these are the kinds of stupid motivational quotes you'll find on instagram and tumblr every once in awhile. they feel vaguely inspirational in a very abstract sense, and you can maybe derive some mild satisfaction from reading them if you're in the right mood.
tell that to someone who's failed their 10th job interview in a row.
they make it sound so easy. what they don't tell you that you have to get shit on, pick up the shit with your hands, inspect it, and then use it to manure your garden.
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when i was very young i wanted to change the world, to
become the best. i have a stupid list of goals written down somewhere. i
remember two of them: become a chess grandmaster, and also cure cancer.
wouldn't be surprised if i had written down "take over the world" or
"memorise 1 million digits of pi" as well.
nowadays my goals are somewhat more realistic. "finish a half-marathon in under the 4 hour time limit" or "make a long-term average of $2 per hour playing 0.05/0.10 online poker". For context: walking a half-marathon very slowly would take about 4.5 hours and the 0.05/0.10 players on ignition are so weak that an above average chimpanzee could make money from them.
while it's nice to achieve your goals and not fall short, it does feel a bit sad to have none of the grand ambitions of a more idealistic version of myself. while i never cured cancer, i was pretty decent at multiple-choice science competitions. while becoming a chess grandmaster is still so far away i can't even see it with a telescope, i did become good enough to beat everyone at my high school and lose to everyone with any actual skill. and i became a starcraft grandmaster which is close enough i guess.
sometimes i think it's a bit ridiculous to say the journey has paramount importance, because the destination is what gets you out of bed to take another step on the journey each day.---
when i was in kindergarten i had a friend ben who i thought i would be friends with for life. i didn't know any better. in primary school and high school you have best friends, and in university you have project partners which is often the closest thing you have to a best friend.
a lot of modern human relations are built around some idealistic notion of forever. BFFs are forever. marriages are until death do us part.
but as i get older, relationships feel increasingly transient. one friend i lost because we decided we wanted to focus on our romantic relationships instead. another friend recently had a kid and he doesn't have time to hang out like we used to. other friends i simply grow apart from and it doesn't feel right to hang out anymore.
a lot of marriages are until divorce do us part.
my dad asked me, why do you value friendships so highly when in the end everyone ends up starting a family and you're not the priority anymore? it was a good question, and sometimes it does feel sad that all the friendships i have will inevitably fade away or otherwise end.
i asked my dad, is it truly the end of the friendship that justifies their value? i asked him, in this case, is it truly the destination that is to be valued, rather than the journey?
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if daniel wasn't streaming starcraft every day, back in 2012, would i have ever picked up the game? definitely not. in one of my palantir onsite interviews matt kaspar told me that he saw "starcraft grandmaster" on my resume and he asked me what my starcraft strategy was. i said, idk, i just mass marine every game because it works consistently.
without the palantir internship, would my resume have passed the dropbox screening process? probably not. would i be living in america nowdays? unlikely, i'd probably be working for atlassian with everyone else in sydney.
not every impact is life-changing. nowadays i drive with one hand most of the time. it's because leo used to drive with one hand and i thought it looked cool.
sometimes it feels like the people in my life are bricks and i am the building.
it's kind of beautiful how you can interact with all these people - and without even knowing it - you're leaving bricks behind for them to build their own houses with. so many people, you'll leave marks on them which they'll perhaps forever keep with them.
when you meet someone for the first time, they're just a stranger. perhaps in ten minutes you'll have forgotten them already, or perhaps they'll be who you spend the next fifty years of your life with.
when i first met shannon, she was just an online profile on hinge. when i first met harry he was just hongkai's medical school friend.
once i tried explaining to daniel why meeting new people can be so exciting sometimes. i wonder if part of it is this kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities. each person is an adventure on their own and you have no idea where they will take you.
who are the people in your life, and where would you be without them?
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in the book "lord sunday" by garth nix, the mariner says "all journeys come to an end". then he dies to unlock sunday's magic cage so that arthur can blow up the world and remake it from nothing.
sometimes the end of a journey means you die and there's nothing more. sometimes the end of a journey can become a brick in your house, an upgraded piece of equipment in your rpg, or a piece of shit in your garden ready to become manure.
maybe that's just human life, right? the knowledge that every journey comes to an end eventually is what makes every moment and every experience so very precious and magical.
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what journeys are you on today, and where are they going to take you?
