Eric Tian

I recently finished listening to The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer on Audible (free eBook here). Schopenhauer is widely known as the ‘philosopher of pessimism’, as he often presents a worldview that challenges the value of human existence. This book is a collection of his essays, of which one concept stood out to me: that of fame, and how futile it is. Schopenhauer writes:

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons applauding? And what would he say if he got to know that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to secure the loudest applause for the poorest player!

What I take this to mean is that fame is overrated. The decision to care about what others think is irrational and if we truly knew how little other people thought of us, we would give them much less power over us. If those who anxiously count the likes on their posts knew how little their audience cared, they would be embarrassed. Did I mention Schopenhauer was pessimistic?

Yet, this isn’t to say one should look the world and yell, “screw it, you don’t care about me so I’m not going to do anything!” It is wonderful that people actively cultivate and share their insights with others, for there is so much to discover in the world. Furthermore, though Schopenhauer might disagree, I’m sure there are some consumers of content who deeply appreciate what’s being shared. Indeed, I have personally had my life turned around by blog posts and books, and have had days brightened up by a simple photo.

But what Schopenhauer begs of people is to avoid the temptation to be get caught up in vanity metrics, since, well, people generally don’t care that much. And while this sounds sad, this notion of discrediting fame is really quite liberating – for the weight of human judgment is great, and to be freed from this is a great achievement.  

Recently during conversation, a friend brought up this concept of the Fermi Paradox. It goes something like this:

Premise	Low estimate
There are a huge amount of sun-like stars in our Milky way.	100 billion
Some of these sun-like stars should be surrounded by Earth-like planets.	20%, or 20 billion
Some of these Earth-like planets should develop life.	0.01%, or 2 million

So, there should be roughly two million life forms in our solar system alone. That’s a lot of life forms, right?

Well… why haven’t we seen any indications of life? With two million life forms around us, shouldn’t we should at least see some indication of life. Where the heck is everybody?

Welcome to the Fermi Paradox.

There are three main hypotheses for The Fermi Paradox, which introduces us to this notion of The Great Filter.

The Great Filter

The Great Filter theory suggests that at some point during life, there’s a wall that life, or attempts at life, have to hit. This wall makes the evolutionary process extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter.

If this is true, the question is, where in our timeline does this great filter occur?

Theory 1: We’re rare (The Great Filter is behind us)

One hope we have is that The Great Filter is behind us—we managed to surpass it, which would mean it’s extremely rare for life to make it to our level of intelligence. One theory as to this filter we’ve managed to overcome includes the transition from a prokaryote cell to an eukaryote cell.

Theory 2: We’re the first

This suggests that for the first time in history, conditions in the universe are reaching a place that would allow intelligent life to develop. In that case, we may be well on our way to super-intelligence, and it’s simply happening for the first time ever. Existence, let alone our existence, is unprecedented.

Theory 3: We’re really screwed (The Great Filter is in front of us)

If we’re neither rare nor early, many would conclude that The Great Filter must be in front of us. This would suggest that life regularly evolves to where we are, but that something prevents life from going much further and reaching high intelligence in almost all cases—and we’re unlikely to be an exception.

This can be unsettling to think about, since it means that if we discover life forms other than us, it suggests that there are few Great Filters behind us. Worse, if we were to find complex life in our Milky way, it very much suggests that the Great Filter is most probably in front of us, thereby dooming our species. As Oxford professor Nick Bostrom puts it, “the silence of the night sky is golden.”

Whatever the case, it’s comforting to know that in a way, life is really special. Whether we’re alone or not, it’s clear that for our immediate surroundings, there aren’t any signs of life that we can see. And regardless if this is due to extreme luck, necessity or the presence of a God, this is a wonderful mystery, and one that makes life quite precious.

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For more on this topic, check out this post by Wait but Why.

There are many schools of thought on how one should raise children. Do we protect them against a broken world? Or do we thrust them into life, letting them fend and grow for themselves? Luckily, Kahlil Gibran in his collection of fables The Prophet offers valuable insights on this dilemma. I encourage all to take a few deep breaths and carefully read the following, because the imagery here is remarkable.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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Related: On Joy and Sorrow.

The following is taken from Tim Urban’s post Your Life in Weeks on his blog, Wait But Why. Fun food for thought.

This is a long human life in years:

And here’s a human life in months:

But today, we’re going to look at a human life in weeks:

Each row of weeks makes up one year. That’s how many weeks it takes to turn a newborn into a 90-year-old.

It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are—fully countable—staring you in the face.

Before we discuss things further, let’s look at how a typical American spends their weeks:

There are some other interesting ways to use the weeks chart:

But how about your weeks?

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got.

Given that fact, the only appropriate word to describe your weeks is precious. There are trillions upon trillions of weeks in eternity, and those are your tiny handful. Going with the “precious” theme, let’s imagine that each of your weeks is a small gem, like a 2mm, .05 carat diamond. Here’s one:

If you multiply the volume of a .05 carat diamond by the number of weeks in 90 years (4,680), it adds up to just under a tablespoon.

Looking at this spoon of diamonds, there’s one very clear question to ask: “Are you making the most of your weeks?”

In thinking about my own weeks and how I tend to use them, I decided that there are two good ways to use a diamond:

1) Enjoying the diamond

2) Building something to make your future diamonds or the diamonds of others more enjoyable

In other words, you have this small spoonful of diamonds and you really want to create a life in which they’re making you happy. And if a diamond is not making you happy, it should only be because you’re using it to make other diamonds go down better—either your own in the future or those of others. In the ideal situation, you’re well balanced between #1 and #2 and you’re often able to accomplish both simultaneously (like those times when you love your job).

Of course, if a diamond is enjoyable but by enjoying it you’re screwing your future diamonds (an Instant Gratification Monkey specialty), that’s not so good. Likewise, if you’re using diamond after diamond to build something for your future, but it’s not making you happy and seems like a long-term thing with no end in sight, that’s not great either.

But the worst possible way to use a diamond is by accomplishing neither #1 nor #2 above. Sometimes “neither” happens when you’re in either the wrong career or the wrong relationship, and it’s often a symptom of either a shortage of courage, self-discipline, or creativity. Sometimes “neither” happens because of a debilitating problem.

We’ve all had Neither Weeks and they don’t feel good. And when a long string of Neither Weeks happens, you become depressed, frustrated, hopeless, and a bunch of other upsetting adjectives. It’s inevitable to have Neither Weeks, and sometimes they’re important—it’s often a really bad Neither Week that leads you to a life-changing epiphany—but trying to minimize your Neither Weeks is a worthy goal.

It can all be summed up like this:

And so, what must we do to hit these Ideal weeks as often as possible? Who knows? Perhaps it starts by minimising the Neither weeks, then moving to the Good, then looking towards the Ideal. While the answer might be different for all of us, it seems like a good question to spend some time on.

One of the many reasons I read books and blogs is to find insights to the question of what it means to fully live. Sounds deep, I know. But I figure that I could use some guidance on this, and what better way to learn than hearing from the people that have gone before you?

Recently, I stumbled across this idea from Austin Kleon’s blog, which referenced a piece by writer Oliver Burkeman called eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life. Burkeman writes,

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. (Relatedly, don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel – forward into whatever choice you made.)

It’s tempting to defer to the path of least resistance, which is often a path that leads to pleasures. And so, this idea that we should put aside these short-term pleasures is honestly kind of confronting, despite these pleasures being often pathological. I mean, if you had to choose a pet, a cute, chubby bee seems much preferable than an ugly, hairy caterpillar.

But looking back, it’s clear that some of the best decisions I’ve ever made fell in line with this framework of prioritising enlargement over happiness. Things like speaking up when it was uncomfortable. Leaving my hometown. Creating this blog. Public speaking.

Interestingly, over time these initially difficult decisions have transitioned into wonderful sources of happiness, something akin to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. It’s just in that one moment, a bee looks oh-so-cute, even though it might very well give you a sting leading to your demise.

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The article referenced can be found here.

I recently watched a video of people dropping in for the first time (thanks YouTube algorithm). In skateboarding, dropping in is the commitment at the top of the ramp. At the top, you’re standing still, staring into the abyss, and then suddenly you’re flying down the ramp and dancing with gravity.

The most important thing to do when dropping in is to commit. The worst thing you can do is half-ass it. When you only sort of commit, you’re likely to fall.

Learning this reminded me of something my dad used to always say. Decide once. You can choose to say no. But once you decide, commit to it and do it to the best of your ability.

I wish I could ask him what he really meant by that, but here’s my interpretation. One can spend endless hours contemplating a decision. But after a while, you’re better off just committing to something and facing the consequences, especially when excessive hesitation leads to time wasting and decision fatigue. As long as you wear a helmet, the worst possible outcome is you learn from it and leave with a great story. The flipside is that it might just change your life.

Indeed, it seems that in many areas, the decision to drop in is precisely at the heart of the challenge.

Picture this: you’re sitting at your desk at 10:45pm, sleep deprived, fatigued from work, sore from a workout and in the process of mindlessly eating your fourth punnet of strawberries. Your whole body begs you to read a book and go to bed. However, it’s a Thursday and you’re supposed to write. You begin to bargain with yourself. Just a short nap. Then you can write your stupid post. But you don’t trust your body to wake up. Just hold on for 10 minutes, you mutter. So here you are, staring at an empty Word document with no real goal in mind.

Ah, hello there.

Out of sheer desperation, you google, “how to write when you don’t want to” and click the first link. You give it a skim read – you’re too tired to read it in depth – and it’s surprisingly informative. You read about a self-discipline muscle. A muscle that grows with consistency and atrophies with days off. The author, Carter Barnett, encourages you to set the bar low if you need to, so long as you train it. You wonder how low it can be set.

After a while, the author ends with: The best way to write when you don’t want to is to just write when you don’t want to.

Exactly what you don’t want to see.

However, reading the muscle analogy reminds you of the importance of consistency. The importance of just showing up. That writing something trash is far better than not writing anything at all. So, you decide to jot this experience down, even if it’s the worst thing you’ve ever written.

Alas, here’s to the lazy days. To the days that seem long, heavy and suffocating. To the days where your eyelids feel like lead. To the days where you wish the Earth could just swallow you up. Here’s to facing these crazy forces and saying, “look, I surrender but just hang on for a sec –” and quickly rushing off to your responsibilities. Like an Asian kid throwing rice in the rice cooker right before the mum arrives. It could be disgraceful. You could end up doing the poorest job you’ve ever done. But at least you showed up and tried. And who knows? Maybe next time, it won’t be so hard.

You glance at the clock and realise it’s 11:22pm. Over 30 minutes since you started. Oi, you only said 10 minutes, your tired self mumbles. Sorry. But you guess it’s time for bed.

In 2014, Maria Popova, the writer of brainpickings.org, did an interview with Tim Ferriss which remains one of my favourite conversations of all time. For context, Brain Pickings is a collection of beautiful and profound musings described as a ‘one-woman labor of love exploring what it means to live a decent, substantive, rewarding life.’ Maria also writes a biweekly newsletter which consistently brighten up my week.

In this particular interview, Maria discusses her blog and who she writes for:

Tim Ferriss: The quote that I heard you cite that I wanted to dig into a bit was the Kurt Vonnegut saying, “write to please just one person”. So, my question to you is, when you write, is that still the case? And if so, who is that person that you are writing for?

Maria Popova: It is very much the case. I still write for an audience of one, and that is myself. It’s like I said, it’s just a record of my thought process, my way of just trying to navigate my way through the world and understand my place in it, understand how we relate to one another, how different pieces of the world relate to each other and create a pattern of meaning out of seemingly unrelated, meaningless information, and the intersection or transmutation of information into wisdom, really, which what learning to live is. It’s about wisdom.

It’s interesting, too, because when I started Brain Pickings – like I said – almost eight years ago, it started very much as a private record of my own curiosity and I shared it with seven co-workers that I had at the time just as an email newsletter thing. Now, to think that there are about 7 million people – strangers – reading it every month… [it’s so] surreal that I still feel like I’m writing for one person, one very inward person.

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When I started this blog back in March 2019, I intended it to be something like an online journal – a place for me to record my thoughts and reflections. But as my readership has grown over the last year, I occasionally feel the urge to adjust my content for a wider audience.

But the more I write, the more I experience this wonderful reminder by Austin Kleon: to write the books you want to read. Sure, I could write about the latest current affairs and topical issues to be ‘safe’. But frankly, the stuff I write about, I’d like to read about – and chances are, someone out there would like reading it too.

Like Maria, writing is ultimately my way of navigating through the world to understand what it is to live. And so no matter the spectators, I write for an audience of one: myself.

Here’s how artist Marc Weidenbaum put it in his celebration of blogging on the twentieth anniversary of his blog, Disquiet.com:

And don’t concern yourself with whether or not you “write.” Don’t leave writing to writers. Don’t delegate your area of interest and knowledge to people with stronger rhetorical resources. You’ll find your voice as you make your way. There is, however, one thing to learn from writers that non-writers don’t always understand. Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery. Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.

I recently listened to a podcast episode on the Tim Ferriss Show called Books I’ve Loved: Alain de Botton. Alain is a bestselling British philosopher and author, and the co-founder of the School of Life. He is also one of the narrators for the School of Life YouTube channel and has a phenomenal reading voice. One message Alain shares comes from D.W. Winnicott’s collection of essays Home Is Where We Start From, called the ‘good enough parent’.

The idea is, many parents are obsessed with being perfect. They want to set the best example for their kids. To cook the healthiest meals. To show the purest love. To have highest moral standards. And what’s more, they do this so their children can have the best upbringing, attend the best school and be the happiest child possible.

The problem is, perfection is very dangerous concept to strive for. It’s much better – and practical – to be simply a good enough parent. Alain says, referring to Winnicott’s writing:

Another great idea from Winnicott is the concept of the good enough parent. Many parents came to Winnicott very worried that they weren’t doing a good enough job as parents. They wanted to be better. They were worried that they weren’t educating the kid right, or there was some eating problem, or school problem, etc. And Winnicott could see that these worries were actually getting in the way of the parents doing the fairly good job that they were doing. And so Winnicott made a fascinating intervention. First of all, he told parents, no child needs a perfect parent. Indeed, a perfect parent is very dangerous. It’s a one way route to psychosis, a psychotic incident because essentially the job of a parent is to disappoint a child bit by bit and induct them into adult realities. If the parent is perfect, how can the child grow used to living in the world that we all have to live in, which is a deeply imperfect one?

So in an ideal world, a good parent is able to break bad news well to the child until the child can accept the whole panoply of difficulties of adult life, amounting ultimately into the fact that we are all mortal and we are all going to have to die.

Alain then suggests that this ‘good enough’ attitude can be applied to other domains such as friendship and learning. There’s no use trying to be a perfect friend, for screwing up occasionally is how a friendship grows. There’s no use striving to be a perfect student, for not knowing things is how you develop a sense of wonder. Being good enough to do the job, but allowing some gaps for maturity and growth, is what we should strive for.

In other words, our imperfections expose the inadequacies of life. And it is through these inadequacies that one understands the world clearer.

What a liberating message: that really, we don’t want to be perfect, for perfect is boring, unnatural and ultimately, unattainable. That being good enough is, in fact, perfect.

A few days ago, I was on the way to buy some groceries when I encountered a homeless man. He was slouched against a wall, wearing worn out clothing and broken sandals. He sat on the bare veranda with a grey duffel bag on his right and in front of him was an empty 7-11 coffee cup. I saw no blanket or rug for him to sleep on. As I walked closer, he looked up and our eyes met. Oh, his eyes. The homeless man had the most glassy and lifeless eyes I have ever seen, as though someone had sucked out the very essence of his soul.

“Excuse me, do you have any change?” he asked in a rough, tired voice.

I slowed down a little, hesitated, and said I had no cash on me.

“No worries. Have a good day.”

As I looked closer into his eyes, I felt a knot coming up in my throat. What stared back at me looked like someone who had been abandoned by the world. Who had lost everything dear to him. Who had lost a reason to live. How could a person look so lifeless? I found it disturbingly difficult to hold eye contact.

“Well, can I get you some water or food? Woolies is right around the corner.”

“Ah no, that’s okay. Thanks, though.”

I paused, contemplating whether to move on and to continue with my day. But curiosity got the better of me. I had to know this man’s story. I squatted down and looked further into his eyes.

“How did you end up here?”

The following story is my recount of the homeless man’s story, who I’ll name H.  

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H grew up in regional Victoria and dreamed of becoming a banker. He had never known his father, who had left his mother before he was born, and he lost his mother to cancer when he was six. He spent the majority of his life with his maternal grandparents, who were both alcoholics.

H was a smart and resilient kid. Although there were a lot of shady dealings with in his neighbourhood, he never got caught up in the wrong crowd. His mother, while she was alive, instilled in him a strong and correct moral compass. A compass that would come crashing down in his adult years.

Despite all odds and expectations, H fulfilled his dream and became a banker. On the way, in his final year of studies, he met a woman. It was love at first sight. They dated for a few months and got married within the year. They had stable jobs amidst the pandemic and loved each other. It was heaven.

But the problem with love is that while it is wonderful to have, it is equally terrible to lose. And H lost it. One day, H’s wife left him for another man and left him alone. This catalysed a downward spiral for H. A spiral which led to substance abuse, getting fired from his job, bankruptcy, depression and finally, getting evicted from his apartment. He had applied for social housing but for whatever reason, his application wasn’t being accepted. That left him no other option but the streets, where he has been for two weeks.

Over the last few years, H started smoking and often numbs his pain with alcohol – when he can afford it. In his darkest moments, H considers ending his own life. He keeps a blunt piece of glass in his rucksack and sometimes rubs it against his skin, wondering why life had done this to him.

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H sighed and looked into my eyes. “That’s life,” he said. “Just one moment can mess you up like that. Never think your life is perfect. It only takes one thing to tear it all down again. For me, it was my wife. For you, it could be something else. But once that thing hits you, you better stop it early. Because if you don’t, it will consume your life like a downward spiral, until you end up on the streets like me.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I murmured something about my condolences and my surprise at Victorian social housing. H looked down sadly, muttering a quiet “yeah.” The conversation was over.