Thoughts of Life
May 11th, 2026
Feeling a bit tired, but in general kind of just, here. I am going to go stream of conscious for the first time in a while, without any AI replying to me. I've been submitting my thoughts and ideas to AI, because, well, frankly it's nice to talk to someone about what bothers me in my day to day and get external feedback.
The brainstorming and orthogonal thinking is quite useful at times, but I realize, perhaps, that sometimes it's useful not to get any feedback from anyone. To just take some time with my own thoughts, being careful with what I think and how I think about things, and not let others and the world around me influence me.
It's important to seek consul when it's needed of course, but it's also important probably to respect how I think and feel.
For my girlfriend, I notice that I don't really know how she feels at times, and it's almost my responsibility to seek out how she feels. It's hard in this sort of relationship, because I don't know what she thinks and feels. Is it right that I feel the need to know how she feels about things?
I am unsure about it all—but personally the questions are more enlightening than the answer at some times. Sure, Claude or ChatGPT will give me the "right" answer, but that's the answer of the vast unconsciousness of humanity.
Sometimes I forget about Wittgenstein, that there are different truths depending on the framing you pick, or the language game you're playing at the time. That all the answers really are contextual.
I think Claude and ChatGPT can give you the right contextual answer, but once again, you are supplying the context. It's as if you are already picking the right answer, depending on how you frame the reality.
The truth of the world, what goes beyond the realm of language, it seems to me that AI seems to miss the point yet again. I do not doubt that AI is useful in helping the world understand language and functions and systems, I do not doubt the AI will help us, humanity, survive for much longer, but I don't think it'll help us in deciding the right frame of context.
Ultimately, it's our own judgement, intuition, and self-knowledge that will help us in any sort of direction.
It's our own identities that will determine how we act and live our lives. AI certainly can automate systems and tasks that are well-established, but to make decisions into the unknown, well, there's a blatant weakness.
The world as it is
My girlfriend is awfully quiet. I don't know what she's thinking at times, and at times it makes me frustrated she doesn't feel safe enough to volunteer her emotional state.
Is it my fault? Perhaps not. But is it my responsibility? Maybe.
Sometimes I feel it's babyish to expect the people around you to take care of your emotional state. Sometimes I feel it's babyish to hide your feelings and just expect yourself to put up with it.
But that's just criticisms being directed at her. I know that in reality that's just how humanity is and humans are.
Because we are all humans.
J suggested that it's okay to accept her as she is as a person, but to choose her as a partner is a different matter. Having selective judgement about this matter is quite a useful skill, because partners influence us incredibly so.
If she's emotionally stunted, or maturely stunted in a way such that she doesn't feel like her own emotions, needs, wants, desires are worth tending to, is it really worth anything at all to keep pursuing the relationship long-term? If she can't even differentiate between a strong resume and a weak one, and if she prematurely gives up and half-asses things, is it worth anything at all? If she's not even competent to work a Friday shift at a boba shop, is it worthwhile?
What I mean is that she's not a competent person, but dear is she a loving person. She is compassionate. I'd characterize her as someone I need but not might necessarily want.
But, if I can't love her as she is, can I keep this relationship going?
I love her humanity and just as she is, but there are clear downsides to it.
Like, what do I actually think? Perhaps that she's like, she's like, she's just fine the way she is. But it's clear she's living a completely different world than the corporate world. And to be honest, I am beginning to remember that the corporate world is not quite everything either.
I honestly dislike the corporate America lifestyle, I feel stalled, I feel low agency, and I feel like I'm not making a meaningful difference.
What even is this world come to be?
I am looking for someone to grow with, and for someone who takes accountability. I fear she's not someone who takes accountability for her life. Her ex-boyfriend seems to have victimized her, which is true, but at some point, it's her life, not her ex-boyfriends. And I really hope she realizes that as soon as possible.
It's not her parent's life, it's not her friend's life, it's not even the fucking government's life. It's her life. If she's an unemployed freeter it's up to her to make the change and difference to pull out of it. Not me, not the weather, not some job or career, it's her life.
I feel that might be where the maturity gap is. Not taking responsibility for life's outcomes, or perhaps, not being expected to of all these years.
When we speak it's of classes and college life, it seems most of her friends are in the... college stage of life. We talk about cafes and puppies. But what of bills and insurance? What of taking care of oneself? It feels like we truly are in different stages of life. Being responsible for one's own well-being, versus being responsible for one's studies are different things.
What I mean is, taking ownership of one's life looks and feels with a different texture than refusing ownership of one's life. And I am beginning to feel like she belongs to the latter.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it's something I have to seriously consider regarding whether or not I want to keep going in this long-term relationship.
Of me
She's criticized me for not taking care of myself better. That's true. I don't floss everyday. I don't necessarily compost, nor do I take out the recycling or trash.
Sometimes I forget to eat breakfast, or drink a lot of water. It's true. Sometimes I do forget.
The world still goes on though. I know my health is my wealth. But sometimes my mind just races. And I forget to take care of myself.
To be fair, her physical health is not that great either. Not like mine is tip top, but it's getting there.
The world still churns on and on.
Work
My work has been chill. Good work life balance. The projects are inconsequential and sort of meaningless. It's compliance work.
I don't feel particularly inspired to work hard anymore at work. Not sure.
The world still churns. I still want out of the rat race.
I don't know how I got sucked into the rat race, and it makes me sad. There's still a calling in my heart to leave it and pursue entreperneurship, but there's a cry in my heart to stay here. It's the golden handcuffs in all it's singularity, and I can't tear myself away from the damn work laptop screen.
Like getting lost in a void, getting lost in space, getting lost in the wide wide sea of stars. I just can't seem to find a place to put my feet down and rest. I just, the responsibilities, the time is slipping away. One moment I'm desperate for a girlfriend, another I'm desperate for an answer for my girlfriend.
The time seems to fly and shrink away. Sun and moon.
The world just seems to spin and spin and spin, and why, fate comes to give me a visit from here and there.
I think of the stories of the Three Kingdoms, or the Roman Empire—of Christ, of Buddha, of World War II, what did Cleopatra think when she took throne? I think of Churchill during the Gallipoli campaigns, I think of Marie Antoinette, I think of Marie Curie, I think of the Amazonians, and of the Khmer people of Cambodia. The Champa of Viet Nam. The Mongols of the steppes. I think of southern Italy.
Why, the world of people is just so vast and different, of all these differences, will we continue to generate more. Of the people we forget, as dust rises and fades, what is of our lives? The life of it all?
The world is changing very rapidly, and I'm not sure what to think of it.
I just feel like a speck of dust on this tiny blue rock in space, and I realize how little my life is, and at the same time how important and massive it is. It's my life.
The world just keeps turning and turning. I am twenty-five years of age. The big picture, oh, how responsibilities you take on can distract you from the utter mortality of life.
I think the most important challenge in life is confronting your own death. That you will die one day, and it's up to you to spend the time with that in mind.
"[T]hat to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die" —Cicero
Memento mori. Sometimes I forget, the bigger picture. I just get so caught up in the day to day, I just forget to contemplate that I will die one day.
It's a bit morose to think about, but I think it's important. The big picture under the blue sky. The biggest picture.
Of Death
That's it? It just ends? It feels a bit shameless, but perhaps in that frame, why, everything is compassionate.
I cannot help but try to think of what is causing my senselessness, but it's important to sit here and contemplate. I just keep writing over and over and over again.
Perhaps writing is a bit like that, there's just ideas coming out, and then you pick one interesting idea and expand on that.
That we will die. Perhaps that's the most important idea, perhaps, perhaps that's the whole point of consciousness. For most animals aren't aware that they will die, perhaps they are aware that they could die. The emotion of fear and adrenaline clearly show that, but perhaps, what are the tears the humans are able to produce, if not that?
It's a strange thing. I think once you make peace with your death, most things come to peace on their own, but to contemplate and make peace with one's death taken seriously, why, it's near impossible to do!
I accept it'll happen one day, but to embrace it? Surely not! My body distinctly rejects it. I don't want to die. And I accept that too.
I think life is about accepting and making peace that it usually doesn't make sense. That there can be conflicting viewpoints of all of it.
What did Cao Cao think of these things? When he was at the Red Cliffs, ordering his boats to be chained together on behalf of Pang Tong's advice?
When Sam Altman or Elon Musk wakes up in the morning, what are they thinking about their mortality? Are they in fear? Are they trapped from above from the holy heavens?
Or are they as the Pope, where they rest well in lieu of their judgement before Saint Peter's gates of heaven?
I don't know what to make of it, but now with my mortality in mind I feel more compelled to move towards direction, one way or another—it reminds me of how immigrant families and children of those families tend to achieve high success. Perhaps there is that mortal flame lit from within when one is exposed to mortality again and again throughout their lives.
Sometimes, I forget that I am going to die, and I live very poorly. And I make very poor choices and decisions. But I realize, that with my mortality in mind, with my own death in mind, why, only the greatest of judgements can be made. Why? I do not know exactly why. There have been a great many people who have described that one cannot live well without knowing how to die well, and I do not know. Perhaps I will not know until on my deathbed. But the exact thought and fears and realizations that come to mind when I am thinking about my death, why, it makes me want to make better use of my time. Perhaps Seneca was truly right to ask of a friend to retire in his letter On the Shortness of Life.
I am to die. I forget that sometimes.
On pictures
I don't know. There are a lot of thoughts in my head, and I don't have a clear vision of where I want to go, nor do I have a clear vision of what sort of person I want to be.
They say sales is the strongest skill to master, because if you can sell and communicate with people you can make money, you can earn and win money from people. You can build that trust very quickly and you can build a good reputation, and that some people are good at sales and other people are not.
They say sales can be learned, but what exactly is being learned?
The say the levels of consciousness is what needs to be learned, but what of it? What are these energies and vibrations going on? I do not know.
Most salespeople accept some form of spirituality and really embrace it. I think I do.
But perhaps, more importantly, is that if I were to die at any moment, would I really want to be a salesman?
If I were to die tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month, or year, how really should I be living my life?
Any of us can die at any moment, it just takes one sudden occurance of fate. A sudden gust of wind on a mountaintop. One thing or another, we could just die.
The fact that I internalize I will die will leave me with an answer, not one that AI can formulate.
I want to make sure that the people around me are cared for, and I wish for the best of them. And more importantly, I wish to, well, I don't know. Have kids?
What do I wish for?
What privilege is it in this modern world that I can plan to have children in the future, and plan to choose how many children I have! What privilege is it to plan my retirement, some 40 years down the line at the ripe age of 65!
That's a wonderous thing of modern times, but I don't think it's durable or guaranteed. Things never go according to plan, and by all means, I could die at the ripe age of 30!
Sometimes I forget about the things I've read in my life. I have read a great deal of timeless classics, but I don't think about them too heavily. Sometimes I think about what's right or wrong, or if reason and logic are worth combating with. I sometimes don't know the answer at all.
Socrates and his "I know that I do not know," perhaps that's really the truth of it all. But it's only death that forces my hand to make movement towards any sort of direction. I am beginning to think that fiction really just is the self-discovery and self-enumeration of lived experiences and ethics and morality, it's the combativeness of such things.
But how to layer it on, how to tell it gently, and how to tell a story, why, that thing is as mystical as the moon itself! I do not know how to tell a story well, other than trying hard through sweat and time, but I feel with many great arts, there's no effort involved. Only enjoyment, only working tirelessly as if the moon itself was.
The moon does not sweat as it revolves millions of miles around the earth, neither the earth around the sun. Yet it moves mountains much greater than any single human, you or I can! It's amazing, isn't it? How it's able to perform such feats without a shred of consciousness. Perhaps, I've been mistaken after all in thinking that consciousness had any sort of relation with it at all, that perhaps what great arts are able to achieve are distinctly great because they achieve it without consciousness.
The flow state that I seek, well, it comes to me in ebbs and flows, and I cannot for the life of me determine when it comes and goes. To act without thought, to art without a thought in mind, perhaps that's really where greatness truly shines.
I think of Alysa Liu, and in her champion of smiles and playfulness won the gold medal. It's a beautiful thing to see someone dance for no sake at all. For it's own sake, dancing to enjoy the moment, why, I think that realization perhaps is the most beautiful thing in the world.
For when I die, I think of that, that perhaps the best way to spend my time is to enjoy the present moment as it is, and to dance and dance and dance! Dancing under the moonlight of life.
Would I be doing this if no one were watching, and no one would ever know
Do I even have the courage to say this? I'd probably just be thinking in circles, in my consciousness, over things to do. Ruminating until I die.
I think there's a part of me that doesn't exactly want to admit it, but it's true. I think I'd be ruminating and eating and ruminating and eating and sleeping and ruminating.
Or more so, why would I want to be doing the thing that nobody would see me do? Or inverse it again, why would I not want to be doing the thing that nobody would see me do?
Because of pleasantries? Because of happiness? Of hedonism? Of survival?
What in the world is the world to be? I do not know.
Not an artist, or a writer, I think I'd feel the need for someone to see me do that. Maybe a monk? I don't think anyone would need to see me do that.
To be honest, I am not sure anything I do is, like, without for an audience or someone in my mind. Am I my own audience? Or is this just sophistry?
I don't know what I'd do if nobody were watching me. Oh jeez. That's the brazen fact. I just don't know what I would do if nobody were there to witness me, you know?
Diet, Sleep, Exercise
Perhaps all I need is these three pillars, I'm thinking if epiphenomenalism is correct after all. That consciousness is the resultant of a healthy body.
Consciousness is the resultant of a healthy body. That all my thoughts, desires, worries, were really just a function of what I've been eating for the past 30 months and how much sleep I've been getting.
Home
When I was a teenager I liked drawing a lot. Making fantasy worlds. Practicing cognition like that. I liked doing Physics problems during my university days. As a kid I would run out in the sun and get burnt tan, then poke at ant hills and wasp nests with a neighborhood friend. The hot concrete would scald my feet, and I wouldn't wonder what's the best way to spend my time.