Have a lot to write about, but haven't had much time

I haven't been able to do due diligence towards my blog in recent months, and I apologize (to myself and to anyone who reads this) for that. There's a lot I've wanted to write about, but haven't found time to do so.

I've been deeply mired in a lot of emotionally draining circumstances in the past few months, and I'd be lying if I said that things are going splendidly. My mom found (another?) tumor in her neck, though it's still benign. Meanwhile, in my dorm, the escalation of some tension has culminated in some hate crime against me again, and far more clear in intent than just some chewed up gum on my door handle.

One of the works of art on my door

I love me some good whiteboard vandalism.

Fortunately, a lot of the people I am close to have lent me a lot of emotional strength, whether they know it or not, either by directly being there for me or by being an inspiration because their experiences I use as a blueprint for resiliency and growth. This past weekend at SBS spring retreat alone, I've witnessed the human spirit wrestling with weight much heavier than that which I bear, and that allows me to continue forward. It allows me to fight hate not also with hate but with love:

Take that.

In reflecting on this recent stuff, I am reminded of something I learned in CS 124 last quarter during the unit on sentiment analysis. When it comes to affected experiences, they can actually be classified in one of five ways called Scherer's Typology of Affective States:

• Emotion: relatively brief episode of synchronized response to the evaluation of an external or internal event as being of major significance (e.g. angry, sad, joyful, fearful, ashamed, proud, elated, desperate)
• Mood: diffuse affect state, most pronounced as change in subjective feeling, of low intensity but relatively long duration, often without apparent cause (e.g. cheerful, gloomy, irritable, listless, depressed, buoyant)
• Interpersonal stances: affective stance taken towards another person in a specific interaction, coloring the interpersonal exchange in that situation (e.g. distant, cold, warm, supportive, contemptuous)
• Attitudes: relatively enduring, affectively colored beliefs, preferences, and predispositions towards objects or persons (e.g. liking, loving, hating, valuing, desiring)
• Personality traits: emotionally laden, stable personality dispositions and behavior tendencies (e.g. nervous, anxious, reckless, morose, hostile, envious, jealous)

I think the recent months have consisted of a lot of negative emotion, but my mood has stayed afloat through a few experiences that have assured me that the negative things are merely episodic, and that even in the midst of such episodes there are people who are there to catch me. That can't be said for everyone, and I'm lucky because it's a very, very good place to be.

Additionally, I have been doing a lot of thinking catalyzed by my psychiatry class. It's on Modern Relationships from a Couples and Family Therapy Perspective, and it's incredibly eye opening. Between that class, conversations I've had with N- and E-, and SBS spring retreat, I've had a lot to think about. Expect stuff on (aka note to self:) negativity threshold and the relationship tension escape velocity, equilibriation and re-equilibriation, relationship resonance, first-order and second-order change, n-dimensional behavioral cones, regret vs. guilt, dynamic vs. static conversations, and what drives my decision-making on personal matters to come.

First New Year's Resolution ever, 1 month in.

I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. I feel like if at any point I find something I want to change about myself, I don't want to wait until New Year's to make it happen. As such, I haven't made many New Year's resolutions to date.

However, I did make one resolution this year.

Resolution 2015: Get my shit together.

Quality resolution, isn't it?

My goal by the end of college was to figure out what I want to do with my life (career-wise, personal life, etc.). I didn't expect to have made progress towards whatever that ends up looking like, but I at least wanted to know what direction I was going in.

I realized just before winter break that I'm lucky enough to be in a place where I have a strong sense of purpose in my life, and that's something many people of my age cannot say for themselves. In particular, I want to spend my life making people happy and improving their quality of life, but in a very surefire way. I don't mean some wishy-washy social committee-type thing. I mean scientifically rigorously looking at ways that people can attain greater fulfillment and satisfaction. I want to engineer happiness.

Even though that's still very big picture and doesn't offer much granularity, it serves as a pretty good guide for my decision-making. In fact, in the long run, it is much better to have this top piece (the why) and be able to go top-down in figuring out what I want to do rather than having a sense of what I like to do/am good at/am competent at without knowing why I continue to do it.

So why do I feel like I'm stuck and moving so slowly? Why do I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time? Why do I not feel like I have my shit together?

I spent winter break trying to figure out why this is, and I identified a couple of general things I need to do.

1) Know when to fold.

I am incredibly susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy. I place weight on past effort expended or invested in a particular activity, class, or person, but that's a naive basis to make future decisions. I get deeply attached to a lot of things. In C-'s words: just like a poker player doesn't expect to win every hand and instead must choose to commit to hands wisely, so must we be cognizant of when certain decisions didn't play out like anticipated and be willing to cut losses and prepare for other decisions we make going forward.

More concretely, this has led me to readily drop classes I attended for two and a half weeks before realizing it's not for me. I've started putting distance between me and the Stanford Robotics Club because it simply wasn't making me happy, despite what I've dedicated to founding the club and keeping it running smoothly. I've stopped watching TV shows that I no longer enoyed in later seasons. I've stopped investing time in people I don't believe care about me in the same way. I've halted job interview processes when it becomes clear that I don't want to work there, even if I was never rejected as a candidate.

This doesn't mean truths in the past were any less true. I am not any less authentic because what motivates me now differs from what once did. The past can (and should) still shape me. Past values matter insofar as how they inform or influence my current beliefs and values.

2) Commit wholeheartedly when you commit.

This is sort of the opposite of knowing when to fold. For the vast majority of choices I make, I will not have absolute certainty about at the time that I make the decision nor ever. If I wanted to wait until I had certainty on anything, I'd be completely paralyzed. Waiting for certainty is precisely that: a wait. It's passive, and relinquishes control to forces beyond our control.

That complacency leads to inaction and general sluggishness. When you have an array of good choices in front of you, and you (and the people who know and care about you) cannot determine which is the correct or best choice, chances are there isn't a best choice. Have some confidence that you'd be able to identify an obvious best choice. Instead, it's all about picking one and making it great.

(Caveat: in poker, bets are rarely just a matter of going all-in and not at all. Similarly, committing wholeheartedly doesn't necessarily mean rule everything else out, but it does mean taking ownership of whatever extent of commitment you make in any given distribution of commitment of resources. I feel like blogging has that effect for me, where by having them written down somewhere it gives my thoughts much more substance, and helps me commit and take ownership of change I want to see in myself.)

3) Do not let myself slip into negative self-fulfilling prophecies and exacerbation cycles.

Over break I noticed that 1/13 marked the day that I've been out of my relationship with E- longer than I had been in it (barring some technicalities in counting). I think I've figured out what was holding me back from moving on: I have this flawed model of how what is meaningful or important to me is allowed to change over time. If you imagine a graph of time vs. importance, I've only allowed myself to say that how important any given thing is always monotonically increasing or decreasing.

This model is problematic in three ways. One, it assumes my assessment is perfect, which it is not. It doesn't not allow me the opportunity to revise first impressions once they're on track to be monotonically increasing or decreasing. Secondly, my assessment has nothing to do with a reciprocal such assessment, and reciprocity (as my own psychology research has shown, hah.) plays a huge role in determining socializing or altruistic behavior. Thirdly, it means that anything that grows in importance to me can never be less important ever. In particular, this third piece has left me feeling suffocated by guilt, unable to accept that someone I have cared for deeply in the past can acceptably be cared for less, and unable to bear the pain of being less important than I once was to someone.

Borrowing from romcoms, I've realized why it is so important to commit wholeheartedly to something. Romcom protagonists often seem absurd because they go to ridiculous lengths in their unconditional love. Sure, it's not a guarantee that all of your wholehearted commitments will pay off the way every single romcom protagonists' seem to. But the reality is that you cannot have those romcom moments if you don't try. If you fail, then you are just someone whose grandiose whathaveyou did not bear fruit, as everyone would expect; if you succeed, then you do become the stuff of legends/Hollywood. Seems like a reasonably good risk-reward to take to me.

Aside: To some extent, being able to take that stance comes from a place of privilege in more ways than one. I can't deny that. I was raised by a mother who has left me with a secure enough (though not 100% secure) attachment style that I can withstand potential emotional setbacks if putting myself out there and making myself vulnerable leads to hurt. I happen to have skill sets that employers are willing to pay good money for, and that gives me the financial means to be fairly liberal in the capacity in which I commit to things wholeheartedly. It is a privilege I have, and, equal or not across everyone, I should use this to the best of my ability.

Romcom protagonists--at least in their moments of emotional triumph, anyway--tend to have very short-term memory for the setbacks they encounter while maintaining saliency in memories of elation or happiness. For the same magnitude of positive and negative emotions, the positive emotions always last much longer while negative emotions become transformative forces from which they draw strength and courage and spunk. This kind of mindset keeps them optimistic and protects them from negative self-fulfilling prophecies. The best way to make your life a real romcom, it seems, is to believe and live as if it already is. If you feel like the world is falling apart around you, just think to yourself that romcoms virtually all have happy endings, so you can't be at the end. Keep looking for the next thread of storyline to chase.

------------------

What am I trying to do more to be consistent with those 3 things above, aka getting my shit together?

1. Read more, especially stuff that makes me think. The more thoughtfully I can think about my own actions and the people and world around me, the better I can fold or commit appropriately.
2. Be open about myself. I've been trying to make myself vulnerable to people again, mainly in the form of demonstrating how much I care about them even if I feel silly or uneasy or unsure how they'll receive my expression. In professional contexts, I've made a personal website that attempts to inject my character and personality into what otherwise would be just a distilled professional profile (i.e. resume) (I say "attempts" because it's a work in progress, and would love to hear your thoughts on the website).
3. Disregarding norms or rules when I see fit. I've always trusted my judgment, but I've often acted against my best judgment to be consistent with norms or rules. I've been trying to be very clear to myself what it is that I actually want, as opposed to stuff I want to want only because there is some level of external social, financial, or whatever prestige associated with getting that.
4a. Stand up for myself. Give myself space and alone time when I need it. Act on what is important to me, rather than what will maintain peace and harmony among the people around me. Be able to recognize when I have every right to believe that I am right.
4b. Be humble. Confidence and self-assurance is good, but over-confidence is not. Being mindful of when what I have once stood up for is flawed, and graciously and openmindedly reconciling the differences when appropriate.

The skies are crying in solidarity with my heart.

Again... maybe I can single-handedly end the drought, in the most Omelas of fashions.
(As it turns out, that apparently is not too deviant from my personality anyway.)

On Consensus Trance, Essence, and Mislove

This post is just going to be really raw thoughts, haven't had the time to really think about it between staffing, classes, and SBS audition season. There's been a lot on my mind, but I'm kind of delirious, so I'll defer some of it to a later post. Who knows, I might wake up and realize nothing here makes sense.

This quarter, I'm taking a class called Valuescience, and it's been incredible. In particular, one of the readings explored something the author called "consensus trance" and its interplay with "essence." Basically, consensus trance is the form of brainwashing that is more commonly known as enculturation. From a young age, we are conditioned into a particular set of norms by our parents and the rest of the society that surrounds us alike, and most people grow up taking cultural habits for granted when, in reality, there is a huge element of relativity behind most cultural norms. Essence, on the other hand, is the set of values, beliefs, and temperaments inherent to our individual genetic code. To illustrate these distinctions as it pertains to my life, I've drawn up this Venn diagram.

Circle ADEG: Chinese/Taiwanese culture, as exposed to/relevant to me
Circle BDFG: American culture, as exposed to/relevant to me.
Circle CEFG: My essence
Universal region (A-H): All possible values and beliefs in the world

So, some oversimplified examples of things that fall into each region
A: Buddhism, use of physical force for discipline, lack of value in arts or humanities
B: Party culture, masculinity stemming from physical aptitude, "American dream" and individualism
C: Hopeless romanticism, harmony and altruism over economic self-interest
D: Recognition of engineering, medicine, law, etc. as valuable career areas
E: Speaking Chinese, emphasis on academic achievement
F: Recognition of humanities and arts as valuable career areas
G: Compassion, respect towards parents, care for family
H: Cannibalism, belief in Allah

In an ideal world of perfect cultural sensitivity and understanding, all cultures would completely overlap such that regions A, B, E, F are empty for any two cultures (complete circles). There might still be universally agreed upon wrongs (i.e. region H, e.g. unprovoked murder), but anything that one culture deems valuable every other culture would accept (i.e. region D and G is all-encompassing besides H) Within this ideal world, your essence would be a subset of that all-encompassing region (i.e. region C is empty).

Obviously, the world is not ideal. The challenge, therefore, is to find a culture or subculture that has the greatest overlap with your essence, and then move to and live in that culture. Doing so is contingent upon having an understanding of what your essence is, and that is remarkably difficult because of the consensus trance. It is hard to distinguish between what is of your essence, and what has merely been instilled in you and taught to you as valuable.

I think that is the answer to what it means to be emotionally mature, a question I struggled with in my previous post. Being emotionally mature entails consciously knowing what your essence is, and escaping the consensus trance that society sets you up to fall into (and to no fault of society and without malicious intent, because consensus trance is something that propagates through generations). Similarly, building effective relationships with other people is contingent upon understanding their essence, and being able to divorce the influences of their essence and their enculturation when thinking about their behavior and empathizing. And while I don't think it is ever possible to fully get clarity on any one person's essence, including your own, I do believe some people are closer than others.

Unfortunately, in many ways--as a friend or RA, as a once lover, as a son--I am realizing I am perpetually fighting the consensus trance. Mislove occurs when one individual tries to enculturate (used loosely, could be something as innocuous and unintentional as a microexpression frown of disapproval or a slight change in tone of voice) someone else without fully understanding their essence because of prejudices established by the consensus trance. Usually, this happens without bad intention; the individual was only acting on what he or she had in turn been enculturated as "right" or "good." I am guilty of having misloved E-, N-, A-, both of my parents, and I'm sure many others that don't come to mind immediately. Similarly, I've been on the receiving end of mislove as well. It's inevitable.

Some people will never develop a deep enough understanding of their own essence and, more importantly, others' essence to build the relationship that "could have been." The tragedy of this entire thing is that there are potential relationships (between almost lovers, between family members, between nations) that would be downright magical if both sides understood each other's essences, but it never gets to that point, and so that potential relationship never reaches fruition. You can only ever work on escaping the consensus trance and improving your own understanding of your essence and their essence, put that understanding in the open and hope, pray that the other side reaches the same understanding. Sometimes they don't, and what could have been never becomes what is.

Convergence

"College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance." -William Deresiewicz, in Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

While the merits of the article is a totally different conversation, that line itself is among the most profound framings of what college is for that I've heard. It doesn't excuse irresponsible behavior, but it also doesn't advocate any one course of action as the responsible course of action.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means for behavior to be considered emotionally mature. There are many people I consider emotionally mature, but their behavior vary so widely that it really doesn't narrow anything down. For instance, I have a lot of respect for both A- and R- because they both seem to have a remarkably keen level of self-awareness and it seems so effortless on their part (which I understand it might not actually be). However, what they actually do are so vastly different--how do I reconcile that for some people, [responsibly and intelligently] indulging in parties and hookup culture is very consistent with what emotional maturity is for them, while for others staying in and introspecting or reading or having long, meaningful conversations is their manifestation of emotional maturity? Which is it for me?

On the other hand, there are people whose lives are more or less "figured out" by common standards such as income and job security, but honestly seem so juvenile to me. My dad for instance--I feel decades older and wiser than him. The way he handles conflict and confrontation makes me want to go up to him, shake him, and tell him to grow up. I talked to my sister in a heartfelt way for the first time ever (which was incredible and uplifting). She told me about how her relationships were going, how her work was going, and her aspirations after college, even though it was honestly mostly quite bland and stuff I already knew from observing at a distance. In addition, she said that when my dad took her out to dinner for our birthday, he tried to secretly take pictures to send to our grandparents because he didn't want to ask because he was afraid of being turned down.

That's so painful to hear. Thanks to E-, I've gotten to a point where I can see past what my dad did wrong and realize that he's actually just awful at dealing with and confronting emotions, but as his son I'm in no position to try to initiate corrective action. He'd be too prideful to do anything about it now that he's in so deep (i.e. divorced). I wish I could've empathized with him sooner, and maybe communicate that I (and the rest of my family, at least at the time) cared about him. Now, it might be too late. I look forward to the day where I've accomplished something in my life that gives me credibility in how to live, and I can actually go up to him, shake him, and help him grow up. Until then, each conversation with him is a frustrating conversation in which I see things I don't want to be, and it simultaneously helps me avoid his behavior and scares me to death because I share half my biology with him, all the while feeling powerless to help him.

When I think about what it means to be liberated from the constraints of family and the pragmatics of the real world a la the quote above, it certainly doesn't mean act impulsively with no regard to consequences. Instead, it basically means screw up, but only if with a purpose. This is the time during which all of my relationship and career choices leads to low-inertia trajectories, or as if on ice: even the smallest disruptions/decisions will be amplified into significant motion in that particular direction, but can also be easily shifted by further disruptions.

Unfortunately, when I bring this back to the emotional maturity piece, it is at odds with my goals in that regard. I feel that, as a consequence of various circumstances in my life, I've been privy to variety, both in facets of myself and of other people around me. While I don't claim to even come close to having dealt with some of the shit that some people I know have dealt with (K- from Tetris comes to mind), I feel like I've had a non-negligible exposure to assholes and found qualities in myself that disgust me such that I can start to develop heuristics to help me converge on behavior I want to see in myself and people I want to let into my life permanently.

In this sense, I feel old or adult. I feel like I've already gone through the low-inertia stages, but simply not temporally aligned with my college career. As the quote would suggest, everything about the low-inertia nature of young adult life trajectory leads to oscillation away from convergence. This brings me to the next thing I've been thinking about a lot: where my preferences are on the affective circumplex, and what that means about the kinds of interactions I seek with people that occupy different roles in my life.

The affective circumplex         

Before I actually delve into where I currently lie on the circumplex, I feel like there are two obvious but important things to note based on my observations. First, each axis is different for each individual. For one person, biking without a helmet might be a high arousal activity, while for another anything shy of offroad trick biking is low arousal. Secondly, where you lie on the circumplex is not static--it will change throughout life. In general, as people age they tend towards LAP (low arousal positive) over HAP, consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory (SES theory), which states that as people's perceived time horizon shrinks, they narrow the breadth (oscillation) of their social interactions in favor of depth (convergence). Less variation leads to more arousal habituation. But within age cohorts there are large variations, and decay also differs from person to person. Instead, more immediately, life circumstances can have a large bearing on your preference. If you grow up in a shady neighborhood rampant with crime, you will be conditioned to relatively higher levels of arousal.

What remains consistent across all people though, regardless of relative intensities of each axis, is that HAP, whatever it means for them, is not sustainable. By nature of conditioning, repeated instances of the same intensity of stimuli becomes decreasingly less arousing. Just ask any horror movie director.

So where does that leave me, college students, and people in general?

For one, SES theory can be expanded beyond a lifetime as a frame of reference. I've come to realize that, in a sort of fractal-esque behavior, observing smaller phases of one's life reveals similar trends to general aging. There is general change to greater LAP:HAP ratio relative to the initial ratio at the start of that life phase. This includes well-defined and relatively rigid life intervals such as high school and college, but also more fluid intervals such as relationships, job positions, etc. Just as with old age in a lifetime, within particular frames of reference there is a gradual decay in HAP preference, and in transitory periods there is a renewal of HAP preference.

Honestly, I feel like I'm figuring out the things that people generally figure out during a midlife crisis. In both a career and interpersonal relationships realm, I'm thinking critically about what they want at the endpoint of everything (when everything converges), rather than employing a greedy algorithm as I go through day-to-day life. When it comes to career, I've discovered that I don't need a fast-paced work environment the same way a canonical Millenial does. Similarly, the relationships I've had with people in LAP-oriented stages of their lives have deepened, while I've had a (relative) falling out with people who seem far more HAP-seeking.

Why is that exactly? For me, I think it has something to do with the nature of LAP and HAP activities. LAP activities are inherently unsexy compared to HAP activities. Independently reading books quietly with someone or brushing teeth together (without any I'm-rubbing-toothpaste-playfully-on-your-face shenanigans, ahem romcoms) is far less of a Kodak moment than is a surprise scavenger hunt or a tropical getaway vacation. The number of people I have the desire to (which often translates to patience for, as awful as that sounds) share LAP moments with is far fewer than the number of people I want to engage in HAP activities with. The causes or companies I'm willing to do mundane work for because I so completely believe in the cause or company is fewer than the number of companies who have sexy, exciting new products.

In that sense, convergent routine is incredibly counter-intuitive. What I've come to realize all too late, and what my dad failed to understand, is that the absence of the rainbows-and-butterflies of HAP is not a sign that the magic is gone. A job or a relationship is unhealthy when the only present quadrants are LAN, HAN, and HAP. Contrarily, if you can find LAP, hang on and never let go. The desire and willingness to be together even if it is "only" LAP is the magic! I wish I knew this earlier, but even so I anticipate this being invaluable going forward in my relationship and career endeavors.

To answer a question A- posed to me while in SF this weekend on my birthday, by the end of my college career I want to know the types of work and find the people with whom there's a symbiotic, mutual desire to share LAP, and then make sure they know it. In fact, if I achieve this ever, even if it takes another two decades (or eight more), I'll consider my life well-lived. But apparently from others' perspective, there's an element of the-sooner-the-better; maybe that's where my flavor of emotional maturity is pushing me. I was watching a video from a friend of mine, and in S-'s words as she saw how I was reacting: "There are some people who you see the way they respond to kids and you think 'You need to have children right now.' You're one of them. They'd make you so happy." While I've certainly entertained thoughts like 'what kind of father do I want to be?', a more generalized interpretation of S-'s statement is consistent with something I've realized: that I can comfortably join in on conversations about marriage with my late-20s through mid-30s coworkers and project forward my imagination and empathize with a parent delighting in his toddler to the point that a statement like S-'s would be made means I've been incredibly lucky to have had the people and environments, for better or worse, in my life that's led to the relative clarity I [seem to] have about my life.

The key words of the previous paragraph is, as the boldface suggests, making sure they (people, job) knows that they occupy a place in your life of such depth and importance. Unlike HAP, the inherently mundane, routine, unsexy nature of LAP means that is not a beacon that broadcasts easily detectable emotions. If you look at the circumplex, which emotion is easier to detect, serene or excited? Clearly excited, but serene is more positive! The detectability of positive (and negative) emotions isn't necessarily correlated with their magnitude of positivity (and negativity)!

For two entities to realize their willingness, even eagerness to share LAP activities together, that requires taking a pretty big risk to say so and even more effort to make sure the true weight of it is heard. There certainly isn't a guarantee that the risk and effort will pay off--chances are, it won't. In every realm, be it family, or career, or friendship, or romance, for every person with a wild success story there must be dozens more with only-partial successes, but even then it's a success! Intent matters! When it comes down to it, the risk and effort pales in comparison to guaranteed failure. Don't be left with the pain of thinking it, meaning it with all your heart, and never truly showing it, because you might not get another chance to, and it won't matter how much you continue to mean it with all your heart. That shit hurts.

Why do I sing?

"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." ~Oscar Wilde

I sing in public. I sing in the shower. I sing with friends. I sing in Side by Side.

I sing to make people happy. I sing the song of the naive idealist. I sing the song of the hopeless romantic, with birds chirping and laughter ringing. I sing the song of the overprotective friend that feels just a little too motherly for the people he cares about. I sing the song of the measured optimist, where people give the benefit of the doubt and couples actually do live happily ever afters but only because they talk through their problems.

I sing for self-preservation. I sing the song of vulnerability. I sing the song of a broken family, and I sing the song of insecurity as I try to salvage its remains. It contains the melancholy melody of the unwanted, and its variations include that of the unwanted twin brother and the unwanted son.

I sing and sing and sing and sing and hope that some people, no matter how few, will hear my song, tell me to turn up the sound, and listen to every last second of every last note, even if sometimes my song is four tied whole notes and only as interesting as the cello part of Pachelbel's Canon, and maybe find that one person that will start to harmonize with my song, and it will sound so good that, as wonderful and classic as my original might have been, the duet cover is a far greater hit.

I sing so that in due time my song will strike a chord with that someone, something about the song I choose or timbre of my voice or the look in my eyes as the notes fall out of my mouth or the purpose with which I sing. They'll stop where they're going and bike alongside me and tell me they like my song and want to hear more, and I'll stop and listen to their song. Or maybe it'll happen the other way around, I don't know.

But right now, I feel like I already did find someone who fervently, enthusiastically sang with me. Together, we recorded our song, and I absolutely loved it, and for 9 months and 21 days I listened to it, and then I accidentally deleted the track. So for now, I sing the song of the broken-hearted.

Communication!

Over this past three quarters, S-'s fondness for communication has rubbed off on me. I'm just starting to realize the communication is the answer in literally every social situation, pleasant or not. And then there's the stretch to actually embrace that answer and actually communicate. With that aside, I don't have much to say I guess. I'm very happy with where all of my relationships are right now, many of which are where they are due to both people putting in a good amount of effort to communicate. I definitely wouldn't have been able to  communicate to this extent even six months ago, and I'm shocked at how much I've grown.

I found out a week ago, by email, that my parents got officially divorced back in April. I still don't know the full details, and neither are willing to tell me. The fact that I was told by email and late stung more than the news of the divorce, and I wish my parents just communicated about it honestly rather than tried to hide it in the emails in the past month; the divorce actually happening actually comes more as a relief to me. It's difficult to deal with emotionally, but I know that in the long run it'll be the healthier, happier option for both my parents. It's scary though, knowing that everything my life was before Stanford was is now fundamentally different.

This morning, I had my first kiss. It was in a spectacularly quiet, peaceful, bed-hair glasses-off bodies-intertwined preceded-by-30-seconds-of-meaningful-eye-contact fashion with E-, and it's left me enchanted the entire day. I've definitely daydreamed about how my first kiss might go, and I don't think it could've felt more natural and right. It's bizarre how quickly people can get close to each other. Just two months prior, I might've been able to recognize her in a line at the dining hall, but probably knew not much more about her beyond that. I'm scared to think about how our relationship will (or will not, though hopefully not) develop from here, but at the moment I just can't help feeling so lucky.

Soulmateship and Vulnerability

It's been a good while since I posted anything here. It's not that I've had a drought of sentimentality or visceral thoughts (I'm kind of just always sentimental, goo-prone, and generally pathetic); quite the opposite actually, as I've had too many and don't really know what to make of them. I've needed a lot more time to think about it, and I'm still not convinced I have all the questions answered. This is a long post.

In a nutshell:
Not everyone is your soulmate, though you can sort of convince yourself of it, because there is a difference between the feasibility of maintaining a relationship and how happy doing so actually makes you. Everyone has vulnerabilities, but vary greatly in what they are and willingness to share them. It is better to share your vulnerability with others and sincerely try to be there for them even if it seems uncomfortable than to let it brew because unless you take a shot you'll never know how they express vulnerability. The worst that could happen is that you don't learn anything about them, but at least they'll know you care.

---
Thoughts on soulmates:

A few weeks ago, S- sent me a link to this article urging people to marry young. Her main argument was that soul mates aren't found, they're made out of the person you marry. My first reaction to the article was that I could totally see where the author was coming from. I didn't necessarily agree with her for a variety reasons. Her premise simply didn't happen in the marriages in my life, namely my parents. But I could see how romantic relationships, including my own, could follow such a trajectory. I like to think that, unlike my parents, I put a substantial amount of effort into my relationships and am decent at making them work.

As someone who generally trusts people until they prove unworthy of it and finds solace from my own troubles by reaching emotional depths in relationships with other people, I certainly would not reject the idea of marrying someone with complete faith that post-marriage I will establish an emotional connection (i.e. become soul mates) with them, even if that connection hadn't been established pre-engagement. Unlikely, but possible. I can just as easily see how that idea would be completely repulsive to others; some people naturally have all their walls up, and only that special person can chip away at them until they come down, and only then are they comfortable committing to a life-long relationship. I respect both viewpoints.

With these thoughts came a somewhat nightmarish realization--if I can essentially fall in love with anyone, why the hell should I not marry the next girl that passes me by on the street? I can establish a meaningful connection with her, right?

A nice conversation with J- served as a good reality check. There were a good number of holes in the author's argument. Obviously, she didn't just marry any ol' bimbo; she had been with her eventual husband for at least a little while. That's a little more comforting--I do think that I am good enough at human interaction to make any long-term commitments that I am actually interested in (as opposed to a relationship with a random stranger) work, romantic or otherwise. Furthermore, after J- brought it up it seemed so obvious: the argument seemed almost traditionalist. Marry someone without knowing where it'll go expecting that the relationship will grow from there, almost borderline arranged marriage (though psychology studies show that divorce rates don't actually differ between arranged and self-chosen couples, so nothing against it), as if marriage were a business transaction. That simply isn't how I want my relationships to be. I want my relationships to be with people I am happy with right from the get-go.

Recently, a variety of different things, however, are convincing me of something I'm deeply saddened by. Feelings of attraction can be very easily manipulated as we learned in PSYCH 70. Indeed, it seems that my stupid, feeble mind is actually quite susceptible to what is only supposed to be banter about my love life from N-. Call it conformity or priming or  what have you--it seems to have an effect.

I borrowed Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman from E-, and as far as I can tell that an understanding of love languages can be applied beyond just a romantic relationship you're invested in. In that sense, it seems that, with sufficient practice, I can speak any love language, even if it isn't my preferred one, to better be able to be there for someone in their times of sorrow or share in their moments of joy. In that sense, it almost becomes possible to be "compatible" with anybody.

The idea that you can be compatible with anybody, though I don't exactly buy it, is scary as hell. Sure, it will  facilitate smooth relationships, but does it also threaten your relationships at the same time because you so easily mesh with others? While consoling and comforting K- through the recent relationship rockiness she's been experiencing, she told me that any girl would be lucky to have me as a boyfriend. That's generally considered one of those classic, somewhat demoralizing tip-off phrases for friendzoning, but in this context where she knows I'm interested in someone else, it made me think a little.

Scotty McClellan's Valentine's Day sermon from my love class had a section where he denounced passionate, romantic love as a mere projection of one's own concept of other people upon them, and when people defy your image of them, the mirage of love dissolves. When I first read that, the idealist in me kicked in and was revolted, because I absolutely believe that romantic love exists and is valuable. However, now that I think about it more, the whole idea of projecting your image of others on to others, though not strictly a synonym to romantic love, is sometimes found in relationships.

As someone who values peace and harmony in interpersonal interactions, I often find myself in sort of a social chameleon mode, and that makes me susceptible to have others' impressions or images of me projected upon me. I feel very guilty when I can't be what others expect of me; this is healthy when there is mutuality in that aspect of my relationships, but when there is not, I simply lose sight of myself and the relationship is not healthy. In other words, sure I'd be a fantastic relationship partner for many people, but it would not be a healthy relationship at least for me.

What it really comes down to, I suppose, is the difference between being capable of and being happy in maintaining a good relationship with someone. The conclusion I seem to be arriving at so far is that I'd be capable of maintaining a caring, compassionate relationship (platonic and romantic both) with most people, but it isn't always natural, comfortable, and reciprocal and thus not always conducive to my own happiness and well-being.

---
Thoughts on vulnerability:

Having arrived at the above conclusion about the possibility of forming relationships with people, the task at hand, then, is to determine the subset of people with whom I'd be happy and comfortable maintaining a close relationship with.

I consider myself pretty well-versed in the literature surrounding attraction, human prosocial behavior, personality psychology, etcetc. So far, I've found that this gives me surprisingly good control over the emotional atmosphere of social situations, even if I'm not doing so very conspicuously or outwardly. Subtle non-verbal cues and changes in diction and tone all help. A recurring theme in conversation between S- and I is how much potential someone who understands how people think and act has to be manipulative, for good or bad.

However, as someone who is very concerned with his own emotional well-being and happiness, I am very conscious not to let my psychology antics interfere with my social interactions. It would only be to my own detriment to disturb the natural course of social situations, because it hinders my ability to get to know people and how they respond to me in my own natural way.

I think what's helped me the most in figuring out who the people I want to surround myself with is to make myself vulnerable to people. I got into the habit of doing so with some of my close friends because it helps me deal with my inner turmoils to try to put things to words. Everyone has vulnerabilities; the worst that could happen is that yours fall on deaf ears, and you can just avoid sharing personal details to them in the future. However, you might find some comfort from them, or encourage them to share some of their own vulnerabilities, and that opens the gates for building an emotional connection.

The concept of vulnerabilities has baffled me for a while now. It means so many different things to different people, and there's so many types of it. I like the idea of a deep body of water with gates along the way because it analogizes nicely to emotional depth. For me, I don't open up to people immediately, and it takes a little getting to know and convincing (usually indirectly; at some point I decide I trust you whether you know it or not) for me to open up. A diver in my emotional depths would have some clean spring water to get through before reaching a gate, and they'll have to find some way to open it. Once past the gate, however, how far you desire to explore is entirely up to you; the waters are a bit more murky, more muddy, so more viscous, but I will continue to share my inner feelings with you so long as you keep expressing genuine concern or desire to get to know me. Only towards the end is there a final gate, which takes a lot of time and commitment to open. Very few people ever get there, but if you do the emotions come out like like a geyser at the very core: extremely heated or impassioned thoughts, usually in short bursts of sentimentality, and it is very easy to be pushed back out of that last gate if you don't put enough effort into growing our relationship.

But that's just me. For other people, there might not be any gate, just muddy water all the way through. For some people, it's gate after gate after gate each hiding away crystal clear water, with friends being sorted into multiple tiers of closeness, and each tier being revealed the same personal details with utmost transparency.

Moreover, what if the vulnerability comes across unintentionally? What if someone notices you crying in what you thought was the privacy of your room, or the shower, or your favorite secluded spot on campus? That's like being a maintenance repairmen for one of the gates, and getting a free pass directly through that gate whether the gate is open or not. Can a close relationship be formed under these circumstances?

I certainly think so. S- and I have talked a lot about a desire to help people achieve what we perceive as their potential. We want to make people we care about into the fantastic people we can imagine them being, even if we honestly have no right to. Now that I think about it, being on the receiving side of unintentional vulnerability simply allows you to better understand someone. Whether they like it or not, you are now better to appreciate them as a whole than most.

One of my favorite quotes of all time, by Neale Donald Walsch: “The purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.” The more I think about it that way, the more it feels an obligation for you to try to be there for someone when they become unintentionally vulnerable to you. You were able to witness their completeness, embrace it, share it with them.

At SBS retreat this past weekend, our talk questions sort of reached a critical point as far as seriousness or depth, which had been mounting over the past few quarters. I remember the first talk questions were silly things like "which starter Pokemon would you be and why?" Through the talk responses at retreat, I found that my observations of many people's behavior and hunches about some of their personalities or insecurities were pretty spot on. I feel like I might've inadverdently broken the ice at retreat for talking about especially heavy topics.

In retrospect, I am so glad I did because I feel much closer to many members of SBS for having done so, but I also can't help but recall how uncomfortable it was doing so. I was way out of my comfort zone, not sure if I was sharing too openly and that was making people uneasy or bored or coming across as insincere. I was also unsure how to best express empathy, striking a balance between showing concern and being too nosy or awkward, towards the people whose experiences I could draw parallels to in my life.

The takeaway, in my head at least, was that I clearly need to not cower from initiating attempts at forming deeper emotional connections with people. Perceptiveness and empathy are some of my greatest strengths, and as someone whose sense of fulfillment is fundamentally rooted in what I mean to or can be for others, I need to learn to step out of my comfort zone to make myself happier. Building deep emotional connections is precisely what I want and would be happy with in a relationship, so don't settle for shallow relationships even if I'm capable of maintaining those too simply because I'm too conscientious to move the relationship to that stage.