Never Been To:

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Vienna, Austria

Rome, Italy

Vatican City, Vatican City

Hong Kong, China

Sydney, Australia

London, England

Las Vegas, USA

New York, USA

Boston, USA

Somewhere, New Zealand

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Tokyo, Japan

Seattle, USA

Vancouver, Canada

Somewhere, Vietnam

Somewhere, Thailand

Athens, Greece

Stockholm, Sweden

The Nurburgring, Germany

Urumqi, China

Somwhere, Nepal???

Dubai, UAE

Somwhere, Quatar

Autobahn, Germany (P.S. I know these aren’t cities)

I’ll add more as they come along…

Places I’ve been to but would like to visit again!!

Paris, France

Beijing, China

Qing Dao, China

Dalien, China

Shang Hai, China

Madrid, Spain

La Coruna, Spain

Barcelona, Spain

I wrote this story a while back when I was unhappy, but whatever image or message this sends out, I no longer completely believe in it. However I think this tale offers some insight into my thoughts at the time.

There was once a young boy, a troubled young boy, who had seen all the evil in the world and had a body of scars to show all that he had endured. He roamed the world in sadness seeing only things that he wanted to be, things that were untarnished and perfect. The more he walked however, the more he suffered and further he felt from those things that he aspired to be. Then one day, he happened to cross upon a cracked vase. It was not a magical vase, neither was it pretty, however, to the boy, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen because the cracks on the body of the clay vase reminded him of his own scars, and for the first time in his life, he had found something he could relate to. He thought the most wonderful things about this vase, that it had suffered so much, yet remained so tough, much like himself!

So in awe of this vase, the boy built it a pedestal and put all his most valued things in the vase and set it high up so that he could admire it every day. The days passed, and the boy fell more and more in love with the vase every day, seeing all the similarities they shared, and the more that he put things that he valued into the vase, the more he adored the vase. The boy so worshipped the vase that he built a pedestal higher and higher so that all the people in the world could see the vase as the most beautiful vase in the whole world! However, one day, a slight wind blew by, and the vase was knocked off from its perch high above the ground and shattered into the many pieces that it was made of. Now, all the things that the boy loved and shared with the vase, lay strewn across the ground. As he tried to pick up the pieces of the vase, trying to put it back together, he was cut over and over again. He thought, why was such a vase so much like myself, so weak? It had gone through so much, yet instead of being tougher why did it break?

The boy then realized that although the vase looked like him, there was little in common. Where the vase was weak, the boy was strong. Where the vase cracked from pressure, the boy toughened from experience.  The scars of the boy made him stronger every day, while the cracks of the vase weakened it every day. Then the boy realized, that the cracked clay vase was not at all like him. He realized that while the pains that he had endured made him stronger, the cracks on the vase made it weaker. It was then, that the boy realized that he was not at all like the cracked clay vase, but rather than a fine golden pot that had been refined rather than broken from its experiences. It was that day, that the boy realized that he was more than a broken boy, but a man made tough the hardships he had gone through, and like the purest metals, rather than making him weak and brittle, he had become pure and strong.

Everything I believed to be true was false,

Everything I hoped to be false was true

This is a game changer

I will no longer lament what has gone

For there was nothing there

A new dawn awaits me

Into the wild I go.

The reality of it all is just that everything is fake nowadays. I feel that there are so many people who are only pretending to be who they are, they find some mold that they think people categorize them into and try as hard to fit themselves into that mold as they can. That… makes me sad, the fact that people can’t stop thinking about what others think of them. To be honest, I too, fall victim into this kind of social conformism, but everyday, I become more and more aware of the little things that people do to fit into society. First and foremost comes the pressure to get and “education” and learn something “useful” so that you can make a living and support a family. Education has been whittled down by society so much, that it is no longer the vehicle by which young minds are inspired, rather, it has become this tool with which tons of raw instruction is hammered into the brains of individuals brainwashed by our conformist society. I feel that education nowadays has little to do with figuring out things for the fun of it, but rather, people seek to learn processes, and I mean raw computations with no meaning to them, just to make a living! Now, I ask, what is the point of knowing something if you don’t know it, and if you don’t enjoy it? It saddens me that everyday, so many people that aren’t happy doing their jobs are forced to stick with it due to socioeconomic pressures.

Maybe I’m saying this because I’m sick and tired of feeling this pressure myself. I would so much like to stop going to school with the pressure of trying to get a degree, but rather simply going to school to study with other people who enjoy learning about the wonders of the world. I suppose this would be very difficult as many people would be with little motivation, but this would be so much more enjoyable and much more productive. Also, I guess that some part of me really badly wants to study piano, and throw away everything else, but I just can’t because I feel that if I did that, I would be putting myself at a huge disadvantage. Maybe if we educated kids in such a fashion that they never had the pressure to produce, but given all the freedoms to create, then we would live in a society which would be much happier, and also, much more productive. To clarify, I think that as a society, we need to start early on, by not teaching kids how to take tests, but rather to inspire them to inquire into the things that they find interesting and that they enjoy. I suppose this isn’t exactly realistic as kids are sociopaths with very little sense of reality, however, I feel that through the modern system of education that we have in place, a lot of motivation and creativity is stifled.

Anyway back to the main topic, I feel so much like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. I see this in my family and among my friends and I usually don’t realize it until I think about it much later. I find that the things I initially found to be interesting and charming, ended up being just fronts, that everything that people say when they are trying to fit this mold, ends up being false because they simply want to fit into some type of personality when they said it, but when situations change and it was no longer in their favor to conform to this specific persona, they would suddenly show their true faces. But then, it is easier and better to lie sometimes. I guess the question then, is when is it okay to lie, to pretend to be something you’re not? I would like to think that it is never, but then maybe I’m not being realistic…

So, I’m not going to lie, I’m going to flat out admit, I’ve had a little bit of a fucked up year, with a lot of ups and downs, which all started back, right after I graduated from high school. Sometimes I ask myself, why me, but then I just sit back and think about everyone else in the world that might be going through the same problems as me, and then I think about people who have so much worse than I do, then I’m grateful for all the good that I have in my life.

Now, I tell myself that what I’m going through isn’t special, and that I’m normal, that I’m ordinary. For some reason, that just doesn’t sit well with me, it makes me scared that everyone goes through the same shit, that goes through the same ups and downs, that faces the same devils that I have faced. I’m afraid that there is no better than what I’m going through, that everyone has to face the same thing. But then, I realize, its not the case, that my life is what I want it to be. If I don’t want to be miserable, it is completely within my own will to be happy.

I’m all that I allow myself to be, if I limit myself then I will be limited. However if I do what ever makes me happy (within reasonable limits) then I will live a very satisfying life. Now this is not saying that I should do whatever and hurt other people just for my own happiness. I’m saying that I should do things in a manner which will give me satisfaction and not just short term happiness, but long term happiness as well while not bringing anyone else down, or taking things away from people that they had before.

I’ve been looking for an answer to all my problems, to ask why me, and why this way, and I think gradually, through this past year, I’ve found the answer, and that is to just take it all in, and appreciate it, and move on. Live your life like its YOUR life, after all no one else can tell you any different. I feel that I’ve just been dominated by all the misery that’s been going on around me, but what I’ve decided, is to accept it for what it is, and appreciate all the good things in life. And just live.

This quote from the movie American Beauty sums it up quite well :”I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry, you will someday.”.

In conclusion, we are all ordinary. We are all ordinary because we are all different. We all seek to be special, but in seeking to be special we all become the same, in the sense that we are all fools looking for something to set us apart. So I say to that, fuck it, accept the fact that we are all ordinary, and all the misery that comes with it, and enjoy ourselves. Enjoy ourselves by being the best that we can be, by achieving far more than we thought possible, by going further than the eye could see. To live a life which where we can fully utilize all these great talents and abilities that the great beholder gave to us. We have so much… we just need to learn how to stop wasting it.

I promised myself a while ago that I would remain stoic with respect to a recent occurrence in my life. After all it is only a fleeting moment in life, and none the sooner would I look back at my foolishness and laugh wholeheartedly, and perhaps, maybe blush to myself in remembrance of my past. Well, today, as I was browsing the  depths of social media, I stumbled upon something that shook me back to the reality which I avoided to confront.

In the back of my mind I have perceived this outcome, however I had always pushed off this reality to the side, thinking to myself, it is beyond my control and that life has dealt me the hand I am meant to hold. I kept on hoping never to deal with  these specific emotions again. However, the morsel of information I had seen, even without reference to anything, made my heart drop as it unearthed some emotions that I had attempted to bury over and over again.

The feeling, I’m sure, many have felt. The feeling of one’s heart dropping, the feeling of despair, the feeling of betrayal perhaps. However, not all is lost, as there is some light at the end of this horrific tunnel. Perhaps this is the shock I needed to shock me back to reality, the jolt I pursued to revive my mentality, the thunder needed to rejuvenate my passion (for what I do not know).

I seem to have gained a new perspective on this whole ordeal however. Whereas before I veiled myself from these truths that were available to me, I now have some insight which propels me to move away from this situation. I feel as if this whole time, I remained still and ignorant to things close to my heart. It is now however, that I feel the need to change perhaps my attitude towards this thing.

Forgive my crypticness, as I do not have the heart to share these troubles that plague me, but anyone who bothers to read my mumblings, most likely knows to what I am referring to, as there are few things in the world that make me feel as such.

I am at a loss on what to learn from this. I am endlessly searching for a meaning with which to justify this experience. Perhaps the meaning lies in the experience itself rather than its goal. Perhaps as the great R.P Feynman mentioned, this is one of these things in life better left unsolved rather than to succumb to a false explanation which will never fully satisfy the extensiveness of the incident.

P.S. It it perhaps silly to note however, that I find it quite curious that my rhetoric closely resembles that of a century writer right now (most specifically that of M. Annorax from Verne). The most plausible explanation to this is due my recent reading of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. It is with great regret that I admit that Verne does not suit my taste right now. I think I will inquire into the strange wanderings of Franz Kafka next.

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think its much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”-Richard Feynman

I wasn’t going to write about this, but seeing as I have nothing else that sparks my imagination, I guess this is the only topic I can write about at the moment. This is something that has been on my mind lately after hearing the quote above. The question then, is why do we follow these grand and final answers to life dictated to us by other people? Why must we have some eternal paradise that we should work towards? Is merely living life to its fullest extent not enough for people? I guess not.

My problem with religion is that it seeks to explain things that cannot be explained. As humans, we are always seeking answers, but when we cannot find answers to the questions that we ask, we fabricate these grand stories, that seem to be centered completely on ourselves to give some meaning to our apparently meaningless lives. As Feynman put it, Religion is just too local, too provincial, too self-centered. How is it that when the world was created, it was created for us? What then is the purpose of all the rest of the universe?

Also, if the only proof for religion lies in the religion itself, then I think it says very little about the significance of what was said. It is no different from me saying that “I am the greatest man alive”, and using the fact that I, the greatest man alive, said I am the “greatest man alive” as justification of its validity. I guess my problem with religion is that it makes everything too easy, too simple, too watered down. Furthermore, why does there have to be only one path to “salvation” and what is even “salvation”?

I do believe that there is a greater power out there beyond the scopes of mankind, independent to the physical laws which we follow. However, it seems to me that limiting this power to the human imagination does not serve it justice, and even hoping to explain such a great force is biting off more than we can chew. Who are we to say that that which we believe to be true is right?

I would like to think that living life to its fullest will bring the explanation that we are seeking, and the simple satisfaction of having experienced life will be the meaning that have been looking for all along.

P.S. I seek not to attack religion, rather, I just think its too easy to give everything an explanation. I feel that it is manmade and it does not do it justice.

The Things I Have

These are the things I have:
A watch, a pen, don’t laugh!
without these I am still me,
without these, tomorrow I still see.

These are the things I have:
my health, a dollar n’ a half.
without these I am still me,
without these tomorrow I still see.

These are the things I have:
my hopes, my dreams, and my laugh.
without these I cannot see,
a tomorrow that would be for me.

-Nemo

Seeing as today is Armageddon-eve I thought I should write something in that strain.

In the same year that the United States declared its independence, one of the most influential books in modern history was published. Incidentally, the book came to define the lifestyles of people in the U.S. more than we might acknowledge. The book that I am referring to, is of course the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

Now, you might be wondering, what in the world does a book about economic policy have to do with the end of the world? Now, this is where I start making ridiculous assertions, and in no way am I saying, nor do I believe, that what I say is correct, but rather, I hope to inspire thought, and if you have something to say, comment!

Most of you understand the main tentets of The Wealth of Nations, or as we know it today, the main principles of capitalism. Capitalistic beliefs essentially say that what is best of the individual is best for the group as a whole, and as an extension of that, that when one strives to achieve the best for themselves, he is contributing the most that he can to society. My problem with this ideology, is that in our capitalistic society, it is one of the main causes the ridiculous disparities between the rich and the poor, as well as a wealth of other problems(hah wealth! get it? ).

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that Adam Smith was wrong in saying that whats best for the individual is best for the whole. What I am saying however, is that our perception of this statement results in the problems plague our modern day society. An example of this result is the monopolies that came into existence in the early twentieth century, due to men such as Rockefeller and Carnegie. The government then realized that when one company has control of a whole market, it does no one good, in fact it gives them such great power that they can demand almost anything (monetarily) from the consumer, and as a result of trying to get the upper hand we actually ended up removing competition altogether. And as a testament to the fact that monopolies to no good, the government enacted the Sherman Anti-Trust act, which is still enforced today.

Another example of how our unsound perception of the ideals of capitalism causes more harm than good is the behavior and decisions of many high level executives in the corporate world. As we have all heard, one of the main problems of modern american society is a lack of jobs due to the outsourcing of labor to countries with more flexible wages and working regulations. People often argue that this practice of outsourcing is actually good for us, as it allows for things to be produced at lower costs, and people often use this as an excuse for outsourcing because it leads to lower prices. However, people don’t see that without jobs, they cannot afford even the cheapest products and when the producer has power, the products might not be cheaper when they(the producers) can just make larger profits, so in the long run it did not help the people. Furthermore, in the long run, the executives will not end up benefiting from their selfish decisions to earn more, because as a result of destroying so many jobs, they have also completely destroyed their consumer base. So in the end, when a company tries to help only itself, it actually ends up benefiting no one.

In 1950, John Nash worked out a modification of Adam Smith’s economic theory. This modification stated that what is simply best of the individual is not always the best choice, rather it said that what is actually the best decision on the whole, is what is best for the individual and the group, or society. This idea is easily shown with game theory, and if you are interested, I highly encourage you to study game theory and see that what is best for the individual actually yields a lower total utility than what is best for the individual and group.

So, back to my original statement, why our askew perception of capitalism will bring “ZE END OF ZE WOORLD”. Capitalism encourages competition, but as we now take it, also ends up ruining our competition and anything that “limits our ability” i.e. consumers. As a result of always seeking what is best for ourself individually, we end up screwing up everything else, and in the long run, what we once believed to be the best also ruins us. As the saying goes, what goes around comes around. I believe then, we should alter our perception of capitalism, and follow the “Nash” view, as I call it, and start helping others as we would like to be helped, and only do things for our benefit as long as they don’t harm other people. This does not mean giving up what you might have so that someone else can have it, but rather when you try to gain something, to not take it from others, but create it for yourself through honest hard work.

Anyway, I hope this has inspired you to look at things a little differently, if not, then oh well. Again, I encourage anyone that reads this to post their own opinions in the comments as I would like to see what other people think, and if there is some debate, then GREAT! I love debating, or as some would say “arguing”, and when we argue without ill will, it brings nothing but the sharpening of the mind.

Without further adieu, Cheers!

I just finished reading the semi-autobiographical novel Surely you’re not joking Mr.Feynman by Richard Feynman and this post is in some way a reaction to the book.

If I took away anything from this book, its the idea that we should simply go through with our intuition, and as the title of this post and my blog, to not worry, as we can change it later.

Now, there are plenty things in life that I want to change, things of that have caused me regret, things that have brought me trouble, and sometimes pain. These are the things which I think can’t be changed. However true it is that we cannot change the past, is it not true that we can forget the past? But then this brings up the issue of whether we should forget out past or not, as our past, in many ways, defines who we are today.

Anyway, back to the original topic. After reading this novel, I was suddenly inspired to become more ambitious and more (I don’t know if this is a proper use of this word but…) avant-garde. I realize that there are so many things in life that as human beings we might not have the opportunity to experience due to obvious limitations, and due to that, we should never shy away from the opportunity to experience something new simply due to the fear of the unknown or some other fear. The trouble that comes with the ideology in always trying something new is that people start accusing you of being disloyal to one thing or another. While that is true, there are still many benefits to being loyal, I believe that in order for life to be lived at its fullest and also to understand life at its fullest, we should try to experience as many different things as possible.

I say this because, children who have few experiences, have very little intuition predicting things that will happen. This is essentially Locke’s idea of Tabula Rasa, in which he says all people start out as a blank slate. Of course, all animals have actions and instincts that are already integrated within our biological circuits before we are even born, but I believe that psychologically, everything is established by experience. In some sense, people might differ in intensity or the amount that they change from any given experience, but I feel that experiences most often affect people with similar backgrounds in the same way (not magnitude/intensity).

A visual example would be to imagine that a life is like a blank canvas on which a huge dot of paint of your favorite color was placed in the middle of it. Now, imagine an experience as something that might tilt the canvas such that the paint rolls and starts coloring the canvas, and how far the little drop of paint rolls is how far we devoted ourselves to this experience. Then we see that only a person who has devoted themselves fully to a multitude of experiences can come even near to painting this canvas. Now one might argue that  perhaps some people have no drive or passion to experience life to its fullest, and are satisfied with living in their own lives, and I agree, that is certainly a viable alternative, as we can see that maybe the little drop of paint that is on their canvas already covers their whole canvas because their canvas is just that small. But if one lives life in such limited boundaries, then, as Nietzsche and Aristotle put it, one is not really human, but rather equal to other animals that roam the world, or even worse, just a slave to others in the world.

I think I’m going to stop here for this first post, and I guess I should just close up by saying, yes, we might regret our actions some day, but had we not taken those actions wouldn’t we just be regretting not doing as we wished to do? So since we’re going to regret things anyway, we might as well have some fun! So, moral of the story: Don’t worry, you can always change it later.