Of Two Worlds

‘But how could you live and have no story to tell?’

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Someone called me a foreigner the other day.

It was a work misunderstanding, nothing particularly major. The sting faded before long. But I found myself shaken at the reminder that some people will always judge you based on what you look like, where you were born or the colour of your skin. People who think you don’t belong.

Today I’m talking about fitting in - because I never have. 

My parents come from opposite sides of the world.

I was born in the United States of America. I have vague memories of playing in snow, walking through autumn leaves and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school every morning. As a child, I thought of myself as an American.

We moved to Malaysia when I was eight. I’d been here on holidays, but this was distressingly permanent. I didn’t know the language, then spoke it with an accent once I did. I was homeschooled and too afraid to mix with the local kids anyway. People called me the white kid. It slowly sank in that this was my life now. The United States was a dream of my childhood. And one of the most bittersweet things I can tell you is that dreams rarely line up with reality. 

I didn't always think of this city as home.

For the longest time, I wanted to go back.

Instead I read endless books, watched too much television, lost myself in video games. I dived headfirst into the ocean of the internet. I didn’t know what to think about my life, about myself. So I avoided both.

Then I started working in my twenties. By degrees, I realized that I had to separate myself from the fantasies that had sustained me for so long. I had to start figuring myself out. Some people think of college as the turning point in their lives. For me, it was getting a job.

Admittedly, mine is different from most. I work with animals. I’ve played with hornbills, been bitten by pythons, held an orangutan’s hand. Apart from that, my job has taught me so many valuable lessons. About responsibility, time management and social interaction. About how to work as a team. I’ve gained friends, had disagreements, gotten in relationships. I met the person I would later fall in love with.

If my teenage years were a long, lonely limbo, I can safely say my twenties have been some of the best years of my life.

Which leads me to today. Somehow, I’ve grown into a man. Yet I still feel the pull of the child I once was.

***

I saw the musical biopic Rocketman in August without many expectations. (The only Elton John song I knew was from The Lion King.) I was blown away. It's a great movie, and a poignant one. Underneath all the fame and fortune, the drugs and booze and orgies, the man born as Reginald Dwight spent half his life running away from the lonely, unloved little boy he used to be. 

Image credit: Swarovski

I can relate.

I don’t think about the past very much. I don’t see the point. The pains of growing up make us who we are. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I’m simply folding logic over an emotional core. Maybe I don’t like looking back because there are things I don’t want to see. There are pains that haven’t healed, that are with me even now.

So much of my life has been spent waiting for things I have no control over. I can only do my best in the meantime. I have steady work, friends and colleagues, someone to love. But sometimes it all feels like a castle in the air, just waiting to collapse into the yawning void beneath.

That’s when I fall back on old patterns. I lose myself in the mindless pursuit of novelty and pleasure. Over the years I’ve sought to quit my bad habits, but I still struggle with the feelings that cause them. The fear that this is as good as it gets. That what I’m waiting for will never come. That I will never be the man I could have been.

This is when I get depressed.

***

And then I bounce back, because life is short and we’re all going to die.

I’m twenty-eight years old now. If I look back on my life, I can honestly say that I’m proud of how far I’ve come. But there’s so much further to go. I’m still waiting to see what happens next.

The dream of the US has soured over the years. I look at the country and see mass shooters and active shooting drills, guns and racism and soaring inequality. A nation with bitterly divided views of its own future. I see a symbol of liberty and progress struggling under the weight of the American Dream. I hope things will get better, I really do. Only time will tell.

Whereas I’ll have lived in Malaysia for twenty years this December. Though tensions exist, I’m proud of this country’s backbone of tolerance and multiculturalism, where different races and religions live and let live. I’m proud of the place I call home. Yet I worry that I will never truly belong.

But here's the thing: I will always be Eurasian. There will always be two sides to my heritage.

I've long been fascinated by stories of duality. Light and darkness, ice and fire, sanity and madness, life and death. Fantasy and reality, and the boundaries that blur the line between the two. Former heroes, reformed villains. Characters who stand in two worlds.

Light above and dark below.

Sounds familiar, don't you think.

I accept that about myself. Indeed, I embrace it. I will never be purely anything. Diversity is a part of who I am. If some people don’t like that, so be it. 

I talk a lot about growing up on here. About life lessons, mindsets, changing the way we think. But I’ve learned that change is a funny thing. It creeps up on you unawares. Sometimes, change isn’t about becoming someone different.

It’s about embracing who you were all along.

The Noise of Novelty

Noise (technical): irregular fluctuations that accompany a transmitted electrical signal but are not part of it and tend to obscure it.

I spend too much time on the internet.

It bothers me because there are other things I could be doing. Reading a book or playing a story-length game instead of browsing endless articles. Working on my fantasy novel or a blog post instead of checking notifications and writing replies. Especially when I’m tired or depressed, it becomes so easy to sink into the mindless scrolling of feeds and Googling of curiosities. Just one more write-up, one more video, one more meme. Just one more time…

Welcome to the Age of the Smartphone, when everyone is constantly connected. When an endless repository of information is always at our fingertips. When our attention itself has become a commodity, a currency, and we have more ways to spend it than ever before. When it can feel like we’re drowning in data.

When we have to actively choose to disconnect.

Today I’m talking about noise. 

Rick Doble

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: modern technology is incredible. Via the internet, we can find facts within seconds. We can maintain relationships with loved ones a thousand kilometres away. And we have unending sources of entertainment, whether it’s YouTube, video games or social media. This is where the trouble starts. The internet is a supernormal stimulus: something which elicits responses far stronger than the stimuli for which our senses evolved.

Our internal wiring evolved over millions of years to equip us with the tools we needed to survive. In the old days, food was scarce, and so we developed a taste for precious sugar, fats and salt. Life was short and bloody; a sex drive was essential for the survival of the species. Exploring new environments and the opportunities they presented could mean the difference between life and death. So we developed a keen appreciation for novelty.

Human ingenuity has led us far from those hunter-gatherer days. But our brains have yet to catch up.

While modern advances have improved our lives to a remarkable degree, they’ve also opened a Pandora’s box of social issues and addictions which turn our own instincts against us. Junk food fills us with far more calories than we need. Porn sites offer the illusion of sexual intimacy. And the constant streams of information, the pings and clicks and little red dots, have become an accepted background noise in our day to day lives.

I’m writing this because the noise is getting to me.

To quote Mark Manson, smartphones are the new cigarettes. We pull them out whenever we have a spare moment, oblivious to the way they’re slowly eroding our attention. It’s the internet in the palm of your hand. And it’s stealing my time. I’ve gone through multiple iterations of this by now. I used to be posting pictures on Instagram, which turned into posting opinions on Reddit. Then I started following the news via Google feeds. Lately I’ve been watching more YouTube videos. Heck, I’m even checking Habitica more often now that I get the notifications on my phone.

I used to think it was limited to one specific application, but now I see that it’s the internet itself. Part of this is me, I know. I’m covering up the empty spaces in my life with webs of entertainment, filling in the silence with comforting noise.

But then again, it’s not just me. Internet addiction is a recognized phenomenon. And just like cigarettes, it’s all too easy to get a hit. I’m lucky I never started smoking; didn’t see the point. It was a waste of money, a danger to my health. But I can see that I’m simply hooked on different vices. Though I’m not about to throw my phone away, I do need to control the way I use it.

These days I find myself craving peace of mind. When I’m not overthinking things or mindlessly consuming content, tiring myself out with useless bits of information. I need the clarity of focus, instead of the endless roar of static.

And that means choosing what to filter out.

We like to believe we can have it all. But that simply isn’t true. Even before the internet, we could never hear every story, learn every skill, take in the entirety of human knowledge within our lifetime. It’s just not possible. And that’s a scary thought, that our lives are so brief, their meaning so fragile. Who will remember us after we’re gone? Will anyone care? Will we have left anything behind for future generations?

I don’t know. I just know that for our own good, we need limits. We must choose what books to read, what games to play, what work to perform and art to express. We have to decide who (or whether) we’ll marry, where we’ll live and what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. We have to spend our time on the things that matter and have the strength to cut out anything that doesn’t. In a world filled with endless connections, we have to choose to disconnect. The bonds that remain are the ones that truly matter.

In a world of infinite noise, sometimes the most beautiful sound is silence.