Eric Tian

A few days ago, I was catching up with a friend and we came across a second hand bookstore. Since we’re both fairly keen readers, we decided to go inside and have a browse. The store itself was tiny – perhaps no more than 30m² – but it was filled with books. Tables, bookshelves and baskets did their best to order the vast collection, but there simply wasn’t enough room. Baskets were like boulders on the floor and each step threatened to topple the books within them, like water in a cup. To say it was like walking through a jungle wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Despite its cramped nature, there was a certain reverence about this bookstore which gave me the shivers. Recently, I’ve begun to read more and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that books are powerful. For the first time in history, the ability for people and ideas to connect through the written word aren’t limited by the shackles of time or place. That’s pretty extraordinary. Want to discover the basis of the Jewish faith? Read the Torah. Want to learn a new skill? Read a guide. Want to discover how someone thought? Read their autobiography. And with the rise of audiobooks and eBooks, the accessibility of these ideas is greater than ever.

As the scientist, astronomer and author, Carl Sagan put it:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

As I was standing in the cramped bookstore, this realisation hit me hard. How many hours has someone out there someone spent writing these books? How many ideas were hidden within these funny dark squiggles? The magic pulsing from these worn out pages were palpable, shaking me to my very core. There is so much to discover, but so little time.

For these ideas expressed more eloquently, I highly recommend watching this YouTube movie: BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. Probably the best YouTube video I’ve seen this year.

The following is inspired by a post on Austin Kleon’s blog. I liked it a lot and thought I’d share the idea as well.

A few days ago, I came across this piece from the New York Times called The Truth About Cocoons. While the article goes in many directions, one idea I found fascinating was what happens inside a cocoon. Here’s an excerpt:

“It turns out that the inside of a cocoon is – at least by outside-of-a-cocoon standards – pretty bleak. Terrible things happen in there: a campaign of grisly desolation that would put most horror movies to shame. What a caterpillar is doing, in its self-imposed quarantine, is basically digesting itself. It is using enzymes to reduce its body to goo, turning itself into a soup of ex-caterpillar – a nearly formless sludge oozing around a couple of leftover essential organs (tracheal tubes, gut).

Only after this near-total self-annihilation can the new growth begin. Inside that gruesome mush are special clusters of cells called ‘‘imaginal discs,’’ which sounds like something from a Disney movie but which I have been assured is actual biology. Imaginal discs are basically the seeds of crucial butterfly structures: eyes, wings, genitalia and so on. These parts gorge themselves on the protein of the deconstructed caterpillar, growing exponentially, taking form, becoming real. That’s how you get a butterfly: out of the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.”

Reading this reminded me of a scene in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

Alice is confused, seeming to change with every minute inside the rabbit hole, and is looking to the caterpillar for some sympathy.

“When you have to turn into a chrysalis – you will some day, you know – and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

Not a bit. What an amazing reaction. While the basis for the caterpillar’s nonchalance remains a mystery, I wonder if there is some wisdom in this outlook – that when the world seems to implode and ‘digest’ itself, there is something extraordinary happening. And so while the current events worldwide go far beyond my comprehension, perhaps there is something after all this enzymatic chaos, something extraordinary, like a beautiful butterfly emerging from the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.

With George Floyd’s recent death catalysing a stream of turbulent events across the globe, not to mention amidst a coronavirus pandemic, I feel it’s inappropriate for me to carry on with my usual, self-centred musings. The events over the last few days have troubled me and have left me with little heart and energy to reflect on these matters in a public arena. As a result, while I’ll share some resources on Black Lives Matter, today’s post will be a bit of an intermission on my part.

Some resources:

• YouTube video containing tons of ads, with ad revenue going towards the Black Lives Matter movement (easy to passively run in the background): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgLa25fDHM
• World class journalism presenting the latest news: https://www.newyorker.com/
• Article outlining various charities and petitions available from Australia: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/06/how-to-donate-support-black-lives-matter-movement-australia

Instead, I’d like to share a short story by Ernest Hemingway called The Old Man at the Bridge. It describes a tale of tragedy and mortality written in Hemingway’s typical unadorned writing style and is one of my favourite short stories. Recently, I re-read this and the messages underlying this story hit me hard, with a strong relevance during these trying times.

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The Old Man at the Bridge by Ernest Hemingway

An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.

It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridgehead beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there.

“Where do you come from?” I asked him.

“From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled.

That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled.

“I was taking care of animals,” he explained. “Oh,” I said, not quite understanding.

“Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.”

He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?”

“Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.”

I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there.

“What animals were they?” I asked.

“There were three animals altogether,” he explained. “There were two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.”

“And you had to leave them?” I asked.

“Yes. Because of the artillery. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.”

“And you have no family?” I asked, watching the far end of the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the slope of the bank.

“No,” he said, “only the animals I stated. The cat, of course, will be all right. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot think what will become of the others.”

“What politics have you?” I asked.

“I am without politics,” he said. “I am seventy-six years old. I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.” “This is not a good place to stop,” I said. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.”

“I will wait a while,” he said, “and then I will go. Where do the trucks go?”

“Towards Barcelona,” I told him.

“I know no one in that direction,” he said, “but thank you very much. Thank you again very much.”

He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with some one, “The cat will be all right, I am sure. There is no need to be unquiet about the cat. But the others. Now what do you think about the others?”

“Why they’ll probably come through it all right.” “You think so?”

“Why not,” I said, watching the far bank where now there were no carts.

“But what will they do under the artillery when I was told to leave because of the artillery?”

“Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” I asked. “Yes.”

“Then they’ll fly.”

“Yes, certainly they’ll fly. But the others. It’s better not to think about the others,” he said.

“If you are rested I would go,” I urged. “Get up and try to walk now.”

“Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.

“I was taking care of animals,” he said dully, but no longer to me. “I was only taking care of animals.”

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.

A few weeks ago, I came across Ali Abdaal’s newsletter which talked about a reflective practice one can do at the end of each day. The idea came from a book called Storyworthy and the practice is essentially asking ourselves, “What’s the most story-worthy thing that happened today?” Then we should make a spreadsheet of these story-worthy moments and over time, we’ll build a bank of stories we can develop and share with others.

As someone who’s been journaling for a while and open to trying new things, this idea excited me a lot. So, every day for the last few weeks, I’ve been filling in a spreadsheet on Notion that’s titled, “what’s the most story-worthy thing that happened today?”. Looking back, this practice has been a lot more valuable than I initially thought it would be. Here’s two reasons why.

1. Looking back on past moments is fun.

Sometimes, it can be easy to reach a point where you sit up and realise you can’t remember what you did over the last few days, like you’ve just woken up from a coma. It tends to happen at the start of a new month or a new year (“man, where did 2019 go?”) and when it does, I find it very frustrating.

From the few autobiographies I’ve read and from the advice of others, recording down the present moment’s events can be incredibly valuable to look back on in the future. It can serve as a delightful reminder of a forgotten experience and remind us what we used to find interesting. The potency of these reflections is comparable to that of Ego in Ratatouille, when he tastes a special dish from his childhood and feels a palpable emotional rollercoaster. The stories that seem mundane now can be incredibly precious later.

2. A reflective practice forces you to find magic in the mundane.

In finding story-worthy moments throughout each day, we must look for moments of magic when none might appear to be. This pushes one to develop a higher level of awareness, looking out for moments throughout the day that are story-worthy. It’s essentially a variation of a daily gratitude journal where constantly reflecting on your blessings is supposed to make you more grateful and less anxious. Through doing this story-worthy moments exercise, I’ve begun to notice my mind unconsciously searching for interesting things in the moment and often, something comes up which makes bad days a little better and good days a little brighter.

There are very few restrictions to this practice: simply write something down each day that was story-worthy. Some moments I’ve written about have been during a run, doing groceries or simply while studying in my room. This practice requires very little effort, seems to be valuable and I’ll be continuing this practice for the foreseeable future. It’s pretty amazing how magical things pop up if you simply look out for them, even in the most unexpected of places.

Disclaimer: This post is taken from one of my journal entries last week and is thus more unstructured and personal than usual. Welcome to one of my more chaotic ramblings.

Neuroticism (noun): One of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology, defined as the tendency to experience frequent and intense negative emotions accompanied by a perceived inability to cope with such experiences. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience feelings such as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.

If I had to plot my levels of neuroticism over the last 4 years, it’d look something like this:

2017 – The year of new beginnings. Entering a new city, starting a new degree, a chance for a new identity. And with that chance came a longing to prove to the world my academic abilities. I worked hard – harder than I’d ever worked before – studying until ridiculous hours and obsessing over assignments worth 5%. Although my desire to succeed at University was strong, I still carved out some time for extracurriculars and having a social life. I stood on the border between healthy and neurotic.

2018 – Despite my efforts, I disappointed myself with my grades in 2017. And so, 2018 brought along with it a greater dose of neuroticism. I gave up many extracurriculars from the previous year and devoted even more time obsessing over every detail in lecture slides. I devoured personal development books, tried every ‘study hack’ I could find and prioritised my grades over my physical, spiritual and mental health. My moods fluctuated heavily with my grades and an assessment mark <80% could ruin my week. And so, despite burnout, a lot of lonely nights and a non-existent social life, I continued to grind and became highly neurotic.

2019 – Finally, I’d achieved the grades I wanted. By 2019, I’d figured out the best study methods for me and as a result, the amount of time I spent studying slowly decreased.

However, the cost I had to pay was immense. I forgot how to socialise, be a friend and didn’t have anything worth to show apart from my grades. And so, I hesitantly ventured out to other activities. Being a better friend. Helping out in church. Joining the University athletics team. Starting this blog. Reading more. And for the first time in 2 years, my studies no longer took first priority in my life. I was content doing just well enough to be considered competitive for my post-graduate options, but nothing more. I began to develop wider interests and my neuroticism levels decreased into a healthy level.

Present – Now, my neuroticism levels have reached an unprecedented low. This was and is still surprising to me – I thought that starting the prestigious course of medicine would do something to make me become more neurotic about my studies. However, the exact opposite happened: the ‘just-good-enough’ attitude from my Biomed degree carried through and I’ve started studying the bare minimum to get a reasonable mark, not a scratch more. Of course, since medicine is a career which demands technical excellence and a strong grasp over many different topics, this level of apathy I’ve reached is particularly problematic.

As I’m writing this, my end-of-semester exam covering >120 lectures is less than 2 weeks away and I’m 4 days behind my study timetable. And the thing is, I don’t really care. The 2017 or 2018 me would’ve been freaking out by this point but my emotional radar is flat-lining. These days, I sometimes wonder if I’ve crossed the fine line between emotional stability and emotional numbness.

Buddhist teachings fascinate me for this reason. While most secular schools of thought would agree that a certain level of passion is required for a meaningful life, Buddhism promotes this idea of liberation and non-attachment which is contrary to the status quo. While I doubt I’m going to become a Buddhist anytime soon, I’d love to talk to a Buddhist monk one day and ask how their path to enlightenment is going. I imagine their levels of neuroticism are much lower than mine and their insight to the dilemma of balancing emotional stability and numbness could be valuable. Plus, it’s always fun to make a new friend.

So, I guess I’m on a quest for neuroticism. I don’t really know where this quest is heading: is the goal to reach my 2019 ‘healthy’ level of neuroticism or to reframe my current low levels in a different light? Who knows. But historically speaking, writing this down tends to be a step in the right direction. I guess we can only wait and see.

Dreams are pretty weird. While I could give a personal spiel about this, I think Matthew Walker in his book Why We Sleep breaks it down pretty well. Here’s five reasons why sleep is weird.

First, we see things that aren’t actually there – we hallucinate. Second, we believe things that couldn’t possibly be true – we become delusional. Third, we become confused about time, place and person – we become disoriented. Fourth, we have extreme emotional swings – we become affectively labile (a psychiatric term). And fifth, we wake up in the morning and forget most, if not all of this bizarre dream experience – we suffer from amnesia. If you were to experience any of these symptoms while awake, you’d be seeking immediate psychological treatment. In other words, every night, we become flagrantly psychotic.

Over the past few decades, much research has been done on the nature of dreams. Through this research, scientists have generated some findings about sleep which seem to explain some of the strange presentations during dreaming. For instance, we know that four main clusters of the brain light up during sleep:

1. The visuospatial regions in the back of the brain, enabling visual perception;
2. The motor cortex, enabling movement;
3. The hippocampus and surrounding structures, supporting autobiographical memory;
4. The amygdala and cingulate cortex – both of which are heavily involved in generating emotion.

We also know that there is a pronounced deactivation of the far left and right sides of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain managing rational thought and logical decision-making. This explains why in my dreams, I think it’s a good idea to fight a dragon whilst naked when in reality, I might be wary of a little dog.

Despite all this research, some questions still remain: why do we dream and more interestingly, what do these dreams mean? I mean, surely there must be a productive reason for mother nature to allow this routine psychosis to occur every night, given how ludicrous it seems objectively. Of course, theories have been proposed aiming to address these questions. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams come from unconscious wishes that have not been fulfilled and that when dreaming, repressed desires reveal themselves in the form of “manifest content”. The task of Freud and other psychoanalysists was to ‘decode’ this disguise and reveal one’s true desires.

The notion of dreaming has notable representation in religion and mythology as well. In the Biblical book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had dreams which turned out to be prophecies regarding his kingdom. This contention is shared by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, who regarded dreams as visitations from the gods, offering divine information. There are certainly no lack of propositions aiming to tackle these questions: a simple Google search of “what do my dreams mean?” is a wild ride.

In the more scientific realm, explanations regarding the reason for dreams include the repair of emotional and mental health, as well as honing qualities of problem solving and creativity, the latter seeming to be in the domain of lucid dreaming *. But while an impressive amount of research has been done as to what happens during REM dreaming (neurotransmitters, cortical regions and the like), the question of the meaning of dreams seems to remain in the esoteric. What exactly does my dream last night of being a primary school student in Brazil mean? Why is there a constant theme of water in my dreams? And most puzzling personally, why and how do some events from my dreams end up manifesting themselves in reality?

Perhaps one day, science will progress to a period where these questions can be answered. But for now, dreams remain curious things we might ponder about for a brief moment when we wake, until we lose its contents to our psychotic, amnesic selves.

* If you’re interested in learning more about this, I’d highly recommend Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep.

It was bound to happen one day, but it’s finally occurred: the infamous writer’s block. For the past two hours, I’ve been sitting at my desk feeling as though I’ve lost the ability to write. It’s not that I’ve run out of ideas – I have a notebook with ideas for posts – but as soon as I sit down to type, my mind just blanks. Since it’s a Sunday and I need to post something, I’ve decided rambling and jotting this experience down is one of the few things I can still manage, so here goes.

In the anime Haikyuu!!, there’s a volleyball player called Bokuto who’s regarded as a top 5 ace in Japan. Meaning he’s the player that his team relies on to score when the going gets tough and is the player who the other team is most focused on shutting down. In one important match, Bokuto goes up to hit a cross shot – a fairly basic spike where the ball goes across the court diagonally as opposed to parallel – and somehow forgets how to. It’s an absolutely ridiculous scene, something akin to Gordon Ramsay forgetting how to chop an onion.

However, I’m kind of feeling this now. I’m not claiming to be a good writer by any means, but writing is something that’s always felt pretty natural to me, whether it’s journaling, writing essays or making these posts. But right now, it’s like some force has taken the neural network wired for writing and severed it. And the remaining neurons are desperately trying to form new synapses to fix this broken circuit. But failing.

Is there such thing as a writing fast? Fasting seems to be the new trend these days – whether it’s intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet or good old week-long fasts, there seems to be some paradoxical benefit in restricting nutritional intake. The concept of fasting applies to domains outside of nutrition too, such as with the digital detox (social media) or taking a break from dating and enjoying the single life. I’ve even heard of productive breaks from religion. Are writers taking a break from writing a thing?

Perhaps God’s giving me a message – but of what? Is this a rite of passage like a runner getting injured? What a cruel rite of passage. Or more likely, I might just be fatigued and just need to sleep. Whatever the case, I’m just going to end this ramble here. I guess we’ll see what happens.

After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week.

Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

One of my most vivid high school memories comes from a Friday afternoon with my literature teacher. School had just finished for the week and many of my peers were heading home, exhausted from two periods of literature class, but I stayed behind with a few others to ask a question regarding an upcoming assignment. As I was waiting in line, I overheard a question posed by a classmate to the teacher:

“Sir, what’s the most intoxicated you’ve ever been?”

While I thought this was somewhat inappropriate, my teacher laughed in response and smiled broadly.

“Believe it or not, my greatest levels of intoxication have never been from alcohol, but from literature.”

Those who overheard this comment erupted in hysteria, perhaps delighted by how well our teacher fit the book-loving, nerdy stereotype of a literature teacher. He had big, blue eyes under thin-rimmed, circular glasses and preferred turtle-neck sweaters and leather boots over the standard teaching attire of shirts and sneakers. I remember staring in disbelief by what I’d just heard. Being intoxicated on literature? In the modern era, there’s no place for books, I thought. The same quality of information can be found in more modern forms of technology such as YouTube videos or podcasts. The teacher’s comment was ridiculous, surely a joke. Either that, or he was just crazy.

For a while, I didn’t think much of this experience. But recently, I’ve begun to read more, thanks to being recommended some fantastic books and with the leisure of extra time freed up by the pandemic. And slowly, I’m beginning to understand what my wide-eyed literature teacher said with a grin all those years ago.

Good literature is hypnotising. They are often written in a way that borders on the edge of familiarity and unfamiliarity, inviting you to leave the world you think yourself to be in and to step inside another. And if you so dare to, the author then guides you step by step into this new world, revealing mundane ideas around you in extraordinary ways, forcing you to question the worldviews and narratives you hold. This can be dangerous, for when you find yourself back in reality, it can be disorienting on a systemic level.

Currently, I’m working through Life of Pi. It’s a beautiful book, with awe-inspiring portrayals of nature and humanity, scattered with golden nuggets on spirituality throughout. One afternoon, I sat down planning to read for 30 minutes, followed by some Uni work. The book ended up holding me for 2 hours, only letting me go due to my fatigue. When I finally put Life of Pi down, I sat up from my couch and walked around the house for 10 minutes in a daze.

The next morning, now acutely aware of the dangers of Life of Pi, I started reading The Three-Body Problem, one of the most renowned sci-fi works of the century, thinking I would fare better. Like the day before, the plan was to read for 30 minutes max, but I ended up spending the whole morning and the rest of the afternoon immersed in it. When I put the book down, my surroundings now dark, I was heavily intoxicated. My world was spinning, I wasn’t sure where I was and I imagine if my housemate asked me for my name, I would’ve hesitated before answering, unable to comprehend the question. It was ridiculous.

Literature, it seems I’ve underestimated you. The messages you hide cannot be compared to knowledge like any other, for the only way to uncover your secrets requires a departure from this world, a departure so visceral that time and space lose meaning in light of your potency. It’s clear without a doubt now: you are intoxicating.