But the unsupported is the truth. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “high-performing” person. Would you rather be the best performer, or just yourself? Would you rather take shots with an ‘outstanding performer,’ or a human being?
Alcohol is a terrible metric, yeah, but a worse metric is absolutely turgid toil, things that stand alone as independently worth sacrificing yourself just to prop it up, and then you see that it doesn’t even reflect you-GPAs, marriages, job descriptions. What reflects me is how messy my room is right now. What reflects me is what I choose to wear at the gym, which are ratty high school T shirts back when I was fat, because that’s the truth.
So, with this in mind, the more perfect your GPA, the less likely you are to say something worth taking a shot to at the bar; the crappier it is, the more likely you are to be able to do the truffle shuffle with a bunch of babes in the dance floor. The truffle shuffle means nothing: it’s just a nice happenstance, a byproduct of taking the time for dance lessons, or going to raves, or dancing by yourself with Bowers&Wilkins and listening to Stromae. But it’s you. Unless you are you and I am me, there’s no point going for happy hour. You can brag about a house, a watch, or a 3.8 average, but what’s the point in bragging when it took a 20 year mortgage to afford that house, when the watch was your dad’s present for making him proud every day of high school, when the 3.8 took days and days camped out in Van Pelt library, sleeping with the fishes and the Narcos marathoners? All it is is the truth of what you decided to pursue, nothing more. What more to say?

What I find true is that worthwhile people are people who’ve messed up before; the people who can teach me are the people who’ve been there themselves. I spent a lot of time assessing people by outward things like people’s beauty or their wealth, but that just comes from the pain they went through to get there, the hours at the gym, the tribulations and choices of their family-it’s a reflection of people’s chillness, and not a very good one. For what it’s worth, GPAS may make a good metric for evaluating people’s inherent chillworthiness-are they worth chilling with? But it’s just good for approximating; your time is not decidable by a GPA, or anything outside of yourself, fixed and absolute; that is the point.