I believe the message has spent enough time in my mind1 so I can distill the original morning commute babble into a concise essay.
It is of no surprise to anyone that my time at Auckland (and its ring-down, now) is rather prominently overcast with a profound and lasting disappointment in self. This sentiment finds evidence in some objective numbers: health metrics, books and papers read, impact of my research, listenership of my music, on-time posts here, friendship, et cetera. But I now see these as not the root of the problem, but a symptom.
Like many things that go wrong in this world, my current mental quagmire started with good intentions and seemed a reasonable arrangement at the time. For a teen with powerful imaginations, quick uptake of information, and too few people to talk to, I had pretty strong an opinion what my future would be like. Some that can still be found (if their paper shredder is broken) in many theoretical physics admission offices. Of course any judgements and suppositions were made with less information than I have now. Still, subconsciously, I had preemptively wrote any departures from my imagination as a personal failure. And well, while fundamentally carrying the same fire, the drive to do physics and those other things, I did not grow up to be exactly how I imagined myself.
It is an oxymoron for someone with a diet “Try Everything™” attitude of life to realize himself has been too busy expecting rather than experiencing, and come up upset at the futility of set paths. Maybe the medley of choices was what prevented me from seeing the conflict earlier. To calm down and recognize that I still managed to get anything done when the mind was busy expecting is a partial relief.
Along the original vision (that my life was drifting further and further from a set path), I would highlight the 15th of February, 2022. On that day life seemed to have crashed down another — one of the final — cascade of deviations; my longest to date relationship ended and I left, driving to Coromandel Peninsula to meet some friends to help me clear my mind. The presence of the Coromandel Pinnacles felt formidable at 2AM and I believe it was wise I didn’t stop ther and brave the unfamiliar mountain track for a sunrise.
On the way back I stopped by a rural supermarket. I saw the Hot Wheels Year of the Ox car (1.5 years old at that point). And that is how my 12-year collection for Chinese New Year Editions started.
7 years to go now.
The above (absurd) recount of a series of events doesn’t really have a moral. Stories go untold unremarked or unremembered. Life is experienced alone no matter the attitude.
Still, to an imaginary curious kid to whom I will show my collection in 2031, that’s story is not nothing. I am too used to measuring myself on a biased ruler that says my time and doing and thinking — years — amounted to nothing and nowhere — a trivially short and disappointing segment. What I did manage to do and think still thickens it.
And now, a better ruler should be put in place, embracing the slightly frightening (and exciting) prospect that I have no clue where life is going, and that is fine.
Maybe greatness lies on this path, maybe bigger failures than I ever perceived myself to have made. No matter what, it’s a path with bigger uncertainties and a bigger mean. I think it’s enough to justify a shift, from busy expecting, to busy doing.
- This is different from rumination. Don’t ruminate. ↩︎
Yourong Frank Wang 