Tag: Psychology

I intentionally don’t have a best friend. 

Julian1 Comment

I intentionally don’t have a best friend. I don’t like the categorization. Or perhaps I have a best friend and just don’t know it:

  • If all my friends were in a burning building and I could only save one, who would I choose? Is that my best friend?
  • Is my best friend the person with whom I spend the most time?
  • Is it the friend I enjoy spending time with the most?
  • Is it the friend I think has the greatest impact on me? On the world?
  • Or is it just a gut feeling when I think the phrase “best friend”?

When I think the phrase “best friend”, I feel repulsed. Not from my friends, but from the concept.

So I don’t have a best friend. Not since fifth or sixth grade, when I had a best friend with whom I fought constantly. Or maybe seventh or eighth grade, when I had a best friend with whom I fought constantly. I vividly recall making my seventh grade “best friend” cry.

Since then, my life has been more of an ensemble cast. I have friends who I love. I don’t make them cry. That’s enough.

Embrace and love your nerd-dom

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Embrace and love your nerd-dom. All successful people geek out about stuff. Whether it’s sci-fi, sports, music, art, or math, they’re passionate and driven, and that’s a good thing.

I grew up a self-hating nerd. My interests were swayed by society’s judgments. I spent years getting over that, understanding it’s okay — desirable, even, to be passionate. I’m still struggling with it–with judging my loves.

It’s even desirable to be into super nerdy stuff? Absolutely. Sci-fi, e-sports, board games, and reading. Philosophy and sports and theater and art. All things I love. All things are great. Bill Gates is into bridge and board games. Steph Curry likes organizing his garage – how’s that for a weird nerdy hobby?

Every topic has passionate zealots and harmful stereotypes about them. It’s good to have passion. Passion moves the world forward. Do your passions, no matter how you judge them.

Most ideas are bad ideas

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Don’t jump at once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Time-constrained doesn’t mean high-quality. Top-of-mind doesn’t mean you should say it. Most ideas are bad ideas, even scarce, enticing ones.

Prioritization and patience are a pair of twins: prioritization is the concept, patience the implementation. Priorities are a rank-order of your values consistent across situations. Patience allows you to align your behavior with those values whenever a new idea arises or an opportunity presents itself.

When someone makes me angry, I often implicitly prioritize that anger, but I don’t have to. Some people channel their anger into achieving their goals instead of letting the anger steer them. The same can be true for other emotions.

An effective marriage between priorities and patience is part of why people with singular focuses are more likely to succeed. If your whole life serves the purpose of creating great literature, each thought, moment, and event slots somewhere under that heading. Every moment could be a story; every word becomes fascinating. If your life serves a purpose, each perception does, too.

An Uninformed Yalie’s Notes on Suicide 

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“It’s not about death as a good choice, per se: more a rejection of all that exists and a disbelief in underlying capital-V Value that prompts a strong and visceral disgust of all that I find. And, so, without any importance to be found, the act—suicide—becomes as equally rational as it was previously irrational: trading the next terrestrial 60 years for that same time spent in that void I’ll reach eventually is just as fine as not. No value is no value is no value, and what’s 60 years to a rock.”

Yes, I wrote those notes (lightly edited for clarity) as an undergrad dabbling in nihilism. And know what? They’re bad—morally bad. That line of thinking breeds Columbines and Unabombers. They’re also wrong. Meaning is made. Even if Value is a construct, that means it’s constructed. That means you can make it! And just because you make it doesn’t mean it’s not real.

But golly, could I write. And for a nihilist, I sure had passion.

Time moves consistently, but mine doesn’t.

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Time moves consistently, but mine doesn’t.

Subjective perception of time is altered by all sorts of stimuli. After a drink, it swims faster, blurrier. Right before lunch, it slows as I savor it more. “Time” is an objective measure about the world—a construct based on collective human experience. Each person’s time, however, is subjective. Experientially, there is such thing as a fast second or a long day.

At twelve years old, late at night in the hold of a sailboat, I wept at the realization that time only moves in one direction. Correct, precocious pre-pubescent philosopher young-Julian: correct, but incomplete.

I also recall, earlier, as a tyke of about seven, telling a friend, “we should have fun for the next hour so it passes faster.”

While I couldn’t yet articulate the difference between subjective and objective time, I already understood its implications: Subjective time is inconsistent. You can manipulate it, and thereby manipulate your experience.

So what?

So play with it. That’s as much as I’ve got. I’ve discovered a powerful tool and have little idea what to do with it, so let’s experiment and see what works. Try slowing subjective time by sensing the subsections of each second. Speed it up by losing yourself in thought. Objective time moves at a consistent rate in one direction. That’s our creative constraint. What we do within its bounds is up to us. If you discover something, tell me. 

Traveling around the U.S., with no nine-to-five, I revert to a pre-1800s sense of time, which I find brings greater focus and emotional depth.

How long have I been writing this? Wrong question.

Is it valuable? Better question.

Is it what I should be doing? Right question.