Reflections

I realized yesterday that I haven't been living up to my full potential. I have been doing my math homework at the last moment, going to bed late, skipping lectures, and underperforming in my classes. I have been lazy, staying in bed a lot and watching too much YouTube. The fact that I have been lacking is not good for my reputation or academic performance, but it also makes me feel lowly and rotten inside.

Yesterday, I had dinner with a fellow CS student, who impressed me in a few ways. Firstly, he seemed to have a vast knowledge of math during our discussion, mentioning his enrollment in honors complex analysis and discussing some advanced mathematical concepts. Secondly, he secured an internship at SpaceX, for which he completed an 8-hour interview problem. Thirdly, he talked about how he built a productivity app in CS97 that reached a hundred downloads in the past week. Additionally, he appeared to have a vast social group, referencing clubs such as StartupUCLA, and personally knowing some of my fellow CS students whom I only know by name. Finally, he was well-dressed and well-spoken, which made a good impression on the rest of us.

The past night passed somewhat uncomfortably for me, as I was troubled by the things I have been doing wrong and the undeserved pleasures I have been partaking in. I felt anxious for a couple of hours before I was able to fall asleep and once I fell asleep, I had an unpleasant dream. I dreamt that my dad was touring a guest through our home and had stopped by my room to give the guest a look. My room was incredibly messy and disorganized, with clothes lying everywhere and misplaced furniture taking up the whole room, making it nearly impossible for my dad to walk through the room. I also dreamt that I had been watching a particular YouTube video, the subject of which angered my dad, perhaps because I wasn't acting my age. Actually, in the dream, I had entered the YouTube video and begun interacting with the people inside it, who were a group of about 4 13-14-year-olds.

Also, this past Thursday morning around 9:30, as I returned from an Engineering group project discussion back to my apartment, I began to feel incredibly shameful of myself. I was actually supposed to stay on campus to attend my next class at 10am, but I felt incredibly fatigued and exhausted for some reason, even though I had been awake for only about 3-4 hours. I came back and slept through my next class, sedating myself with the petty comfort of YouTube shorts. Later that day, I thought about my high school peers, many of whom currently study advanced fields of study at elite universities, and I felt even lowlier at the idea of allowing so many people to slip by me. The next day, Friday, I started a weekly homework assignment that I should have started much earlier in the week. Things did not go well for me, and I ended up barely missing the deadline.

I made a scary realization recently about the relationship between hard work and status. Firstly, the idea of status is unspoken of, but usually clear to everyone in a group setting. That person has a higher social status and has accomplished more, works harder, earns more, or has a higher-status social circle. And it is good to have a high social status because it means more glory and more wealth. But someone who aspires to improve their social status will have to undergo much pain and sacrifice in pursuit of that goal; that status will not be handed to them on a silver platter. Furthermore, I think social status must be earned, and feigning it is difficult if not impossible (feigning high social status is also a narcissistic trait, I learned). By contrast, the person who resigns themself to a life of low social status, refusing to engage in hard work and virtue, will be faced with dwindling prospects and fewer resources at their availability. If you care about nothing except immediate protection against pain, you have virtually no responsibility or burden in the short run.

I knew someone in early high school who admired me as long as I was humble, hardworking, and disciplined. That individual held me in high regard and treated me with admiration. And I had to work hard to reach where I did, by practicing good manners, staying on top of my studies, and maintaining reciprocal conversation. But as I, greedy, tried to abuse that person's trust in me, by shirking my responsibilities, I lost what I had gained. As I started to become increasingly lazy, arrogant, and petulant over the course of several months, that person's admiration began to fade and soon I found myself flailing for that person's attention, like a spoiled, self-centered baby.

The moment you decide that you want to be a better person, to stop doing the things that are wrong, to begin to win over the admiration of your peers, and to begin to gain some self-respect for yourself, the harder things become suddenly. Piles and heaps of papers are dropped on your desk unsympathetically, clamoring for your attention and indifferent to your pain.

And trite thought it may be to say, life's limited span makes it serious. After a certain point in time, if you have failed to reach a certain milestone, recovering from that is difficult if not impossible. If you fail to become well-socialized by the age of 4, you will never be well-socialized. If you fail to learn your first language within the critical period, you will never learn a language. If you don't learn martial arts during childhood, the door to you becoming a world-class martial artist closes pretty rapidly. If you are uneducated by the time you are 25, you will probably never be well-educated because learning becomes much more difficult.

And for myself, time in the past five years has progressed much more rapidly than it did in the five years preceding that because my identity has been much less malleable over the course of the past five years than it was in the five years before that. And as my identity becomes even more fixed over the next five years, things will be even less likely to change for better or for worse. Over three years ago, I chose my field of study in university, which I have had to stick to since then (I mean I haven't had to, but the alternatives weren't great). Rigidity is also somewhat comforting because the relative certainty of your position in life that it gives you prevents you from having to constantly defend who you are. A professor who has a relatively unproductive semester from the standpoint of research is still a well-established and respected individual who has the chance to make a rebound in the subsequent months. On the other hand, a kindergartener who behaves poorly for the entirety of six months, I think, is more likely to be sent off at once to the bottom of the social ladder of kindergarteners. So over time, as your identity becomes more rigid, the doors of possibility begin to close off, which is both a good thing (because it means your past hard work pays off in the long run) and a bad thing (because it is difficult for a lowly individual to climb up the ladder).

So being relatively young as I am, I need to go a long way in order to prove myself out in the world. Things may very well go horribly for me (bad job, no wife, no family, shoddy home, lazy, fat, no friends) or they may go well for me (good job, nice wife and family, clean and pretty home, hardworking, fit, and socially respected). I can certainly make things go badly with ease, but if I want to make things go well, I need to clearly define my goals, work hard, prepare myself for the possibility of failure, be painfully humble and consistently keep my eyes open to the things I may be doing wrong. And even if I do these things, there is no guarantee that I will get what I want. But there is also the possibility of me getting something that I don't want but which is even better. Being a good person is such a difficult thing because I firmly believe that you are never good enough, no matter how much you try. And I truly believe that that is true: everyone is good and everyone is bad. Increasing your good:bad ratio means that you must constantly submerge yourself under scalding water to mold yourself into the person you wish to be. And how good of a person do you want to be? That's an open question. Jesus Christ was the best person to ever live, according to Christianity, and look at the terrible things that happened to him. If you want to be good, you can never quit and you must accept that you have to suffer, even if you don't want to. So as I conclude this post, what else can I say but to ask for the mercy of the one watching us from above and to say: Ad gloriam dei maiorem.