One of the weirder meals I ate in Korea was at this eerily quiet rice soup store.

It was a tiny rice soup store in the Michelin guide, and inside it only had enough room for a stainless steel bar that sat 7 people. We got there 30 minutes early and waited in line for the tiny number of seats.

The entire place had a brutalist concrete building vibe, and the menu selection was limited, and the waiters and chefs barely spoke, we just pointed to their main offering (pork soup with rice), they nodded and proceeded to make the dish in what seemed like absolute silence. Like the staff and the other guests, I also didn't speak at all.

— That dish stood out to me because up till now i've never seen pork broth this clear. It didn't feel like it had oil in it, and it feels like you can really see deep into the soup.

I felt pretty disappointed when I started on the dish, it didn't have any flavoring – felt like it was just thin-sliced pork. Over the course of the meal though, for some reason I felt myself focusing on the flavor of this dish more intensely than most of the meals I've had before. The lack of distractions – both in the external environment and the broth itself, made me want to seek more experiences, the and only stimuli with enough depth to dive into was the pork itself. And so because the pork was made so simply, it made me appreciate the natural flavor of pork much more.

To be honest, I didn't think the meal was in my top 3 in the trip when I left that store. However, in the months after the trip, I find myself thinking to that meal, and the headspace that it invoked in me, often.

It's actually the case that everything we encounter in life produces a lingering sensation. It's subtle but rich in variety, much like the sensation that food gives us. This is why we call the ability to appreciate it “taste”. And in the past few days, I found myself noticing the relationship between the calmness I feel at the moment and how deeply I can dive into the flavor of the moment.

— The place I notice this the most, I think, are in social interactions.

My mom is an extremely social person while my dad is a super antisocial one. I think in some ways, my tendency gravitates towards that of my dad's. Things that other people pick up socially seem to take just a smidgen longer for me to pick up, and I sometimes wished that I was someone who naturally had a lot of charisma.

Something I noticed though, is that just by being practicing being grounded in the moment, I'm able to detect more nuances in social interactions now. A focused but relaxed mind naturally hones itself for depth. And just like how the blank environment at the rice place made me observe the taste of everyday pork at a deeper level, I find myself more aware of how distracted I am at the moment, and how I'm able to understand things much deeper when I approach it with a calm mind.

And all that was because of a bowl of some pork broth rice.

— Categorized under: #psychology, #interactions, #meditation

In the circle I hang out in nowadays, there is a lot of lament that people don't take the small risk of taking time to discover themselves even if they don't feel passionate about their jobs.

There is a book called “The Pathless Path” that does basically exactly this. It argues that too many people are stuck at the grindy jobs prescribed to them by society for a sense of safety, and that one day it would be too late for them to do so.

The book has a lot of followers, and I said a lot of such laments myself – why aren't people doing more to actualize themselves, even when the risks appear to be so low?

A few months ago I saw a thread on Twitter that changed my opinions on this. I've only read it once and the thread has now been deleted, but at some point I realized that I've been passively thinking about it for a few months.

The gist of it is that “a person pursuing their own path is on a constant, endless quest to discover their value systems, pursue it, and justify yourself to other people. A person on the default path does not need to justify their purpose and usefulness, while someone on the non-default path needs to be thinking about it all the time. This is effortful enough that it can be rational to do away with the process altogether and stay with the default path”.

Over the past few month, this thread has been reworking my perception of people with common day-jobs, to the point that I don't really think negatively about people on the default path more. Sometimes, I even admire it. And overall, this has been a beneficial change to me.

— Categorized under: #social, #interactions, #life

Rome is quite a beautiful city! I've fallen in love with the architecture here. I feel like the spirit behind the architecture and statues have meshed with my thoughts in subtle ways when writing this.

1. Moments of anger, annoyance, jealousy

People who are loosely acquainted with me generally remark that I'm a very calming presence – soft spoken, relaxed, positive, regulated. Although people who know me really well actually know that I'm a really, really moody person.

A lot of quietude comes from regulating expression (mostly speech) – when I feel an emotion, there's a filter that examines whether that emotion is appropriate to express, and that emotion is expressed only when it feels appropriate.

The regulation is rather interesting – it can make you calming to other people, but at the same time it can suppress spontaneity – by the time positive emotions passes through that filter, they tend to be a lot more muted.

On the other hand, I'm also noticing acutely when that regulation fails, when moments of sharp negativity make me say things that I don't really intend, and a lot of me wonder whether its possible to be spontaneous while also not being spiky.

I think that it's probably possible, and that the way to do it is to basically recognize emotions faster through practice. I suspect that meditation is basically this, and will probably tune some of my practices towards that direction.

2. Moments of projection

I was visiting a restaurant with my mom and stepdad the other day, and my mom struck up a conversation with one of the staff.

It had been a long day and by that time both my stepdad and I (who are both more introverted) didn't really feel like conversing. I distinctly remember observing the staff's vibe and body language and noting that he didn't seem interested in talking.

To my surprise, the staff was actually really happy to engage, and brought up conversation topics and kept the exchange going for a while.

To a certain extent, people mirror what vibes others put out, so my mom's openness to conversation probably contributed to that outcome.

Despite that, I usually consider myself pretty good at reading people, but clearly there was a moment of projection here as well. The moment that that evaluation was made, you are already biasing that conversation towards a certain direction too. I think my learning here is to not take my evaluation of people's vibes too seriously, and understand that they could change as well.

3. Initial Impressions

One benefit of living in a 3rd space is that you get a vast trove of data on how people interreact with you and each other. And one of the fascinating observations so far has been how people form different mental models of how the 3rd space operates based on their initial interactions.

For example, they tend to assume that the people they interact with the most is the most in charge of the space. They also assume that the events they went to first were the primary types of event for that space.

Seeing this has actually kinda drilled home to me how important first impressions is when interacting with people. I kinda always knew that it was important, but had nothing analogous to compare it to. When you see how differently people form first impressions of a space, you see how differently they could form an impression of a person as well.

There has been times in my life when I consistently gave people better or worse first impressions, depending on where I am in life at the time; but I don't think there really is a time when I paid much attention to first impressions, and now I distinctly notice when I unnecessarily come across to people as being unlikable, and how that could be improved with slightly better habits.

(I notice how I could fine-grain track the impression I'm making on people too, but am hesitant to pursue this because it could be construed as manipulative. I probably should feel less anxiety around this.)

4. Who's Going to Listen to Me?

Over the past few years, I feel like the notion of listening has become a relatively rare resource.

At least from my personal experience in both 1-on-1 and group conversations, conversations tend to stay at the surface level more often compared to a few years ago.

I'd like to dig deeper into what's changed, but at least for myself personally, I think a contributing factor is how often I hoist my immediate thoughts onto others.

My mind doesn't do much internal calculus on talking to specific people about specific subjects. Instead, it identifies people who seem to have a lot of similar interests, and sends all subjects to those people.

Thinking back, I don't think that's a great method. It contributes to a less exciting conversation usually, since the topic lands less. The topics would have been better matched to people with those specific interests.

Furthermore, the info-dumpy aspect of it makes it harder for me to provide others the space to tell me more about what they're interested in.

In an ideal world, I'd like conversations about the topics I'm specifically interested about to be directed to people who share those exact interests, and this opens up space in conversations outside of my immediate interest range to become opportunities to learn more about the worth.

That might be a good step towards a society that listens more.

— Categorized under: #psychology, #interactions, #communication

Just got back from Vibecamp. On the very last day when I was relaxing on a the grassy hill outside of dining cabin, somebody handed me a bubble wand, and I played with it while watching the people around me.

Right before Vibecamp, I spoke with a pretty devout Buddhist, and have been thinking about that conversation a lot.

While blowing bubbles by myself at Vibecamp, I experienced a lot of equanimous joy, and there was something I really valued in it. It seemed to me that a moment of equanimous joy is equal to hours of excited joy. Equanimous joy feels sustainable, while excited joy (think about the likes of going to a rave) stems from a large amount of expectation, which I think is the same thing that leads to much of our suffering.

Buddhism attests that all emotions are suffering, and I think equanimous joy to be a sort of sweet point in terms of positive emotions to strive for. Maybe it's the case that I prefer it now over hours of ecstatic joy, and that it's what I might look for in events and chats going forward.

— Categorized under: #philosophy, #buddhism, #interactions

At some point when I was little, the thought occurred to me that I should never be proud of anything that I didn't actively contribute to. This counted pride in my family, my school, and my nationality. I'm not sure why the thought occurred to me, but as an adult I feel like this advice has largely served me well.

Recently, I've been wondering if I could take this advice further. I was watching a show called Vinland Saga, where one of the ostensibly nice characters commits pretty awful acts in part due to his wounded pride, and it reminded me of times when I felt like my pride was wounded. It very much felt like an alien emotion – really intense, and something I think isn't that productive overall.

In the book Impro, the improv comedy teacher Keith Johnstone remarked that in ancient times, artists were seen as conduits to muses rather than auteurs of their creations. The art piece only reflected the completeness of that conduit, rather than the personality of the artist themselves. I really like that definition – it lets people create without thinking about being judged according to their creations.

Recently, I've been thinking about whether this perspective applies to not just art, but being a person – can I be a conduit of good vibe and good outcomes, just like that of good art, and not have those vibes and outcomes be seen as a core part of my personality? Because I think identifying with those outcomes are what creates that sense of pride that can get wounded sometimes. I'd like to just be a good conduit, rather than sometime who's (self-perceived) to be great.

All of this feels very hand-wavy, as I am still trying to figure it out, but I think if I focus just on the craft and nothing else, imagine myself as a tiny nucleus of an atom in the middle of a balloon as opposed to the surface of the balloon itself, I'd be a bit closer to reaching a place without ego/pride, and would be able to let go of things much more quickly.

— Categorized under: #emotions, #interactions

Recently I've felt some anxiety towards going back to work, which has been interesting to reflect back upon.

While at Fractal, I've met some people who seem very brave to me – they are willing to forego conventional job opportunities to pursue things with very low odds of success/impact like starting their own classes.

When I ask them about how they found the courage to do so when they could have gone for very high-status things, they would say that if you think about it, failure doesn't say that much about yourself.

I agree with this on a rational level, but find it hard to square with on an intuitive level. When I asked them about this, they said that “surrounding yourself with supportive people” helps a lot.

Thinking about my recent mindset, I do think this latter explanation has a lot of truth to them. When you interact with a lot of new people (for me, this seems to happen recently in the context of dating), they tend to use employment as a judge of your worth. This doesn't happen when you are usually in a supportive community. I find that when I prioritize interacting with new people, my anxiety goes up accordingly.

What this provides at least, I think, is a tool to help deal with anxiety. If you believe that your community are essentially the correct one, then hanging with a community with aligned norms will help you with the unusual status signals of the real world.

But I think the question this begs is – what is the correct way to look at status? I'm not sure the broader population is by default “correct”. It is just the most popular option currently. And I think that defaults towards “correct”, but is not necessarily always so.

I have some ideas as to ways to look at this, such as the psychological health, connectedness, and the diversity & representativeness of the population composition of the community, but it's something I may want to save for later.

— Categorized under: #interactions, #communities, #sociology

One tiny thought for the day.

When hanging out with friends one on one, I tend to be somewhat attentive to how the other person feels and do things to actively counteract low mood if they have it.

But I wonder if it's better to just do what gives me good mood and have that influence my friend in a contagious way?

This begs another question – how can you cultivate the ability to feel positive moods (the type that's contageous) more of the time?

Imo most people are pretty bad at this, and I feel like there's some genetic component to it as well, but I do think it's possible to practice this, I'm just not super sure how, and not sure that I've seen people write about how to do it either.

It's strange to think that I do a lot of emotional self-introspection, but haven't really found how to do this, but I want to learn!

— Categorized under: #interactions, #psychology

Had a hangout with a friend yesterday that went below expectations. Thinking about why today.

One of the things I want to calibrate on myself is whether people who go to hangouts are more interested in entertainment or conversations. My experiences along this realm actually surprise me quite a lot. I used to think that I'm on about the 80th percentile for interest in deep conversations over entertainment, but based on my interactions I might adjust this to be more like 98%. Which is to say that what I perceive as a good balance between entertainment/introspection are way too much introspection for most people.

As another factor, I think people are more open to introspection at some times, but your have to read that signal correctly. A person who's tired is less open to introspection and more open to high-energy experiences.

introspection <–> chill <–> entertainment consumption <–> adventure are all valid and different modes that you should be able to recognize and transition seamlessly in and out of. I'm pretty bad at reading these signals and should vibe better.

There may also be a point when people get tired, read this correctly and end the hangout right there. Overdraining the hangout is really bad.

Another thought: what if the person you are hanging out with doesn't play along with the prompts you give out? I think to a certain degree you need to be able to fully have fun on your own (and this is something I'm still working on) to be happy in most situations. This requires a pretty high bar for positivity and sense of humor that I'm still cultivating.

An important part of the sense of humor is prolonging the bit. I think in that particular interaction, there were many opportunities I had to prolong the bit but didn't notice them before they passed. Jokes are rarely hilarious just on their own – a large amount of context needs to be construction. I think that for this reason, I should learn to pursue the bit in an improvisational fashion and see where it goes.

Epilogue:

For some reason I always feel bad when a hangout doesn't turn out well! But I do pretty much feel better after a day, and I found that living by a community, it usually happens faster (otherwise, maybe a day and a half). I should keep in mind that anytime I feel bad, I usually feel better after a day anyways. I feel lucky in that my mood setpoint is decently high right now.

Part of it too is that I wonder how much am I responsible for the results on a hangout? This one isn't a date, but certainly in a dating context people assume that you are solely responsible for the outcome. I think it's slightly unfair, but I don't think that that's awful either, since cultivating fun vibes I'm trying to learn how to better do anyways.

So in summary: – Lean towards entertainment/external-experiences by default – Extend the bit – Observe their signals, maybe even ask directly what they feel like doing. – End at a good point – Cultivate fun on my own – Don't feel bad, you'll feel better after a day anyways.

That's it for today. Until next time!!

— Categorized under: #interactions

In conversations with friends, I've chatted about the idea that the concept of love could be decoupled from the idea of providing resources. In our culture, we tend to associate love with willingness to provide resources – whether it's time, money, food, shelter, or attention – to the person we love. However, if we decouple them altogether, it's now possible to love anyone unconditionally without feeling like you are stretching yourself thin.

But after thinking more about how kindness works, I'm realizing that looking at it as providing “resources” doesn't really capture the process of giving all that well.

For one, I think that there are plenty of times when what we give are much, much more nebulous than what can be strictly defined as “resources”. For example, instead of giving time or money, we might give kind words or put ourselves in psychological or physical discomfort for others, and it feels strange to me to characterize this as “providing a resource”. When you add the set of nebulously non-resource things we can give to each other – words, safety, thoughtful gestures, potential to actualize – to the idea of resource, I honestly cannot think of a good word for the combination of everything we can give. Perhaps I'll think up a better word for it one day, but as of now, I can only call it “giving” as opposed to “giving resources”.

There's another big reason that I think the framing of “giving resources” is quite flawed. When we thinking of the idea of giving resources, we think of zero-sum transfers of assets where both sides value that resource equally. In some of the most important acts of kindness, this mental image is just not true.

To someone who is homeless in Winter, a blanket means much more than another item in the closet. To someone who's looking to escape an abusive family, small gestures of giving and trust can mean more than the world. Using Heinrich maneuver takes little time but could save a life. Giving a child a dime so that they could buy their favorite candy could mean a long-term faith in the generosity of others.

What I'm recognizing now is that even when you don't feel safe enough to give a lot yet, a significant amount of possible kindness arises when you notice that there are opportunities where your contribution makes a large difference in someone else's lives. These types of situations are not very common, which means that following social norms will generally cause you to ignore these opportunities to give without thinking too much about why. But if you can get past that psychological barrier, then you open up the opportunity to not only make a huge difference in someone else's world, but to create a new norm of kindness and thoughtfulness for those around you. I think this is part of what makes kindness so inspirational.

One of my hopes is that in this new year, I'll be able to recognize and give more in this type of situation.

— Categorized under: #social, #psychology, #kindness, #interactions

What is non-performative? To give an example, there's the old saying in dating that you should observe how your date treats the waiter, since it shows how kind your date is when not biased by trying to impress you. However, since this saying has now become universal, the act of how you treat the waiter itself has become performative. That is, your date might treat the waiter nicely to try to impress you.

So now you have to expand what you observe in your date to understand how kind that person actually is. It doesn't necessarily have to be about which person they are kind to though. Kindness can also show through small details, like how patient someone is when an order takes a long time, etc. These acts are usually done without awareness of performance, which makes them better signals of someone's kindness.

Is that all, though?

Thinking back to the people I met in my life, I can point to at least one instance where a friend is quite kind even non-performatively, but her kindness breaks down significantly under stress. When not stressed, she's the type to make all kinds of small gestures one wouldn't think of to make people feel welcome, comfortable, and at home. However, when stressed, she had a tendency to lash out at those immediately surrounding her.

So maybe it is true that kindness is only fully observable under stress after all. It's not a satisfying conclusion, but nevertheless a useful one to keep in mind.

— Categorized under: #kindness, #psychology, #interactions