A Circle Has No Beginning

"Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?" 

"I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning."

- J.K Rowling 

It’s a warm night in July, and I’m sitting here wondering where half the year went.

All right, that’s not true. I know exactly where it went. These past few months have been caught up in a swirl of new responsibilities at work, family issues, depression and anxiety and too many video games.

Last year was about change for the better. My mother was going through chemotherapy, and it was going well. I was quitting my addictions, embracing my goals, improving myself as a person. I felt like I was moving forwards.

This year my mother’s cancer is coming back, and it’s officially stage four. I don’t feel that different anymore. It all seems like more of the same. Too easily I find myself slipping back into old patterns of behaviour, procrastination and avoidance of painful emotions. This is where the true challenge lies. What do you do when you start sliding downwards? Hope is easy in the beginning, but how do you sustain it?

Today I’m talking about circles.

Someone I know from work died the other day. I knew him for years. We saw each other around most days, made small talk, arrived and left together. The same patterns playing out until you could almost believe they’d last forever. Until they don’t. One day the cycle stopped.

We all have to face death sooner or later. Just like in The Lion King, Simba in the gorge trying to comprehend that his father was never coming back, we too are forced to recognize that the circle of life embraces us all. A circle has neither beginning nor end, but it does end for everyone. Someday it will end for us.

This is natural. Everything ends. Careers, relationships, journeys. Dreams. We get sick of the work we’re doing; we drift apart from the people we’ve loved; we take the final step of the adventure. We lose sight of our dreams. They get buried under clouds of anxiety, mountains of responsibility, the darkness of depression. They get worn down by the constant grinding of routine. And so we fall back into the same patterns as before. The same fantasies that make us feel better. Because we haven’t really changed, have we? We still have the same feelings, the same flaws. We’re still the same people in the end.

But what does it mean to change? 

Mark Manson once said that it’s impossible to change yourself, and a waste of time to try. I love the guy, but when I read that last year, I was sure he was mistaken. I was a better person. I had changed myself.

Later I realized that he was right. I hadn’t changed who I was. I was simply doing different things and feeling better for doing them; getting high on my own self-improvement. Then I stopped feeling better and backslid into bad habits, until I could feel good about quitting them again. So the cycle goes.

That’s all it comes down to in the end: our behaviour. The self is an amorphous concept made up of race, religion, upbringing, emotion, mistakes we’ve made and lessons learned, the people we hate and those we love. Our identity is the sum of our entire lives, every choice we’ve ever made, distilled into who we are today. How are you going to change that?

The answer is, of course, you can’t. I understand that now. You will always be yourself. You can only make better choices, take better actions. The choice to consume less sugar. The choice to put the damn phone away and read a book instead. The choice to actually sit down and write all this out instead of telling yourself you’ll do it tomorrow.

I wanted to find some new insight here. But a lot of this is stuff I’ve said before. I don’t know how to stay hopeful, any more than I know how to predict the future. All I can do is what we’re all doing, one day at a time: stepping blindly into the unknown. Perhaps this is bravery? I don’t feel particularly brave.

We’re always moving forwards, whether we want to or not. There are things I take for granted now that seemed impossibly distant when I was younger. I’m sure that years from now, I’ll look back and feel the same about the problems of today, no matter how overwhelming they may seem.

The circle of life is always turning. We can accept that there are things we cannot change, but take control of what we can. Or we can deny them all, forever drifting through patterns of avoidance, complacency and distraction, until the day the cycle stops. Here’s the thing about circles: every ending is also a beginning. Every death is the start of a new phase of life. Loss is unavoidable, but the circle moves forwards nonetheless.

I guess all we can do is make the most of the time we have left. 

The Winds of Change

I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. 

– Lewis Carroll 

Change.

Our greatest hopes and deepest fears revolve around it. Finding love and losing a loved one. Achieving our dreams and watching them die. Rising to glory and falling from grace. In every life, both the storm and the soothing breeze are born from the winds of change.

When I was younger, my life was static, directionless. I was horribly afraid that this was the best it would get. This was all I would ever amount to: nothing much of anything. All those feelings I struggled to escape by losing myself in fantasies. When, I kept asking. I was alive, but when was I going to start living?

I look back fondly on that younger me now. If only he’d known.

Once again, we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year. I thought of listing out my various lessons learned in the old one for your edification and amusement. But nah, screw it. This time I’m doing something more holistic. As I look back over 2018, the year that was, I sense a common theme. A lot of boundaries broken and milestones achieved, but it was all the same, really. Isn’t that ironic?

For me, 2018 was about change.

Stuff happened in 2017. After an arduous two years, my uncle died of colon cancer, the first death in our family in over a decade. He had 62 years, and it struck me that that wasn’t very long at all. My first real relationship ended in a breakup. I’d finally found someone, and it didn’t work out. My mother was then diagnosed with the same cancer, requiring an emergency operation. I signed the form authorizing life-saving surgery and recognized that most painful of truths: our parents aren’t going to be around forever. The operation was a success, but complications led to a stay in the ICU. She almost died.

I suppose it was the perfect storm. I realized that in so many ways, I’d been wasting my life. Going into 2018, I had to start using it wisely. I had to become a better person.

First and foremost, I gained a newfound appreciation for my mother. Our history wasn’t the best. I’d long kept myself emotionally distant from her, wary of getting too close. But keeping track of blood tests and chemotherapy appointments, sleeping on hospital floors at her bedside, I realized that I had to let go of the past. To embrace her for who she was, not who I wished she could be. This was the time; someday soon, it would be too late. Even the thought of that kind of regret was haunting.

Second, I’d long indulged in a certain bad habit from my youth. One of many forms of escapism, like my books and video games and fantasies. All attempts to avoid a reality I wasn’t happy with. But coupled with the internet, this vice was particularly harmful (and sadly common, even touted as ‘normal’). Reluctantly, I accepted that I was addicted.1 I’d made scattered attempts to quit over the years. Now I joined a recovery-based forum and started implementing what it would take to stay clean. 

And third, I realized that I had to start taking my writing seriously. I’ve talked a lot about dreaming of becoming an author, but a dream without effort is just a wish. Was I putting in the work, actually writing my novel on a consistent basis? No, I was not. I’d already dabbled in Habitica for self-improvement. Now I joined a writing guild and began keeping myself accountable through the community. 

Meanwhile, the world was changing too. On May 9th, in a shocking upset, Malaysia’s ruling regime was voted out for the first time in the country’s history. Fed up of corruption and draconian authority, the people changed the government. And they did it peacefully, united despite underlying racial and religious tensions. I played no part, but I’m still proud of that. I’m proud that this country is my home. On a smaller scale, my workplace underwent some much-needed, ongoing renovations, with an increased focus on animal welfare. My schedule was also reshuffled to some extent; suddenly I was busier than ever. But I digress.

By the middle of the year, my mother’s cancer markers were going down. The chemo was working. I’d been clean for months and found my whole mindset changing. Confidence and social skills were so much easier without guilt. For so long, I’d believed that my vices were things I couldn’t live without – and now I was proving to myself that I didn’t need them.  

I’d also quit Instagram earlier in the year, realizing that social media was just one more time sink on the internet. (It’s a good thing I never got on Facebook.) To my surprise, I even found myself losing interest in video games. I still loved them, but felt no desire to play for hours on end. I’d taken up meditation, was spending more time making artwork, began learning Japanese as a third language and had gotten back to playing the piano. And of course, I was writing. There were better things to do.

I was starting to appreciate real life over the one found in fantasies.

My mother finished her chemo in July, with excellent results. The cancer was in remission. Words can't describe my gratitude for that. But I was also finding the writing frustrating, getting bogged down in the second act. And the high of staying clean was fading fast. This was the new status quo, after all. The novelty had worn itself out, and my motivation faltered.

I’d been driven by the thought of becoming a better man. But I started to wonder: had I really changed? Wasn’t I the same person, with the same flaws?

So I slid back into my old habits. The next few months were a struggle to stay clean again.

I wasn’t exactly moving on in the romance department, either. Even post-breakup, I still clung to my old relationship like a security blanket. We consoled each other that we could still be friends. And we are. I’m forever grateful to her, and still am. But I was afraid to let go, even though the core problems persisted, and my own feelings were increasingly ambivalent.

Sometimes we have to learn the same lessons over and over again.

If the first half of the year gave me the drive to improve myself, the second half taught me something equally important: self-acceptance. We’re all human. Sometimes we screw up. I struggled, failed, went back to the same cycles. And that was fine.

You see, I realized that I’d been approaching this the wrong way. As Mark Manson put it, trying to change ourselves is a waste of time. What matters is our actions, how we behave. We all struggle sometimes. But as a wise old wizard as flawed as any of us once said, it is our choices that make us who we are.2

I am a better person now – because I choose to be.

Which brings me to today.

A few weeks ago, three years after I wrote that first chapter in a blaze of inspiration, I finished the first draft of Wraithblade. There’s still much to be done, but this was the first year ever that I sat down and put in sustained effort towards writing a book. I made more progress than in the previous two years combined. Discipline and accountability make a difference.

I met someone new in December, who showed up in my life out of nowhere. Compared to before, it’s a different story in every way. I appreciate that. Funny how someone can make you rethink everything you thought you knew about relationships; it doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes people just click.

My mother is still with us. I’m still putting my thoughts into words, drawing order out of chaos. And I’m nearly a month clean, which is better than nothing.

There is a Buddhist saying that my father told me. ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ I’m certainly not enlightened, but it is apt. In many ways, I’m living the same life as before: working during the day and writing at night and spending too much time on my phone (the struggle is real). But now I enjoy it all more. I’m committed to living in the moment, instead of wasting time picking over the past or worrying about visions of the future. Life is here and now.

I’m not a kid anymore, and that’s okay. It’s time to embrace being a man. I am proud of all I accomplished in 2018. I still have my demons, just like everyone else. I’ve just gotten better at fighting them.

Here’s to turning the page to the next chapter of our lives.

Keep moving forwards, everyone. Have a great 2019. 

1 - That post wasn't really about video games.

2 - Or as another wise old wizard said, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. Bonus points if you can name both.

PUBG Mobile - Who Wants Chicken Dinner

You know what, I haven’t written something fun in a while. The self-improvement stuff is all well and good, but let’s not take life too seriously, huh? Because life is serious enough as it is without us helping it along. Take that, life. In your face.

Today let’s talk about video games!

So I’m purely a mobile gamer now. The PS4 has languished, untouched for months. Poor baby. I’ll get back to it eventually; I’m looking at you, Kingdom Hearts III. But for all of this year, I’ve been portable.

Mobile games are often disparaged as ‘casual’, mindless brain candy beside the more in-depth entries on console and PC. Yet the mobile gaming market has grown exponentially over the last few years, with more and more quality titles standing out from the digital unwashed masses. And now a juggernaut has arisen, taking on smartphone gaming with frying pans and bolt-action sniper rifles.

Today I’m talking about PUBG Mobile. 

The original PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds exploded onto computers last year, and was so popular it spawned an entirely new genre: the battle royale. The premise is simple. A hundred players parachute onto a sprawling map where you must run, hide, and kill each other off. Jungle, desert and European landscapes are realistically rendered, eerily silent except for footsteps, gunshots and moving vehicles. Playing with headphones is recommended. You’ll want to hear them coming. An encircling electrical storm forces you into increasingly small plots of land. If the other players don’t kill you, the storm will. The last one standing wins the coveted Chicken Dinner.

Think the Hunger Games with military-grade weapons, where you have to worry about different ammo types, bullet drop and people sniping you from 100 meters away.

It’s awesome.

A breath of fresh air.

PUBG’s addictiveness comes from two factors. First, you’ll be playing with friends and fighting real enemies. You can play solo, in pairs, or in a squad of four. Voice chat is built in, and communication and teamwork are essential. It’s entirely possible to carry on a conversation while roaming around looking for people to kill. The convenience and social aspects cannot be overstated. Once a group of friends had to go a cybercafé to get this kind of action. Now they just pull out their phones – even if they’re a thousand miles away. 

Bonding time.

Second is the emergent gameplay. Bounded by design and technical constraints, most video games funnel you from one level to the next. There is nothing wrong with this. In recent years, however, wide-open sandboxes have become the norm, in which you have the freedom to play however you want. The gameplay emerges from your actions, and those of others. In one match, you might drop into Pochinki for some frantic house-to-house gun battles. In the next, you might wander the hillsides and only meet five people. You’re constantly writing your own story. Every choice you make matters; any mistake could get you killed. That’s pretty intense, and makes victory all the more thrilling. 

The night is dark and full of snipers.

And it is entirely, one-hundred percent free.

Oh, there’s plenty of monetization. Cosmetic upgrades like new outfits and weapon skins are always purchasable. The controversial loot crates are here in plenty, in which you buy the chance to get a cool new serial killer mask or hot pink submachine gun. There’s a season pass system called the Royale Pass, in which you pay to unlock a higher tier of achievable rewards for the current three-month season. The game also doles out crates and costumes for improving your rank or hitting various achievements. Just a taste to keep you coming back for more. 

Aren't we stylish.

But none of this has any effect on the gameplay. The guy in the stylized helmet is still screwed if he can’t aim, or doesn’t use cover effectively. The game is free to play, and you win by playing well. It’s that simple.

This is the future of gaming, right now. If you’d told me this kind of massive, precision-based experience was possible on a phone, I’m not sure I would have believed you. But through well-thought-out design, it does work. It works incredibly well.

PUBG is unflinchingly difficult. You will get shot in the head by some dude hiding in the grass across the river. You will get into firefights and lose; you’ll be winning, only to get taken out by a well-thrown grenade. And you will also survive, thrive and fight your way to victory.

So what are you waiting for? 

See you on the battlegrounds.

What We Leave Behind

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.

                                                                            - Terry Pratchett

The other day, someone from work committed suicide.

I didn’t know her well. We were from different departments, moved in different circles. The gaps between meetings stretched to weeks, if not months. A lot of the time, we only passed each other in the hall with a smile and a simple hello. Yet the workplace is also a community, a lattice of human beings tied to this place and time, these efforts and environment. You expect people to leave. It’s only natural. Colleagues resign, older folk retire, friends move on to greener pastures.

But this was different. This time, someone died.

It’s said that change and death are the only constants. But sometimes it may seem that one can only be achieved with the other. Over the last few days, I’ve heard tales of depression, stress, what must have felt like inescapable problems. For what else is suicide but a desperate attempt to escape? The tragedy is when someone succeeds.

I do understand. I considered killing myself too once upon a time, when I was much too young to be thinking about such things. I felt like life would never get better. But I decided, no. As long as I was alive, there was a chance for things to improve. Once I was dead, it would all be over. So I made the choice to hold on.

And looking back, a lot of the choices I’ve made since then, the bad habits I picked up and the addictions I still struggle with, were exactly that. I was finding ways to hold on. To avoid my problems, and escape my demons.

But I’ve spent enough years running. Holding on isn’t enough anymore. This year, I’m looking my demons in the eye.

Nowadays, I’m busier than ever. I’m doing more at work than I once did. I’m learning Japanese, colouring intricate patterns, making a concerted effort to finally write my fantasy story. I’m reading good books and dropping those that aren’t so good, because let’s face it, ain’t nobody got time for that. I’m playing video games, drawn to the experiences they offer, plucking up new ones like a magpie and then lamenting that I have too many games, the ultimate first-world problem.

All these disparate activities. But they all have one goal, in the end. The same goal we all have: to defeat death.

That is to say, to do things that matter. To have meaningful experiences. To do meaningful things. To somehow know that my life has purpose, that these years were not wasted. To leave behind something that will live on. Is this not one of the core drivers of human history? Dynasties have been built, riches amassed, kingdoms founded and conquered. Empires rise and fall and for what, if not the desperate desire to matter? To know that the world has been changed, even a little bit, by our presence.

Are they worth it, these things I’m doing? The way I’m living now? I wish I knew. I don’t think anyone does. We’re all just doing the best we can.

I didn’t know her well. I didn’t know her hopes and dreams, or the darkness she must have gone through. But I did meet the couple in the ICU who talked about how her life had crossed paths with theirs. Who looked over and said quietly, she was a good person. I’ve read the tributes, the remembrances. I’ve seen a tiny piece of what she left behind.

Maybe this is how we defeat death; in the hearts and minds of those we touched along the way. Maybe, despite the tragedy of how she chose to go, she’s no longer bound by pain. Maybe some part of her is free. I hope that’s true. I really do.

Because now the book closes, with so many pages still unwritten. The rest will forever be blank, cut off before their time.

Now her story has come to an end.

  

Five Ways to Know You’re Growing Up

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

- Leo Tolstoy

If you could travel back ten years into the past and meet your younger self, what would you tell them?

Time has a funny way of speeding up as we get older. When we’re young the years crawl like the infants we are, in terms of experience. They start picking up speed as we enter adolescence; time learns to walk. By our twenties, the years are taking long, manly (or womanly) strides into adulthood. We look back in vain at childhoods tinted with nostalgia; we see children shooting up like bean sprouts. They grow up so fast! We exclaim. And to our eyes, they do. It didn’t feel that way when we were young, though.

Time has a way of changing things.

There are some lessons you can only learn with perspective. Success comes from failure, wisdom from ignorance. You have to do the wrong thing – sometimes for years – before you can understand what’s right. Last year was all about epiphanies. I learned and grew a lot.

So far, this year seems to be about putting those lessons into practice. To quote Bruce Lee, knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. We all start out as children in life, innocent and unschooled, tripping up and making mistakes that will later define us. We’re all young and stupid sometimes – until we learn.

Today I’m talking about five ways to know you’re growing up.

1. Becoming self-aware.

I suppose the simplest way to define this is being aware of your own bullshit.

All right, all right. The less pithy definition is knowing who you are as a person. Not just your likes and dislikes, but your knee-jerk reactions and emotional tendencies. Self-awareness is the capacity to look at yourself from the outside, flaws and all. To examine yourself from all angles. Invoking David Foster Wallace, to recognize the currents and eddies and blackest depths in our minds and know that this is water.1

Easier said than done. Our upbringing, our environment, our egos; all of these contribute to the way we see ourselves. All of these blur the face in the mirror, forming a mask that doesn’t always match reality. There’s a reason so many coming-of-age stories talk about ‘finding ourselves’. It’s because figuring this stuff out doesn’t just happen. It takes experience and effort. Often to discover who we are, we must first figure out who we’re not.

2. Learning the patterns of the past.

The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. I guess we’re all crazy, then.

One of the most crucial forms of self-awareness is examining the patterns in our lives. What have we been doing over and over, forever disappointed with the results, yet still expecting different outcomes? What are we constantly making excuses for? What do we secretly desire, but never seriously attempt?

What are we afraid to change?

A couple months ago, I got off Instagram. It was getting too addictive. But then I started spending too much time in internet forums on Reddit. I cut down on that, only to spend hours reading articles on Quora. A couple weeks ago, a personal problem was bothering me. I had some time off work, so I read a 500-page novel in two days. Because I could.

Do you see the pattern yet?

Books, television, video games, the internet.2 I’ve always been someone who’s found solace in his own mind, in ideas and stories and fantasies. But this can be taken to extremes. Far too often, I dive into other worlds to escape my own. One of the great truths of life is that avoiding your problems is easier than facing them. In today’s world of likes, virtual playgrounds and constant connectivity, where avoidance is as easy as pulling out your phone, this is more important to recognize than ever.

Because while we’re caught up in the same patterns, it is frighteningly easy for life to pass us by. Without even realizing it, we cage ourselves in comfort. You don’t want to look back one day and see that the door was always open.

We just need to have the courage to step outside. The courage to tell yourself, no more.

3. Gaining self-discipline.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a famous study on self-control. Back in the 60s, researchers gave children a choice between eating a marshmallow now, or getting two after a certain period of time. They then observed as their subjects grew into adults. The findings were clear: children who could resist temptation got better grades, ate better, behaved better, and were generally more successful.3

This makes sense. Quitting an addiction; studying longer; working on that personal project you keep putting off. These require persistence and consistency. They require discipline.

Mine is lopsided, you might say. I do well at upholding external obligations. For the sake of others, I have discipline. But when it comes to myself, I fall short. And that’s a problem. Because I’ve slowly come to see the value of self-control.

Like Steve Jobs said, we can only do a few things in our lives. (Yeah, I’ve got quotes for everything.) We only have so much time. And the difference between wasting that time on pleasant distractions and working towards your goals isn’t inspiration, because you won’t always be inspired. It’s not motivation, because you definitely won’t always be motivated.

It’s discipline. Making the effort, over and over, even when you don’t feel like it. This stuff isn’t cool or sexy or what have you. It takes courage. It takes dedication. And most of all, it takes the ability to manage yourself effectively. That, more than anything else, is the difference between success and failure.

The idea here isn’t just to break unhealthy patterns, but to build better ones.

4. Acquiring healthier habits.

How hard is it for you to brush your teeth?

Do you need to talk yourself into it every night? Lecture yourself about the benefits of dental hygiene, along with horror stories about gum infections and rotted teeth?

Of course not. Who does that? If you’re anything like me, you brush your teeth and barely even think about it. You don’t need to think about it. It’s a habit.

Good habits are the patterns in our lives done right. (And vice versa.) Although we perceive everything we do as consciously controlled, the reality is that our brains conserve processing power for important decisions. Everything else runs on autopilot. And that’s important. We think new behaviours will require major effort. And they will, until they become normal. Then you’ll barely even think about them. Acquiring better habits will literally change your life. 

But they’ll do it one step at a time. 

A common flaw in our efforts is thinking that change must be all or nothing. If we fail once, or twice, even a dozen times, we’re doomed. This is absolutely false. Personal growth is a process. We take a step every day. Maybe we sometimes take one or two back. But we learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forwards. And one day, we’ll look back and be amazed at how far we’ve come.

We just have to want to change in the first place.

5. Understanding that change comes from within.

The last great truth I’ve realized is that you can’t force someone to change. People have different levels of perception, different forms of life experience. We can argue and advise all we want, but you can’t batter someone into believing. It doesn’t work like that. True growth comes from within.

You see, the key to change lies in the concept of identity. We subconsciously cling to whatever we feel is a part of ourselves. A part of who we are. This is why guilt- and punishment-based approaches are so ineffective. By driving home that we are guilty of something, we actually reinforce it, and ensure that whatever it is remains as part of our psyche. The key is to forgive ourselves, and move on.

If you want to quit smoking, you can’t think of yourself as struggling against the urge to smoke. You have to tell yourself that you don’t do that anymore. You have to tell yourself, I am not a smoker.

Because the work of becoming better is just that: work. It takes a thousand tiny choices, day after day, to let go of what holds you back. Sometimes we choose not to. We’re only human. We lie, we cheat, we take the easy way out. We think we can get away with it – until we learn otherwise.

So the best advice I can give is don’t change. Be like Peter Pan; stay young forever. Keep doing the same things, day in, day out, until they make you sick. Until you think, there must be a better way. Until you hit rock bottom. That’s where the true, innermost desire to change is born.

That’s when you start growing up.

***

If I could say one thing to my younger self, it would be to trust the journey. Appreciate where you are in life. You’ll screw up, make mistakes, go through all kinds of angst and pain and anxiety. There’ll be good times too, shining moments that will make it all worthwhile.

And someday you’ll be a little older, a little wiser. You’ll look back and know all of this brought you closer to the man, or woman, that you were always meant to be. 

You just have to take it one day at a time.



1 I dedicated another post to this article alone. It’s an outstanding examination of self-awareness from an author who died too soon. If you haven’t already, go read it.

2 This is all on one device, remember. So convenient.

3 Interestingly, researchers at the University of Rochester later repeated the experiment, but with a twist. The researcher who gave out marshmallows acted either trustworthy or unreliable. The number of children who held out for the second marshmallow rose and fell accordingly. This suggests that it’s not a matter of nature, but of nurture. The reliability of a child’s experiences will help determine whether they have faith in future outcomes, or choose to seize what they can while they have the chance.

Crucially, it also means that self-discipline can be taught.

Why I Stopped Using Instagram (And Feel Better Than Ever)

I am a creature of habit. 

We all are. Our habits define us. This person wakes up at dawn. That one swims laps every week. This guy blogs in his spare time. There’s a reason The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most famous self-improvement books ever. More and more, I’m realizing how small, consistent behaviours build up, until they become a part of us.

That isn’t always a good thing.

This person never speaks up. That one is always negative. This man avoids responsibility. That woman drinks too much, this guy burns all his money on useless junk, that kid is jerking off to porn.

I’ve talked about addictions before. I won’t bother going over the same ground here, but in essence, an addiction is a bad habit that spiralled out of control. Instead of facing our problems, we run from them, trying to escape into fast food and fantasies and anything that can light us up with another hit of dopamine – if only for the moment.

And the next moment, and the next moment, and the next. We become like dogs trying to catch their own tails, always chasing the high. Stuck in place instead of moving forwards.

Screw that. Life is short and we’re all going to die. This year, I want to become a better person. To achieve my goals and improve myself – not waste my time on things I thought I needed.

This year I’m quitting my addictions.

Today I’m talking about getting off my damn phone. 

Image credit: Engadget

One of my favorite writers, Mark Manson, recently talked about how smartphones have become the new cigarettes. They’re ubiquitous, firmly entrenched in today’s culture – you don’t have a phone? – and as is becoming increasingly clear, are bad for us in excess. It’s not our lungs being corroded, but our attention.

Technologically, we are more connected today than ever before. The internet is literally in the palm of your hand. We have endless information and entertainments available at the tap of a screen. Google, iFlix, YouTube, social media. Likes, comments, cat videos. Novelty and instant gratification. It’s a steady stream of randomized rewards that keeps us coming back for more.

The price of this is that we are permanently distracted. We can’t sit through a movie, a workout, a traffic light without pulling out our phones. I know I couldn’t. Some of that screen time was spent reading genuinely good content, but way too much of it was on social media. I never got into Facebook (probably a good thing). But for the last year or two, I’ve spent a fair part of each day posting pictures, statuses, and browsing quotes and memes on Instagram. A week ago, I got fed up and finally deleted it.

Two things happened. Number one, I panicked. It felt like I was giving up something precious, critically important. Something I needed. This is, sadly, one of the hallmarks of addiction.

For the first few days, I caught myself picking up my phone, staring at the empty space where the app used to be, and then putting it down. How often do we do this during the day without even thinking about it? Every free minute turns into a reward-seeking behaviour. It’s a sobering reminder of our animal instincts. Humans can be trained too.

And number two, I began to feel free.

Suddenly, I was more focused at work. I had more time to read, to ponder things, more time to play games. More time to write. I found myself becoming more aware of my surroundings. I was less caught up in taking perfect pictures. A drain on my attention had been removed – and my own attention-seeking behaviour reduced accordingly.

I still feel a pang at cutting myself off this way. But at the same time, I realize that I don’t need to be vicariously involved in other people’s lives. And vice versa. There are better ways to spend my time. Who else has told themselves they were only going to scroll for five minutes, and then lost half an hour or more? Do you need that kind of time-sink in your life? 

Because we don't. We want it; the likes, the upvotes, the notifications. We want the external validation, fame and the approval of others. But want and need are two different things.

Of course, it’s not just social media.

The internet has connected us like never before. But it’s also opened a Pandora’s Box of entertaining distractions, to say nothing of the effects on outrage and extremism. Humanity is still learning how to cope. I know I am. 

I also know that we only get one life, and one world that matters. The real world. Not one seen through a screen. So how about looking up from yours?

I’m about to do just that.

What I Learned From Getting New Glasses

My eyesight sucks.

No really, it’s bad. Holding-stuff-in-front-of-your-face-to-read-it bad. I have severe myopia (nearsightedness), a fact I cheerfully ignore. Because for most of my life, I’ve worn glasses.

While genetics do play a role, myopia cases have skyrocketed over the last century as a result of modern lifestyles. Your eyes are malleable, and meant to focus both near and far. With an excess of strain on the eyes – e.g., focusing too much on near objects – your eyes become stuck, losing their ability to focus at a distance. Too much reading or screen time, not enough sleep, working in poor light: all of these are detrimental to visual health.

You know the cliché about smart kids wearing glasses? Yeah. There’s a reason for that: they’re always reading. The idea has become ingrained in popular culture. Glasses are considered a sign of intelligence.

But glasses do not fix your poor eyesight. They ameliorate it. The lens is a filter applied to help your eyes do what they should be able to do naturally. Hence the term ‘corrective lenses’. They correct the problem. They don’t cure it.

Many people maintain that myopia can be cured. Through a regimen of eye exercises, vitamin supplements and reducing near-point stress, your nearsightedness can be reversed. The eye can be restored to its natural state. There are a number of success stories on the internet – with the caveat that you should wear your glasses as little as possible. It makes sense. You’d never heal an atrophied leg by relying on a crutch.

It’s just not always practical.

I dabbled in the exercises as a teen. Heck, I should still do them today. But the evidence for better vision is anecdotal. Although I’m always reading and staring at screens, for me, at least in part, it probably is genetic. Both my parents wear glasses. My mother’s eyesight is as bad as mine. And, well, I can’t be walking around bumping into walls. I need to see.

It’s not progressing, either. Myopia usually stabilizes around one’s teens or early twenties, which is what happened for me. It’s been the better part of a decade since I needed stronger lenses. While they can be inconvenient at times, I don’t have a problem wearing glasses.

Maybe someday I’ll try contacts.

Anyway. Today I’ve got a story to tell, about how we see the world.

I just bought a new pair of glasses. They cost an arm and a leg, but my last pair was from 2015. One hinge had snapped recently, and rust was starting to form. They’d served me well. It was time for a change. In particular, the old lenses were scratched and yellowed. Not that big a deal, I thought. The view was a little blurry, perhaps. I was more worried about the frame falling apart.

When I first put on my new pair, though, I was stunned. Everything was so clear. Colors were brighter, sharper. It was a whole new window on the world.

The old pair was scratched and faded, but I wore them every day. My mind had adjusted itself to the blurriness. It seemed normal. Now if I wear them, it’s like looking through a yellow fog.

That’s a good analogy for our beliefs and prejudices, don’t you think? We live in certain conditions and think it’s normal. Only with hindsight and perspective can we look back and realize that the way we saw things was in fact skewed, shaped by the environment we were living in at the time.

Life is a succession of changes. Births, deaths, love and loss, new careers, different countries. Our environment is constantly growing, evolving. Sometimes the old ways of thinking no longer apply.

And sometimes we choose to change, by actively seeking out new experiences. Taking responsibility for yourself is frightening, but also liberating. We can’t help how we see the world, but we can choose what to do with what we’re seeing.

We can choose a different view. One that embodies who we are today, not who we used to be. 

And hopefully, the world will become just a little bit clearer.