wanderingintofocus

On the unintentional consequences of an unconsidered approach to raising awareness on mental-emotional health, and its loose parallels to screening and overdiagnosis, briefly _ In "Is it okay to be not okay?" , I had briefly written positively about the increasing awareness of the maintenance of mental-emotional health. However, today I posit that this might not be a wholly societally beneficial trend, for the nature of the current implementations of such awareness-raising might bring about some unintended consequences. Mental-wellness seminars peddled to students and young adults  through our institutions of education today seem to always be quick to denounce the effects of stress and emphasise their deleterious impacts on our quality of life. Often, such seminars use scaremongering to make it almost sound like it's your fault if you have some mental-emotional issues that you cannot overcome because you simply weren't paying enough attention to your health to proacti...

On the life cycle of interpersonal relationships with asymmetrical emotional needs, briefly _ It would be reductive to launch into a discussion about the "okayness" of not being okay without first considering what makes something "okay". Is it necessarily the converse of that which makes something "not okay"?  "Okayness" is not a concrete standard with a universal criteria - it is a value judgement that differs among different people that shapes the general consensus of the "okayness" of the action in question. Hence, two levels of abstraction must be considered - "personal okayness" and "common okayness". With the increasing awareness of the importance of the maintenance of mental and emotional health, the current consensus is that it is okay to not feel okay, because everyone sometimes feels this way, and that it is acceptable to reach out and seek help and/or mental-emotional support from other people. This is an ...

          Flying cars. Space colonies. Immortality. Humanity has always attempted to predict the future, but is often grossly inaccurate. Even at a recent artificial intelligence conference held in China, futurist Elon Musk claimed that 99.99% of predictions that human beings had in the history about the future turned out to be false. Nonetheless, predicting the future is appealing because it allows us to prepare for it. However, it also brings with it dangers such as undermining public confidence, exacerbating the impacts of wrong predictions, and possibly even catalysing the occurrence of the sheer undesirable.            Predicting the future is appealing because it allows us to better prepare for it, especially giving us partial control over the outcomes of imminent events, from the level of abstraction of the individual to the society. Weather forecasts allow commuters to better plan their travel. Market predictions a...

According to an article published on 4 August 2020, the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) reports that suicide remains the leading cause of death among people aged 10-29 in Singapore, adding that the number of suicides among the 20-29 age cohort remain the highest compared to other age groups.  You know we live in a first world country when the leading cause of death for your youth is suicides and not preventable infectious diseases. Credit where due, every school in Singapore today has a full-time school counselor. In fact, our school had three counselors at the start of this year, two of whom were here on a contractual basis whose duration of commitment have since elapsed and they are no longer attached to our school.  Recently we had a mental health wellness seminar for a CCE (Character and Citizenship Education) lesson in school, wherein the speaker shared with us statistics and studies regarding the importance of sleep or having a balanced diet. In addition, we were introduce...

Why does it always seem like the students who are doing the best tell the rest that "grades are not the most important thing"? If it clearly isn't, then a rationally-planned curriculum will not centre around that fact. 2 or 6 years in, here we are in the final lap in the sprint to the finish line of the race that is our pre-university education.  Today I attempt to reconcile this by presenting my Preliminary Hypothesis on the Dynamically Changing Needs of the First-world Student .  For this model to be applicable, the student must first exist within what I would call an "individualistic-competitive" education system - where individual achievement is emphasized and students are benchmarked not by their individual progress and self-improvement, but by their relative proficiency to their peers in standardized assessments.  This model assumes that the basic physiological needs of the student are being met, where she has continual access to shelter and safety, health...

Content Advisory: This piece does NOT discuss religious themes. _ forgive /fəˈɡɪv/ verb  stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence, flaw, or mistake. _ We all know people whom we hate - and people whom we have offended (if you don't know of any such people, then either you're indeed truly benevolent, or simply, YTA but haven't thought hard enough/are too dense to figure). Some of these people, we regret having ever offended or crossed the line with, but the relationship at present seems beyond repair. Similarly, some of these people regret having ever offended or crossed the line with us, but the relationship at present seems to them to be beyond repair. The only way for a broken interpersonal relationship to be repaired is for both parties to, first and foremost, be willing to mend relations. Only then can resolution and forgiveness be of any value in consideration to this discussion. In modern casual lexicon, the meaning of forgiveness seems to have...

You're already perfect, yet you can always be better. _ improvement /ɪmˈpruːvm(ə)nt/ noun an example or action of of improving or being improved; a thing that makes something better or is better than something else _ The ultimate goal of self-improvement is to reach the state or point where you no longer feel the persistent need to improve yourself. Self-improvement, therefore, seems to be self-defeating. The point of improving yourself is to make yourself better than you were before, or in some cases, better than someone else. However, implicit to improving yourself is actually the assumption that there something inherently wrong with you and the way that you're living right now.  Thus, obsessively indulging in self-help material and incessantly chasing self-improvement might just feed the feeling of inadequacy; if we keep chasing improvement, we sometimes overlook the progress that we have made.

happiness /ˈhapɪnəs/ noun  the state of being happy. _ The hedonic treadmill is a prominent theory in psychology that describes that every individual has a unique baseline of happiness, where regardless of the magnitude of positive or negative events that happen to the individual, they would return to that same baseline of happiness characteristic to themselves.  However, this baseline of happiness is not always entirely reflected in an individual's demeanor and action, as some people can seem very positive but are in actually often in a depressive state mentally or when they are alone with their thoughts, and conversely.  This is because positivity and happiness, though often used interchangeably, are not the same thing. Positivity is an attitude, not a feeling; it is something that you choose to inhabit even in the face of less than favorable circumstances. Positivity depends on and can only exist based on your response to situations; one does not feel positive - one me...

Clarification: This is not a discussion between the features of Spotify or Blogger as content hosting services, but rather a comparison between the activities that they facilitate, namely music-making and blogging respectively. _ relativity /rɛləˈtɪvɪti/ noun   the absence of standards of absolute and universal application _ Recently I had come to know of a good friend doing very well on Spotify with his music (which are in their own right very well-written and produced), where he found his pieces featured on the homepage queues. I personally enjoy his work. In an isolated incident, I had also seen another counterpart promote the work of another person whom I did not know prior, which I then checked out. It is quite a feat when the work one produces is able to raise awareness for itself through word of mouth and genuine recommendations by peers, than if such promotion were to be undertaken oneself. Temporarily stripping away the distinct differences between music-making and my blog...

Clarification: This is an opinion piece and not a factually researched article. Definitions and lines of reasoning presented herein are largely my own. _ FOMO /ˈfəʊməʊ/ noun  anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media. _ FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out, refers to the knowledge that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening not involving one but involving one's counterparts that leads to an anxiety or fear of being deprived of the positive experiences that said counterparts or peers are encountering in the given moment. It is one of those weird phrases that has only entered the common lexicon in recent times, and not only already seems dated, but also has an implied negative connotation. However, perhaps the aforementioned criteria are not enough to fully define the circumstances in which FOMO manifests itself. To illustrate, if a gazillionare builds a fleet of automated humanoid dro...

Tentative realisations: 1) to be of value, one needs to bring value to some person(s) or some cause; 2) "value" includes demonstrating the efficacy of a system, eg being a model student demonstrates the success of the education system, fulfilling (1); 3) s/he who commands respect is valuable; 4) to command respect, one needs to bring substantial value to some person(s) or some cause (ie be "good" at something); 5) it is not enough to be "good" at something to command respect, for this respect in question is offered by other people. thus, one needs to be "good" at an endeavour that other people value (eg good at making music vs good at wasting time); 6) more value is accorded to acts of value that are more challenging to achieve (eg grand humanitarian efforts or benevolent volunteer work) or elicits an emotion (ie someone can be considered to be of special value if s/he makes you feel a certain way); 7) value is relative, for if ever...

confidence /ˈkɒnfɪd(ə)ns/ noun the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something. _ self-esteem /ˌsɛlfɛˈstiːm/ noun confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect. _ Recently I had started setting up various social media accounts. When signing up for a Twitter account, one of the steps was to Describe yourself, to which the subheading text stated:  "What makes you special? Don't think too hard, just have fun with it."  This instruction comprises three parts. Let's break it down. (1) Just have fun with it fun /fʌn/ noun enjoyment, amusement, or light-hearted pleasure. "the children were having fun in the play area" _ I think most people realise it in their hearts, but the journey of growing up has shrouded this understanding in the shadows of professionalism till they are no longer able to relate to that which they had used to, and that is that: Fun can be an end in itself. It is often pe...