If the biggest achievement this year is to survive, that's a win too.

While I was writing this post, this song was on the back

The world we live in is ever so fast paced, hungry, competitive, delusional and bewildered. For youngster (like us), it feels like we are always a leg behind everyone, we worked day and night as if there is no tomorrow, asking the very last bit of us until we eventually burnt out.  

But really, who’s expectation are we trying to live up to?

I am not here to tell about Jesus nor I am trying to represent any group of people,  merely exploring the issue from my own experience.

The measuring ruler.

To say I am lucky enough to not have any family issue or pressure to do what I am doing now, blessed with extensive supports from all round - is a fair statement. In short, I chose where I want to be but along those lines, I made comparison about my decision against my peers and that comparison I believe, is the problem of most of my mental issues.

The general mindset, especially kids brought up in Asia, we have different benchmarks we set for ourselves for any given point of time, though those benchmarks are most probably induced by our parents and confined by our environment, directly or indirectly. The funny thing about the benchmark is that it is not really fixed at any point, it’s like a continuous time series – a moving average of how others in our age cohort is doing.

Say if 8 out of 10 of our ex-classmates became a millionaire at age 25, the benchmark would change from – “getting a well-paid job at age 25” to “becoming a millionaire at age 25” or else we would classify ourselves as worse-off. As ridiculous as it sounds, that is the invisible ruler we have to "define" ourselves, to gauge if we are falling short or being ahead of others at any point of time.

Generally, I believe the ruler should serve as a compass, but it is often abused by comparing one’s ruler with another, that in my opinion can be unhealthy. Sometimes the ruler made us feel insignificant, as if we are a failure, ignoring all the things we do right and those challenges that we pulled off, big or small, that we should be proud of. The answer we have in justifying ourselves are terrible, but the question is worse to begin with.

Work in Progress

Many feel we are steps behind others based on the “ruler”, that we need to do be constantly on the go or engaged or be an overnight sensation to be back level. Aside from the massive bug the ruler has to offer, I don’t think we have to be constantly on fight mode, nor we have to know / to have opinion on everything to be above watermark. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting we should just lay back 365 days a year, we will have to be able to fight aggressively when the time calls for it and deliver a certain standard that is within our range of acceptance, but not all the time.

I myself landed a demanding job in a decent city, being the only junior within the team where my senior is at my age, has an Olympic math champ under his belt and finished his masters 2 years before I started running regressions for my degree thesis - is very intimidating. They have my utmost gratitude for being helpful and understanding, but deep down, I have this urge of keeping up with my team, so I signed up for extra online classes and spend weekends on learning more techniques in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. As positive as it may sound, at times, the demand from myself rather than my organization, is excruciating and exhausting, both mentally and physically.

The Snap

And after three years, not surprised – I needed more and longer breaks to recover, to a point where I felt suffocated, no longer passionate about the work I am doing and lost my general sense of happiness. I sat down and reviewed how I operate, only then I learnt the need to take it easy, understand that I don’t always have to be super tense or always up to the next big thing. It was a huge realization for me, accompanied by my mentors, close friends and multiple mental breakdowns, it was painful to see what I did to myself.

Again, fortunately I am surrounded by good companies. I came to know more about myself, my forte and my shortcomings, and that acknowledging my weaknesses doesn’t necessarily have to dismiss my strengths, evaluation and revision are meant to make things better and not for punishment, also we shouldn’t plea guilty for taking breaks when we need to. I accepted who I am while still pushing myself to be a better person.

My point is, life is not really like a rat race, being number one is not the only way to prove anything if it proves anything at all. The finishing line is the goal, but the process we undergone that enriched our experience, the relationship that we nurtured along the way that eventually became part of us are what makes the race worthy to run in the first place.

In hindsight, I am glad that I earned friends and good reputation among my organization as a person not as a toolkit. I won some fights and lost some too, because I know having good intentions is not enough, we are not fortified by technicality and capability. So, till this very day, I am still making sure I give my best shot every time, review my work extensively, ask tough questions to myself and answer them in a convincing way, pick myself up, take a break if I need to and move on. The ruler that I used to measure myself? Fuck knows where I left it.

What next?

I think our existence is an accumulation of a thousand small things, if we just relentlessly concentrate on the next small stuff 99% of the time, we can almost certainly get them done and maybe even more. Not saying that we should run the rat maze and not think, but we’d be better off to keep the big picture in plain sight for occasional reflection and spend most of our energy in doing what we can control every single day.

Great things and people are not made up in one day or one moment, if we think shooting straight for the stars is too hard to the extend that is unhealthy to us, then screw it. Do the small things first, we will see where that can take us. We do the little things in pride and we do that now. Don’t hesitate, I meant rest and take breaks, not waste time.

If the end goal is to build a bridge across a river, learn math, practice problem solving, know about building materials, enjoy the learning process while keeping the value of it at the very back of our heads, buy a chocolate bar after finishing a subject, go for a free stroll somewhere after learning new techniques, celebrate all the little milestones along the way.  

“Just do it” might not be a perfect way to put it, but at least it sums up the spirit of what we are after. Yes, we are imperfect and maybe even way behind our so-called “agenda”, but we also have everything we ever needed to bend the arc of our life slightly to the way we want it, taking breaks on intervals, pausing occasionally, and on the road we go. We will make mistakes, but since no one in the world can give us the perfect answer to our uniquely specific circumstances, the only way we will find out is to first just do it.

Aftermath

All in all, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in having a ruler to define ourselves, (though it doesn’t make much sense) so long it points us in a general direction. Start with things within our control and take life one day at a time. Sure, we have problem to resolve and challenges to step up to, but we tackle them all because it is exciting (and fun), not just for the sake of doing it. When I say exciting and fun, I mean fun-fun, even without posting it on social media. We don't need to be good at the beginning, we just need to be ready.

Inspired by the movie – < It's Kind of a Funny Story >

Eat, drink, drink coffee, drink alcohol, talk to friends, talk to strangers, read books, read maps, draw maps, fall in love, lay back, smoke, smoke something illegal, dive, sky dive, free dive, hike, run over a hill, dance, sing, breathe, LIVE.

别总是想，要去做，去体验，去感受，去表达，去付出，去拥抱，去分享，去爱，也接受被爱，去生活。