wanderingintofocus

"The thing that scared her most was not hiding in a cupboard, or under the bed, or floating in the corners of the room like a ghost. The thing that scared her most was inside her head, pressing its thumbs against the backs of her eyeballs and whispering from the insides of her ears:  "You have been chosen, not for one unhappiness, but hundreds, and I will make you yell at your mother, and hit your friends, and bite and scrape and burn your own skin,  I will make the days long and the nights even worse, and you will hide in your bed, under the blankets, and in the dark, away from the lights and the crowds and the noise, until the day you decide that things would be easier if you never woke up at all." - The Almighty Sometimes, by Kendall Feaver _ I remember a not-so-tactful exchange with a colleague before, something along the lines of the necessity to complete a course. They claim that to have the mental resilience to see through the programme, we cannot consider quittin...

On achievement, the incommensurability of struggle, fish in a tree; soup with a fork, and a brief discussion on mental health and psychological safety at the workplace _ "If there's one thing that I've learnt from video games, it's that if you meet more enemies, then you're going in the right direction." - Anon In the discussion of worldly achievement, struggle and setbacks are often framed as prerequisites for success. However, it may be possible that this confuses the necessary for the causal, in our perception that more struggle is correlated with a higher degree of future success.  We may first resolve the discussion of whether struggle is necessary for success and achievement. "And it's the hard way "But it's the right way "The right way... to break in a glove "With something like this, you gotta be ready to put in the work, make the commitment. So what do you think?" - To Break in a Glove, from Dear Evan Hansen (musical) ...

On the aforementioned subject, that may or may not have been inspired by real-life events, implied rejection through absent reciprocation, as a reminder to myself, and the self-defeating nature of putting people on a pedestal _ Once in a while, I get the privilege of meeting some new people from whom I come to learn a lot in the very short span of a first meeting. Perhaps in the interests of self-improvement and character development, I might be keen to interact with them again or regularly, especially if I begin to find myself enjoying their company, or resonate with their principles as inferred through their work ethic and observed behaviour. I reckon that for at least once in our lives, all of us might have the familiar experience of wanting to be closer friends with someone, only to find that this desire is not reciprocated. Previously, I've written about the compatibility (or lack thereof) of cognitive, behavioural, and emotional needs , that predisposes different people to st...

I came across this on my LinkedIn feed today. LinkedIn is no Reddit, but the comments seem largely supportive. In principle, I am fully in favour of the "health and wellness first" approach to employee management. It hurts to see my sister being expected to periodically feign optimal performance whilst being essentially functionally incapacitated. Therefore, by the standard of only this metric, a "2-day menstrual leave policy" (hereafter, "MLP") may sound like a good idea. However, since equity and equality are necessarily dichotomous, it may be possible that these distinctions engendered by such "progressive" policies may conversely entrench the very attitudes that they seek to dispel. This may be a problem because the pursuit of equity undermines the equality of opportunity, if employers with productivity-maximising objectives must decide between "menstruating people [sic]" and not, ceteris paribus. It won't be difficult to see h...

A brief discussion on identity, and considering what it means to love or be loyal to someone, even as people change with experience and time _ When we love someone or are loyal to someone, where do the bounds of this commitment lie? Do we always give our unwavering support to their causes even if we disagree with them? To what ends do their personhood reach? Does their personhood comprise only their physical being, or also their mental state? Do we still love them or owe them our allegiance should they unfortunately come to be incapacitated or are "no longer themselves"? I have no definitive answers to the above questions. This piece serves to present some possible perspectives on the topic, but is by no means a model response or completely representative of what I may fully opine. The discussion of loyalty is complex in its own right. We may first consider the following claim: Loyalty is usually given to a cause or a set of values, more so than to the person representing the...

On stagnation, self-esteem, social media, and selection bias, briefly _____ "How have you been working on yourself?" is the new question that I hope to be able to answer favourably, when queried. I recall first realising my magnitude of stagnation, when catching up with a friend with whom I try to meet every half-yearly, and nothing had fundamentally changed in the past six months, save some new experiences from my interaction with the circumstances beyond my control. I recognise, however, that it may be possible that any change happens so gradually as to be indiscernible to me, but is more evident to the periodic external observer. In my celebration, however, I have indeed observed improvement in some aspects that have far-reaching and outsized positive impacts across my life, which wasn’t the case before, such as now enjoying the company of myself to even frequently seek it after forced social activities. So I have become better, but perhaps not in a way that I can demonstr...

A personal word on social media and content creation _ Though hypocritically I sometimes fall into the same trap when I am not interested in a discussed topic at hand, I feel like a lot of "sharings" and "discussions" today only feature the restatement of common platitudes and the prevailing "acceptable opinions". This may be a problem because most difficult questions don't have simple answers, but much of new media today so seeks categorical conclusions that we often forget that an exchange of ideas and perspectives is in itself a worthy outcome of conversation. As with most modern technologies, I remain conflicted at the effects of social media on my life.  I think social media makes it easier to maintain "passive friendships" and acquaintanceships by providing reasons for engagement; when you put out a Post or a Story, you are essentially creating Content to which your Viewers can respond. Comments and Replies facilitate "out of the b...

A perspective on sentimentality and nostalgia, the past and the present, probability and the equivalence of memory and experience Content Advisory: This piece is NOT grounded in mathematical or scientific theory and can only serve as a mental model. _ should /ʃʊd/ verb modal verb: should used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions. "he should have been careful" could /kəd,kʊd/ verb modal verb: could past of can. used to indicate possibility. "they could be right" _ Today I wish to address two concepts that are relevant but not related. PART I It is the mark of a tactful policymaker to identify the discrepancy between what "should be" and what "is", and to create policy that addresses the root causes of the reality of the situation instead of assuming the truth of the ideal outcome. I think we are so conditioned to provide and respond to politically correct answers that we often fail to ident...

Since we all have a finite amount of time to spend, we must make choices because of the problem of scarcity, where there are only such limited resources to fulfill unlimited wants.  An  opportunity cost  is incurred when the decision is made, which is the value of the next best alternative forwent. We internalise this cost as the sense of loss that we feel when we must choose between doing two things that cannot happen at the same time and cannot be rescheduled or postponed (the "what a pity" sentiment to forgo the other thing). I posit that, in our lives, we must choose how we allocate our time, attention and energy across three primary classes of relationship: our relationship with other people; our relationship with ourselves and; our relationship with our work.  Our relationships with other people refer to that with our friends and family, people whom we care about, or our service to the community and others. People who genuinely find fulfillment in serving other...

Today I discuss why some of us feel like we can never get better, how it is actually our fault, and what we could start to do about it try to make things better. _ As was common for most students my age then who were at the stage of our lives where we were at the start of trying to figure things out, I had found myself stuck in a cycle of self-inflicted misery. Today, I feel much better than before, and feel like I have become a better person. I come to realize that one of the key things holding back our progress is our idea of identity. Identity is what defines us. It is what we characterize ourselves as. Thus, it may be possible that we identify ourselves with negative attributes.  This becomes a problem because becoming better can be seen as making ourselves “not ourselves anymore”; By identifying ourselves with a negative attribute, we are making counterproductive efforts to get rid of that attribute and become better, because every improvement is seen as us “losing ourselves”,...