relationships Archives - The Cracked Door

Normal Life around the World: Thinking about What Normal Life Is Like Wherever You Go

When you visit a new place in the world that you have never been to before, that place can often seem really exotic or really scary. Having never been there, we can feel an ambiguity when we think about it. Our mind sometimes casts that ambiguity into one of two extremes: the most amazing place on earth or a horrible, scary place where we will constantly have to be worried about safety concerns. Which one you pick often has to do with whether we have built positive or negative associations based on the types of stories we have heard about that place.

Psychologically, this is normal, but these initial conceptions unsurprisingly turn out to be completely wrong. You may initially see what you think you will see, but if you stay long enough or keep an open mind, you will slowly discover all the ways in which you were wrong.

For me, one of the most important lessons I learn when traveling to a new place is that this place, in all of its wonderful unusualness, is normal for the people who live there. When I visit a new part of the world, instead of thinking about how strange it is – whether strange in the exoticness or strange in the weird or scary sense – I try to think about how those who live there can consider it normal. For every place is normal for someone.

By thinking about how weird it is, I mentally separate myself from the place, but by conceiving of how this too is normal for some, I force myself to confront one of the most perplexing things about humanity and the world: how we can create so many different types of normal. Thus, I come to terms with how in its distinctiveness, it still has something major in common with the place that I call home: that it is a home for the people there.

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.

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.)

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.