Thought Diary - Upside Down Snow Globe

Purpose is a buzzword. Even Zuckerberg delivered a speech about inspiring a "sense of purpose" in all people. I explored many variations of purpose in my blog posts: hope is immortal, uncertainty is powerful, life is beautiful...  Art of Nier: Automata from caveman. They all paint the same picture.  A picture of not giving up. A picture of going against all odds. A picture of trying really hard. A picture of lots of emotions. A picture of a future that we want to live.  In the end, it comes down to effort. It comes down to a measurement of sacrifice. How much are we willing to sacrifice to achieve something we want? Our free time? Our bedtime? Other commitments?  I have also talked about relativity countless times on my blog. Without sadness, there will be no happiness. Otherwise, how can we differentiate between the two emotions? Without sacrifice, there is no effort.  Otherwise, how can we distinguish effort?  We have limited ...

Have you ever felt a sudden, unexpected sense of familiarity? A view that you can swear you've seen before, but can't figure out when. A sudden rapport towards a place or a person that brings back nostalgic memories that you can't quite remember.  Picture by me from Pixel 2 XL. There is this theory that there are many world lines, and our world is just one of them. In nearby world lines, we have nearly identical lives, but with a few distinct differences. In faraway world lines, we are living completely different lives. Many like to entertain this theory because it gives them hope, hopes that life will not be limited by present problems and hope that life can be changed for the better.  Some dismiss deja vu as simply memory failure. Others take deja vu as evidence for the multi-world line theory. They say deja vu comprises of fragments of your memory from nearby world lines. I take it as a fanciful perspective.  Life feels like a grind sometimes, and i...

Falcon heavy.  When we think about space, we seem to be enchanted by its expanse. It is something big beyond imagination and filled with mysterious that we can not begin to unravel.  How did the universe being?  What is at the edge of the universe? Can we travel to another galaxy?  Falcon Heavy is a mere rocket. It is a big rocket, but it is trivial compared to the size of our universe.  Picture by me from Pixel 2 XL. Insatiable.  It is pretty clear that human desire is insatiable. The best examples are ourselves. We wish for goals, we give up on them, we reach them, and we set other goals. Last week, I talked about the unreacheable state of complete satisfaction. Insatiable desire is merely another way of saying it.  Falcon Heavy's launch brought me back to this topic. Elon Musk said something along the lines of wanting to make humans an interplanetary species. Everyone can share the primal human awe and desire to explore ...

Relativity is awesome but also cruel. Like how a magnet always has two poles. Even if you cut it in half, the magnet will still have two poles. A single pole magnet does not exist. Everything in life has two extremes.  Happiness cannot exist without sadness. Good feelings cannot exist without bad feelings. Life is built on top of relativity. The classic example that money cannot buy happiness shows that once we achieve a previous goal, we set our sights higher at a better goal.  Art from Children Who Chase Lost Voices. Does this limit us? Is life just a joke for us to approach an asymptote? If life is built on top of relativity, then it is impossible to achieve a state of complete satisfaction. This also justifies religions that focus on clearing the mind and reaching a nirvana like state. People try to overcome the limitations of relativity by clearing themselves of desires. Relativity seems limiting, because no matter how far we go, we will always automa...

Ideas are likes seeds. They grow, and they wither. Nothing is permanent, not even the universe. The long life of galaxies may seem permanent in comparison to our own, but it is still not permanent.  Those who reach too far are burned by the sun. It's been awhile. Racing towards the sun is no longer as attractive as it used to be. The way there is treacherous; we are being roasted left and right. There is no comfort anymore, and I can no longer shrink back to my previous, smaller, state.  Photo by me from Pixel 2 XL. The fall.  Now this is funny. Why did I grow all the way up there to only fall down? Why did I try to reach the sun to only burn up? Why did I live to wither? Youth is fleeting, and time is unrelenting.  Photo by me from Pixel 2 XL.  Good night.  At least I didn't go gentle into the good night. I was a mere seed. Then, I grew fervently into a resolute blade of grass. Now, I am a thin, withered fiber.  Photo ...

Characters Express meaning. Somehow, we trained our brains to interpret and imagine complex scenarios by seeing letters and characters. We associate symbols with language and ideas. Typed words and spoken speech are forms of communication, but how powerful is language?  Art from 5 cm per second. Text.  We see them all the time. This is text. We mostly read texts to gather information. This event happened. This is the consequence. This is what they think will happen. We read books for intellectual exploration. We transcribe words into a story in our mind, and we enhance the story with our emotions. Legal contracts and official documents are written in words. Words are written symbols for spoken languages. Spoken languages communicate ideas. Words communicate ideas.  But is it dry?  Imagine reading a history textbook. It is hard to get into it if you are not super interested in history. Now imagine watching Schindler's List , and seeing history through...

Ideas are like seeds.  They grow into magnificent trees and beautiful flowers, but not all seeds survive the journey. Seeds need water, soil, and dirt. sunlight, and a sky to grow. And their limit? The sky.  I woke up.  This energizing feeling is definitely water! Water mixed with mossy moss. So comfortable! I just want to sleep a bit more, and I need to stretch myself. Good night.  What is so bright? Is that what they call sunshine? Ahhh. It is too bright for me. Why can't I just sleep in a little more. And the moss is drying up around me. I am thirsty. I want to reach a bit deeper to taste water. Wish me luck! Sunshine is so sweet! I can't get enough of it. It is comforting and inviting. Maybe I can touch it. It seems a bit high in the sky though. Whatever, I will touch it and find out how high it is. My friends all want to touch it too! But I will be the first.  Photo by me from Pixel 2 XL.  I am so cold! I am freezing. The white...

Doubts prevent us from succeeding before we even try.  We ask ourselves: It is worth it? Will we succeed? Should I continue to do it?  Most of the time, we simply dismiss opportunities as "too hard and not worth the effort." It is true. Often times, opportunities are not as easy as they seem. Recently, cryptocurrency prices skyrocketed. It seems easy to make a fortune from cryptocurrencies, but there is always the doubt. Will the currency suddenly crash? Will you actually invest your hard earned life savings in cryptocurrency?  Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash The Uncertainty Barrier Barriers are concepts or actions that are hard to breach. The chance of winning the lottery is so insignificant that it might as well be zero, but people still buy the lottery because the initiation cost is low. You only need a few dollars to play the lottery to get a "chance" to win it all.  Cryptocurrencies are another matter. Even if you invest a few do...

It has been a year, Probably the most eventful year of my life. Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash I will begin with a quote unsplash. I love these quotes. I collected them throughout this year.You may find them inspiring too! But we are always searching for truth…. That is constant. - Kurisu Can we really ignore our existence or our purpose? Not for long. We always look for meaning, truth, or whatever you call it. We, humans, may appear different and have different beliefs, but in the end, we are always searching. Doubt ourselves, lose our way, but never stop walking. - Gin We don't always know what is the right thing to do. We don't always know what to do with our lives, and that is ok. Without doubts, we will never be open about ourselves. Without constant thinking, we will never learn and grow. Time will never stop. Change will never stop. We also need to never stop, walking, changing, thinking, doing.  Struggle valiantly through life while waiting f...

2017 Prime. Odd. Sums up to 10/10.   Jokes Aside.  Let's recap my life this year. January I remember my Junior year of high school. Reading 10 pages of history book every day and taking a page of notes to prepare for pop quizzes. In Calculus, we also started learning series and conditions for convergence and divergence. Hard times.  3/10 February Fencing season ended. We took pictures of seniors under a balloon archway. My record was pretty negative. I have a win/loss ratio of less than 0.5. I also remember volunteering to keep a door closed at the Chinese New Year party. I started preparing for Moody's Mega Math Challenge, 14 hours of using math to predict sea-level in the next 50 years.  5/10 March More notes. AP Economics. History. Calculus. Taylor series.... We had a big history commercial project. I planned out an elaborate commercial, but the plot was ruined by a group of boys' propensity of adding stupid things. Also, I lase...

Truth hurts.  Don't we all know that? Truth hurts, because it is not how we want it to be. We want lots of things, but most of those things will not happen. That is why truth hurts. We do not want to fail. We do not want to be reminded that we are not that awesome.  Photo by Christian Nielsen on Unsplash. Expectations.  One of our greatest cognitive ability is the ability to simulate and experiment. I can imagine someone's reaction to certain actions, such as a poke. Most people would turn around to find out what is poking them. We can predict this because we have seen it hundreds of times ourselves. We learn from history, and history binds us. No.  History is a part of us.  Without the past, we would not be who we are. Without learning and seeing all the intricacies of life, we would be lost in this complex world. Without practicing tasks over and over again, we would not be able to do anything efficiently. History is similar to experience. The...

I tried to kill it, but I couldn't.  In order to prepare for my rejection letter to a certain undergrad university on the west coast, I tried to convince myself that I will get rejected to dampen the despair when I get the real rejection letter. However, no matter how hard I tried, I just could not put away the thin ray of hope for acceptance.  Immortal,  Hope is immortal. No matter what happens, we will always yearn for something we do not have, whether it be material or mental. Even when we deprive ourselves of hope, even when we empty our minds, can we really put away the tingly sensation that flutters around like a butterfly in the back of our minds? Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash. but insubstantial.  While we cannot kill hope, hope doesn't really have any real impact on our three-dimensional life. They are mere butterflies, after all. Even if hope fly to us heads on, we will barely be able to feel its impact. If we try to catch hope, we wil...

Darker spark.  Such irony. Yet true.  I started this blog from one single metaphor, a spark, and that is the upside down snow globe metaphor : life without action is boring, but we can make it exciting by taking initiative and turning life upside down, much like how we turn a snow globe upside down.  Conflict.  The world is relative. Success is sweetest for those who fail. Money is sweetest for those who do not have enough. Romance is sweetest for those who do not have romance... Without stress, there would be no relaxation. Without struggle, there would be no achievement. Without war, there would be no peace Art from Fate/Stay Unlimited Blade Works Wait. What? Can there be peace without war? Humans always fought each other for one thing or another, verbally or physically. It is only natural to fight when we all are unique and have differing opinions. Peace is learning to live in harmony despite differences and friction.  The Upside Down...

This morning I went through a few journal entries I wrote four years ago. I have to say that my interest level was not that high; I would rate it a 6/10. So I wonder: why do I write journals, or why do I write blog posts here?  Art by ajak60 . Reason.  A few days ago I read a personal improvement blog article along the lines of how 99% of people fight over mediocrity  because not everyone is willing to take risks and go for the top. Ultimately, the blog focuses on the path to become extraordinary and more productive....  I suppose a blog can be an inspirational and insightful blog. I wrote a post centering solely around productivity and advertised it on Reddit ( Block Life - Productivity Experiment ). To this date, that post outranks all of my other posts on this blog.  I considered making my blog like that, but there is a big difference between writing for myself and writing for others. While writing a blog for views, shares, and customers,...