Musings about Life Archives - The Cracked Door

The Importance of Singleness

One of the most common mistakes I see US Americans making about dating is to assume they must be with someone. US society has subconsciously taught us that to live a successful life, you must have found someone, and this can cause people to rush into relationships without really examining whether that person is a good fit for them.

Someone once told me that as an adult, she had only been single for a handful of times, and that these were the worst periods in her life. The longest was a two year period after breaking up with someone before finding someone else. She lamented how bad she felt about being single. She had internalized the societal messages that you are supposed to be with someone and had assumed that during these periods of singleness that she was doing something “wrong” in need of correction. She wished she had better used these opportunities rather than spending her time immediately rushing into a relationship.

Our single periods are precisely that: opportunities. Opportunities to learn about yourself, who you are, and what makes you happy in life. When we view singleness as an issue in need of correction, we fail to learn from that time what we can.

We should be more comfortable being single. Some people might want to be single their whole lives, and that’s fine. And some people might ultimately want to be in a long-term relationship, and that is fine too. But, periods of singleness are excellent opportunities to become comfortable with who we are and what we most value in our lives. They are an asset, not a liability.

The mindset that we ought to find someone can make us do one of the worst things in a relationship: settle. By viewing not being hitched as a problem to be solved, it turns whatever potential partner in front of us to a potential “solution.” Is this person “good enough” to be someone that we can use to meet this requirement? That can produce a sense that if they check certain boxes, they are good enough to be the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with.

But, if we are fine being single, the question becomes more open and genuine: Do I enjoy spending time with this person enough to spend the rest of my life with them? If you are comfortable being single, you can always move on and continue your single life until you find someone who you do want to spend your life with.

If you need to find someone, then your threshold for what kind of things you cannot tolerate must be much lower. This can lead to people staying in relationships that are not a good fit – or even with people who mistreat them – because they feel like the psychological or social cost of leaving is that much higher. Relationships built on such a premise are also much more likely to become unhappy, have problems (like abuse, adultery, etc.), or to end in divorce later (cite).

Spending your whole life with someone is no small matter, so it should be taken lightly. And trying to force your way into a relationship only disrespects and lowers the effectiveness of the process. Ironically, the best way to take the question seriously is to make it only one option in the first place.

Living through the Normal Times in Between

Movies and books often wrap their stories in a tidy, emotionally-satisfying ending. In a big climactic moment, the hero slays the marries or marries the love of their life. The problem is solved, and the story ends as they live happily ever after.

Life rarely works this way. There is always a tomorrow. For every major, life-changing triumph in our lives, there is the day after, and a day after that. Regular life eventually sets in now that we have to live in the new reality we have set for ourselves. Life has no big story ending (until death), just a continuation of more and more days.

Hollywood depicts success as being able to “win” or overcome these challenging climatic moments, but living a successful life seems to actually be about how to live satisfied during the “normal days” in between. Learning to be yourself on the quiet days can be the most challenging thing of all.

Looking Back on Life: How Seeing the Route You Have Taken Can Give You New Clarity

Hindsight can really be 20/20. Sometimes looking back on your life can give you a fresh perspective.

It can show you the path you did not know you were taking. Clodovis Boff in “Feet-On-the-Ground Theology” shared an insight he learned traveling throughout the Amazon rainforest. He was visiting dozens of villages there and had hired a guide to show him the way.

One day they were climbing a hill. Boff, unused to the terrain, was out of breath slowly going up the hill. His guide, who traveled these paths all the time, would fly to the next fork in the trail and wait as huffing and puffing, he walked up. Once Boff arrived, he would show Boff direction they needed to go at that fork and fly up to the next fork in the road.

Boff said while he was walking trying to catch, he had no clue which way he was going or how he was getting there. Once he got to the top of the hill, he looked back and saw how their path led right up the hill to where he was standing now. He realized life is like this: in the moment, you do not know how your roundabout route right could lead anywhere, but when you look back, you can see how your past led to exactly where you are now.

Reflecting on our lives to date like this can show us the path our life is actually on. It can also muddle things.

Sometimes when we reflect our past, we see how truly uncircuitous our route was. We tried something that failed to go anywhere and had to double back. Unlike Boff, we are not always led to expert guides and must discover the best path the hard way.

With this, we should be patient with ourselves. The route we now see only looks like a route in retrospect, but it takes many years to find that path. Chances are you did not know that at the time.

So reflect on your life but do so with patience and self-compassion to not only see where you have been and remember where you were at at that time. Even though something that clearly seems like an error now given what you know, you may not have ad the ability to know that at the time.

Why Is Life Not Working Out for Me: A Reflection on Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops”

I recently read Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops.” It is a fantastic coming-of-age novel about a poor boy growing up in Belitung, Indonesia and about the role individuals, society, and the world overall play in producing poverty. To wrap up the novel’s themes, the main character, In its final pages, reflects on how fate, effort, and destiny influence the direction of people’s lives:

Many of the poor from his island, in particular, give up and blame their poorness on fate. God or the divine must think they deserve to be poor like this. They may be tired, and giving up is the path of least resistance. Working hard can be like picking fruit while blindfolded: you don’t know what kind of fruit you will end up with, but at least you’ll have fruit.

I found this to be an interesting and honest reflection about resilience in the face of difficulties in life. Everyone struggles with succeeding and failing in life, but those without as many resources often lack the ability to safeguard themselves from their mistakes and the mistakes of others (see this more detailed discussion how that happens). This can make it significantly harder to continue to persevere in life choices like education that may prove useful for one’s long-term development. They often cannot handle the risk that they may fail.

Instead, they frequently must choose the safest option professionally: whatever will give them enough money to eat and have a place to live right now, even if that job pegs them into a lower income track. Thus, they narrow themselves to what has worked, even if it may not be the best option for them. Because of this, giving up or blaming yourself can seem like very practical options.

But blaming fate or blaming yourself both ignore the potential role society might have played to put them in this more marginal position in the first place. Societies often act to exclude certain people, relegating them to the status of poor or supposedly undeserving. But it takes time, energy, and emotional intensity to realize that and to determine how to best take action to address it, and those who need such action the most unfortunately often do not have it in them to work through that.

(For a more full discussion about the travails of the socially fortunate, you can read that here.)

Intellectual Vacations

Most people need to take a break every once in a while, whether that be a few week vacation, or sometimes a longer break to help unwind. A physical break can help us detox emotionally from the constant churn of our everyday lives.

An intellectual break can be just as necessary and life-giving as well, yet it doesn’t get the same focus in our society. Take time off from your normal rhythm of production and produce something new yourself.

For example, one could take a few weeks or months off to work on one of your passions. During that time, produce something, such as poetry, a novel, a painting, a new video game, a music album, a beautiful hand-crafted piece of furniture, or whatever it is you enjoy making. Such a goal gives direction for the time and also can give a sense of exhilaration at creating something with one’s own hands.

Many would rather it be in a field or hobby that is different from what they do all day, so if you are, say, a writer slowly becoming tired from having to write all the time for your job, paint, write music, or do something far away from what you normally do all day for work. An academic friend of mine cooks: using his hands to produce great food to detox from reading and typing on a screen all day.

In their jobs, many are denied the ability to make something that excites them personally. Their employers give them tasks, and they produce what the organization needs or wants from that. That can be worth the paycheck and can even be fulfilling for many, but after a while of producing, it can become soul-sucking.

Some do this during their off-hours throughout their normal week, but if you are able, it can be helpful to set aside a few weeks or even months every once in a while to complete something on your own like a sabbatical. Use that time to unwind from the stress of your daily existence and work towards something new that you are proud of.

If that is you, taking time for yourself to create something with your own hands every once in a while can help replenish you from the soullessness of conformity and drudgery. Go on a vacation where you physically unwind, sure, but also make sure you devote time to make something you are proud of.

Reflection on Living in New York City for the Last 5 Years

I wrote this reflection during my last day in New York City:

Today is my last day in New York City. I have lived here in Brooklyn for five long years. New York has meant a lot to me. It has been my single favorite place to live out of all the places I have lived in. Here are some of the things that New York has meant to me or that I learned during my time here:

1) Many jobs, most frustrating: I worked many jobs while there. I developed my professional capacity as a data scientist there. I had many jobs I loved and many frustrations. Many annoying bosses and many great people to work with.

2) Many relationships: I went on a lot of dates during this time. I went from someone pretty inexperienced with dating to doing it all the time. Some were good relationships, but for whatever reason, most turned out to be okay or bad. Finding someone often felt nearly impossible in New York, especially through dating apps. It had the problems of too many options, leading to difficulties finding which ones were the best fit for you.

3) Many new societies, cultures, people: New York throws a lot at you, and I loved that. I loved seeing the many different parts of the world represented here. Visiting all the restaurants. Seeing all the museums Learning about different facets of history and society. I learned so much about the world here.

4) Pandemic and foot injury: About half my time here was during the pandemic, during a partial or complete lockdown, and during that time, I was further handicapped by a debilitating foot injury for about a year and a half to two of my five years here. That was awful.

5) Transitioning stages in life: I transitioned from young adulthood to the starting of middle-life here: I arrived in my late twenties and am leaving at 33. During my time here, I transitioned from my youthful energy to what may be the beginning of my middle adulthood. I noticed my energy level, preference for routine over adventure, and desire for things like alcohol changed pretty drastically over time.

6) Changing life priorities: I arrived here burnout from graduate school but still in love with learning. I was connected very much with academia and out there intellectual pursuits. During my time here, my passions transitioned towards a career focus, which then bottomed out, leaving me to whatever I will find passion in next.

Over these five years, my career and building my resume I think slowly became my driving force. I built a career in data science and juggled multiple passion projects (writing poetry, an animated sitcom, a blog, etc.) In contrast to previous stages in my life, I read less intellectual material, spent less time socializing with peers, and tended to focus on what would build my resume or on the “crux” or intricacies of getting my projects done. I think this was a necessary stage for me as it grew my skills and my capacity to get things done efficiently.

At the same time, I think my interests are changing, and I am slowly moving away from that during my next stage in that. In the last year, I started to realize how truly pointless all such career ventures ultimately were. I got shaken out of the trance and decided to move on, focusing on what makes me happy.

7) Fewer relationships: I made less close friends here than during previous places I have lived and felt less connected community-wise. Maybe that was partially because New York is a big city, maybe partially because the pandemic and my foot injury stifled some of this, but mostly I think it was because I was focusing on my career.

Despite the fact that my time in New York felt like back-to-back life crises and stress, living here was still a joy. I will always cherish my time here.

(For more about life in New York City, click here.)

4 Things that Surprised Me about Living in Brooklyn

I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years. Here are a few small things that continue to surprise me about this place:

1) How affordable some parts of Brooklyn are

New York City – Brooklyn in particular – has a reputation for being expensive, which is usually true, but I was surprised to discover some parts (like South Brooklyn) that are pretty cheap. Too often people only consider the popular or standard neighborhoods instead of finding a place that is a good fit for them. These neighborhoods, in my experience, are often more expensive, more crowded, and otherwise less enjoyable to live in.

My rent of $1,500 a month for a single bedroom was below the average for the country overall, and I have never seen cheaper groceries than in the stores around me. I averaged $219 per month on groceries. On top of that, I did not need a car, meaning no car payments, car insurance fees, gas expenses, or trips to the car mechanic.

Thus, Brooklyn has cost me about the same as or been cheaper than most other parts of the US I have lived in. The trick is to find the right part of the borough to live in.

2) Its ethnic quilt

Brooklyn is a hodgepodge of races and ethnicities. Each group is surprisingly concentrated into distinct neighborhoods (often based on historical waves of immigration) that transition suddenly. In a few blocks walk, you may pass through several very distinct ethnic enclaves with different feels. If you walk only a few yards, for example, you may shift from a predominantly Chinese or Yemeni neighborhood. More than say Manhattan, this gives the borough the feeling of a quilt with distinct feels in each section.

3) How helpful people are

New York City has a reputation for being stand-offish, but that has not been my experience here. People – in both Brooklyn and other parts of the city – may prefer quick interactions, but they are really helpful. You often have to get straight to the point rather than exchange long touchy-feely pleasantries and will keep the interaction short, but Brooklynites and New Yorkers, in general, will give the shirt off their backs if that is what you need.

4) How alive yet reclusive Brooklyn can be

I am the type of person who needs stimulation, yet I feared that living in Brooklyn, the constant churn of traffic and people would slowly drive me insane. Maybe some parts of the borough have this issue, but I was surprised by how quiet it can feel. I can have activity when that is what I want or I can retreat into my quiet apartment when I need to relax. It’s been a great balance of adventure and tranquility.

(For more a fuller personal reflection on what my time living in New York City meant for me, click here.)

How to Survive as a Young Adult: What You Can Do to Live A Satisfied Life during Your 20s and 30s

As someone in my early thirties, these are the aspects of life that I have found useful to feeling satisfied and fulfilled during this stage in life. If you are unhappy, feel free to think about whether you lack any of these and then determine the best ways to cultivate it. Be patient with yourself as you do; it can take months to grow them, and you have done nothing wrong if you are missing some of these; you are not a failure.

1) Intellectual growth: Are there things you are learning in your life: new skills, new perspectives, new things about the world, etc.? That can range from formal education to more informal methods like reading books, watching insightful videos that teach you something (all over Youtube or Netflix), or stimulating conversations with others. It can also range from learning about abstract academic subjects like philosophy to drawing to studying ants (because why not). Everyone has their own thing. For some, learning communities like book groups or other meetups where you learn with others help keep them accountable and encourage them to think about the topic in a new way.

What you are learning about can be useful for your career or completely separate, but developing wholly unrelated skills can teach you something new about yourself. Follow passions beyond what is “useful” or can be applied to your daily life: it helps you grow as a person. For your career, it may even give you inspiring new ideas about what you want to do with your career. That and it can be a lot of fun, helping fulfill you in ways you did not realize you needed.

2) Creativity: Are you producing anything cool? That could be art, writing stories or poetry, wood carving, drawing comics, dancing, or whatever you love in life. For example, my friend and I write a haiku a day (a small three-lined poem) and over the last few months, we started writing one short story or essay a day (like 300-500 words or a half page). Writing is my form of creativity and art, but you can also do supposedly “logical” activities not just artistic ones, like solving math puzzles that interest you (which I have done from time to time; I’m that kind of nerd and love it), conducting science experiments, programing a computer game, or building a computer from scratch.

For some people, their intellectual growth and creative activities are the same: they learn about a topic area as they produce things in that space. But, it is important to determine whether you are exploring each one adequately. Some people who combine them into one activity lean towards one and do less of the second without realizing it, leaving them unfulfilled. If that is you, you could develop whichever one you are lacking through another fun activity.

3) Introspection: Exploring who you are, what gifts you offer the world, what you need in life, and what you want in life. In my experience, too many people just “go with the flow” in life and follow what society or others suggest they do, become, or value.

Instead, it’s important to think about what you value in life, what makes you happy, and how you can use your gifts to help make the world a better place. What do you offer the world? What have the opportunities in your life offered you (your job, your family, your group of friends, etc.), and to what extent have they helped meet your needs and allowed you to become all that you can be? Finally, to what extent have you been able to offer your gifts and abilities to the world?

If any of these spaces you inhabit are lacking, it can be okay to advocate for yourself to make sure they meet your needs, find supplemental communities in your life that add the aspects that these communities lack, or leave any of those communities entirely. (Which one is best in any given situation is an incredibly complex judgment call to make, but when you are lacking what you need from the environments you are a part of, it is usually some combination of these three responses that ends up resolving the issue.) No one knows what you need better than yourself.

A helpful way to start thinking about what you offer the world is to list the jobs, courses, projects, programs, and other things you have done in your life (both fulfilling and unfulfilling) and list what about them has given you life (aka motivated you) and what about them have frustrated you or otherwise stifled your life. List what impact you made in that setting that you are proud of as well. Then look for common patterns across these lists: What common patterns emerge about what inspires you, and what about what frustrates you? This can help determine both what types of skills you offer and also what kinds of communities to look for that might best incorporate and cultivate your skills.

4) Mentoring and leadership: Do you have the ability to grow, teach, or inspire others? Examples of this can range from parents raising children to mentoring or teaching others to managing a team of employees who you help grow and become all they can be. Many psychological studies show that people tend to feel most satisfied in life when they have both mentees then can mentor and coaches/mentors who can, in turn, mentor them.

In addition to learning, we become more fulfilled when we feel like giving back to others in our community. Some people do this through their careers, either in their official job description or by informally helping others in their workplace. Not every job gives people the opportunity to do that, though, so others do in other communities of life: within their family, their religious communities, within their groups of friends, in clubs or social groups they are a part of, etc. If you are lacking this, think about how within your current social network, you might be able to mentor or lead others, and if there are no such opportunities, brainstorm how you can branch out and do it in other ways. These can range from volunteering to workplace mentorship programs to help youth with their homework to hanging out with your lonely neighbor when you have the time.

If none exist, think about what skills you can offer and help others through. You can use Recommendations 1 through 3 to try to come up with a few ideas on how, and if none of those work for you, brainstorm how you can branch out and do it in other ways. These can range from volunteering to workplace mentorship programs to help youth with their homework to hanging out with your lonely neighbor when you have the time. If you think creatively about this, you can make it happen, and you will almost certainly love the result.

5) Relationships: Community matters. I find in this stage of life, this can be hard. Studies show that in the United States at least, the 20s and early 30s in the United States are on average the second loneliest time in people’s lives (after one’s elderly years) where people have some of the least strong relational connections. High school and college are times when you are surrounded by peers, and after graduating, we are thrust into the world without yet having built the alternative communities that those who are older end up relying on.

Thus, you must be intentional and sometimes creative to form community. You may have to put yourself out there. Don’t let shyness defeat you.

What Is the Point of Money?

Many spend their lives acquiring money, but what really is money?

For many scholars, money is the ability to do something – whether that is to eat a sandwich, own a nice necklace, have someone provide a service for you – turned into a quantified unit. By this definition, money has incredible value. It literally is the ability to do or have things, but there are still some limitations to that value.

First, the capacity to do what? At the end of the day, money is a tool, a way to meet other goals. Capacity makes a very poor goal or purpose in itself. People who pursue money for money’s sake are attaining the ability to do things without a sense of what they want to do in life in the first place.

Second, as quantified capacity, money becomes less valuable the more you attain it. Everyone has the capacity to do things with their time and energy. Your salary has a certain amount of capacity as well. When you work, you trade the ability to do whatever it is you could do with your time and energy during that time for the capacity latent in your salary.

Often, this trade may give us even greater capacity, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not do with the time we have. You can use that capacity to meet your needs and pay for the things that you want, and thus help you live a better life. Such a trade may be worth it for you.

But after you have so much stored, gaining more may no longer add much value to your life and in some cases, may decrease it. Billionaires, for example, have enough to meet an entire life’s worth of needs and wants (and often the needs and wants of dozens or hundreds of more lives after that).

In such a situation, they do not have enough time left in their life to enjoy the capacity that they would gain from making more money through work. Each day they work, they lose one more day they have spent doing anything else (spending time with family, relaxing on a beach, or whatever makes one happy). Some ultra wealthy still work because they feel their job gives them a sense of meaning in their lives, but from a certain perspective, they are sacrificing their capacity to keep working.

Billionaires are an extreme example, but this applies to a certain degree to everyone. There is a time to build a base of capacity for ourselves by earning money, but the more one builds up, the less useful any new money we gain becomes. Eventually, that can switch and trying to attain more money after that is actually counterproductive.

You should evaluate for yourself how much of this thing called money you truly need and when the money you would gain is no longer worth what you would have to do to get it.

Life at the Top of the Mountain

“Uh-oh, I see another mountain to climb, / But I got stamina”
“The Greatest” by Sia

Hollywood often gives its movies satisfactory endings: the villain has been defeated, the world saved, the couple forever in love. But real life rarely works that way. Even after your biggest triumphs in life, there is always a next day when you must go about your regular life again. And then a day after that. And a day after that. Life keeps going (until death), just a continuation of days to get through.

Our successes may be fantastic at first, but they get absorbed into this continuing cycle of existence. I have spoken with people who think, “If only I would become incredibly wealthy or famous, I would coast for the rest of my life,” as they hustle to make their dreams come true. They try to climb the mountain that they have set before themselves, and some never make it to the top.

Among those who manage to achieve earth-shattering success, though, you might expect them to coast and live out their dream life, but many in that position successful people keep going for more. Some become used to a more extravagant lifestyle and feel they must climb even further to pay for their increasing expenses; others just seem addicted to the thrill of the climb. Whenever they get to the top of the first mountain, all they see is another even higher mountain behind it. True success, true peace must lie behind at the top of that mountain.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible has a different take on success. This is my personal paraphrased summary of what he said:

“I have had all the types of ‘successes’ in life you could ever think of – money, wealth, fame, power, learning, many wives [a common form of success in his culture for men in particular]. You name it; I’ve had it. I have stood on top of the world; I’ve actually stood on top of many worlds. And what of it? Did these things make me happy at the time? Certainly, but that fades over time, and I must go back to the endless quest of living finding satisfaction each new day.”

I can relate: I have had great accomplishments in life that I am proud of, but what of it? When you finish one mountain, there’s always another mountain to climb. Satisfaction must not come from being at the top.

I see many people still struggling to climb their mountains, that is, to reach their highest goals in life. Many never get to become what they always hoped and dreamed. They can spend their whole lives climbing their mountain. They can live in ignorance of what it is like to actually make it to the top. It’s often at the top that the harsh winds of the universe hit you the most, and you must make sense of how you will find meaning in it.

Whether you are in the throes of climbing your mountain or at the top or even about to start your climb, reflecting on what would give you lasting satisfaction in life and why is helpful. What would you do if you obtained your biggest dreams in life, and where would you go from there? And what would be enough that you would be content that you lived a life worth living? You may not be the same person after the climb as before, but by thinking about it now, you can cultivate the introspection to assess what you truly want in life and the strategic thinking to chart how to get there.