A Great Summer

The view from the roof above my office on 7th Avenue.

I think this is the first year in which I haven't feared the end of summer. There were hints of it last year, too: I was thrilled to go to college, and I felt more than ready to start a new chapter in my life. But this time around, I know exactly what I'm expecting to return to. And it makes me ecstatic.

In a funny way, there's something about knowing that summer isn't the only freeing part of my year - like it was in high school - that inspires me to value it more. In high school, summer seemed like a too-brief period of time during which I wouldn't have to worry about school-related stress or juggling too many things at once. Summer always seemed like a breath of fresh air, and it felt like a justified period of stasis. But in college, summers are also an opportunity for self-improvement and gaining experience. Many people work (which isn't "freeing," per se), and our routines change for those three-odd months. While this isn't necessarily more relaxing than the college lifestyle, I do think it can serve to be beneficial.

N—, M—, B—, and I in Central Park on a recent weekend.

For one thing, I've taken my first college summer to be a time for reflecting back on the year, thinking about how I've changed, and considering other aspects of myself that I'd like to work on. Unlike in high school, when summer represented a kind of getaway, this summer has felt like a period for development and growth. With that in mind, I developed a list of things that I wanted to work on throughout the season, and for the most part I've done pretty well.

For starters, I'm using Facebook a lot less. I deleted the app off of my phone (trading it out for the Messenger), and check my newsfeed for only a few minutes every day after work. Like I've mentioned, I've been running and exercising at a relatively consistent rate (it's a work in progress). I also stopped looking at my ex's blog cold turkey (among other things), and I reworked my investment plan (nerd). I'm playing piano pretty consistently, and I'm sleeping enough. And best of all, I'm seeing friends and growing more confident with each passing day.

There's under a month left of summer, but I'm not worried. It's been a great one.

Letting Go of the Future

I've been thinking a lot about law school lately. It's probably the result of a couple of things, namely being away from school and operating in the "real world" for the past few months; my desire to know what I want to 'do' and to 'be'; and in large part, the show Suits.

I recently read that thinking too much about the future can be a really damning thing. While it's obviously never a bad move to create goals and develop aspirations, outlining unrealistic narratives obstructs your thinking towards other potentialities and creates room for later disappointment if those narratives don't come entirely true. 

But the reality is, I don't know what I want to do with my life, and that upsets me. As someone who likes to have more or less my whole life "under control" - and note, I do at least realize what a sweeping statement that is - the uncertainty of not knowing who I'll be when I "grow up" is admittedly unpleasant. 

But all of my worries really challenge the mantra of this blog: I should be focused on enjoying these fleeting years of my life, not stressing over details of what it will be like in ten years. Besides, it's not like I've got the power to get myself into law school in the present moment. All I can do is keep working my hardest and making the most of my time as an undergrad. In other words, as is too often the proper remedy for my occasional anxiety, I just need to relax and enjoy the pleasant fact that I'm alive.

An example that I really think drives this whole point home comes from earlier this week, at work. At some point I noticed my boss' engagement ring on her finger, prompting an entire train of thought about what marriage will be like. One particular thought about my non-existant lifelong partner had to do with my proposal to her. In considering this, I had a split second of fear over how I would know how large her ring finger is without revealing my intent to propose. Then I realized: worrying about what kind of lawyer I want to be in eight or more years is a lot like worrying about what kind of engagement ring to buy for the future wife I haven't yet met. It just doesn't matter right now.

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time."

- Abraham Lincoln 

An Afternoon at Memorial Sloan Kettering

The view from the fifteenth floor: the Upper East Side.

My grandma has been staying at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for the past week. It's a somber place, but the hospital has a lot of positive things to offer.  Particularly, theres's a recreational center with a nice view. It's peculiar how attached you can grow to certain aspects of an environment in an emotionally sensitive time. For me, it's the toilet on the seventh floor, which is annoyingly difficult to flush. For some odd reason, this particular bit of the hospital provides a kind of comfort to me. Maybe it has something to do with stability. 

My Grandma's Clocks

Because of her illness, my grandma has spent the past week or so in a hospital. For the time being, I've been spending some time each night with her cat. Apart from the occasional scratch or bite, he's a pretty friendly guy. Every time I go up to spend some time with him (my grandma and I live in the same building), I bring something to read. Since little of note ever happens while I'm cat-sitting, it's usually a quiet half hour.

Quiet, that is, in a sense. Recently, I've noticed that in my grandma's bedroom, there is a clock in each and every direction. I attempted counting, and though I lost track, the number easily exceeded ten. This makes for an astonishing soundtrack. The first time it really occurred to me, I sat there and attempted to understand how a person falls asleep in the midst of such cacophony. I found it a little stressful, even. After all, as a metaphor, the image of an elderly person's room filled to the brim with clocks speaks volumes for itself.

When I asked her why she has so many of these things in her apartment, she responded casually, offering that she has simply acquired them over time. Some were gifts; others were catalog orders. When she explained it in that manner, it didn't seem nearly as much of a big deal as I had initially thought. But as someone who is interested (and apprehensive) about the future - or, put more optimistically, enthusiastic about the present - I interpreted her collection of timepieces perhaps more symbolically than she intended.

I think that to an extent, every person is afraid of change. And in a large way, a room emblematic of the passage of time speaks to that quite profoundly.

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

New York Times Sunday Review: "Love People, Not Pleasure"

I really enjoyed this Op-Ed from the New York Times, which explores the tension between happiness and unhappiness as two individual scales rather than one comprehensive spectrum. The article's author is Arthur C. Brooks, who is the president of the American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. that I had the chance to visit on a trip in high school). The article tackles important questions about the pursuit of happiness through extrinsic desires (e.g., fame, material goods, pleasure, etc.), when it is actually more wholly derived from intrinsic ones. My takeaway: our problem is "love things, use people." The solution: "love people, use things."

Read the article here.

Motivation (or, Achilles and the Tortoise)

At some point in high school, one of my favorite teachers had me read a book about math. The book was called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. After reading it, I started to regard math as more than just a numbers game, but rather as philosophical in its own way.

One key idea that the book's author exemplifies is Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. In a nutshell, this mathematical conundrum is premised on the idea that despite being much faster than the tortoise, Achilles can never overtake the tortoise in a race if it begins with a headstart. Logically, this checks out. Imagine that the tortoise is one hundred feet ahead of Achilles. By the time Achilles reaches that point, the tortoise has advanced another fifty feet. When Achilles advances another fifty feet, the tortoise advances another twenty five, and so forth. This goes on infinitely, and Achilles technically never catches up. As Charles Seife (the book's author) illustrates, the Paradox is explained with the concept of convergent series, which was not around in the days of the Greeks.

But I'm no engineer: I study the humanities, after all. So I bring this topic up for another reason altogether. Zeno's Paradox is important to me because of the way in which I think about my goals and time horizons, and how I'd like to change that. And more broadly, Zeno's Paradox suggests an important idea about the fleeting quality of life.

I try to run a healthy amount to stay in shape. In fact, it's a goal of mine to run six miles every week. When I'm not away from school, this works out numerically well for me, as one lap around my block at home is almost exactly one-third of a mile. So if I'm doing a two mile run, it'll mean six laps around my block. While this is useful when it comes to measuring exactly how much I need to run, I often find myself applying a kind of Zeno's Paradox framework in motivating myself to keep going.

After one mile, I'll begin to hear a nagging voice telling me that I just need to make it another half-mile (since this is technically an easier goal to achieve than completing another full mile). Upon reaching that point, the voice will start up about another quarter-mile. Then, an eighth-mile (lose yourself), and suddenly, my run will be over. When it comes to running a couple of miles, this kind of mindset isn't too problematic. But I think that the underlying idea it illustrates is.

To put it another way, I went to a high-stress high school. It was technically a seven-through-twelve grade school, so I experienced a total of six full school years there. Ultimately, high school was a good time: I made some great friends; I had some memorable experiences in New York City; and I learned so incredibly much. But just like on my runs, I often self-motivated Zeno-style, convincing myself all too often that I had x amount of time to go until y, at which point I'd be z of the way through my time there. Sure, it kept me going. But it also had me thinking all too far ahead. I was focused on getting out. I wanted high school to be over.

Between my summer job, final exams, and my occasional exercises, I've noticed that I do this whenever I need to wait something out. I think like this whenever I'm unhappy with a situation. I self-motivate in this way when my goal is simply finishing. But I realize that time is precious: especially at this particular stage in my life. It makes me consider how I've got to change my attitude when it comes to situations I'm not happy about.

You can always quit, but you shouldn't. That's the first step: choosing to commit. If you make it that far, the next important thing is to keep going (that's step two). But the final, most important step involves positive self-motivation. I'm not talking about Achilles and the Tortoise. I'm talking about finding something about the situation to love, or trying your hardest to discover something positive about it.

The next time I go for a run, I'm going to try and focus on the good weather, or how nice it feels to get active. If only he had stopped worrying about each increment of the race, I think Achilles would have beaten the tortoise in no time. Sure, it's true that calculus refutes Zeno's Paradox. But so does a better outlook.

Getting Started

A couple of months ago, I rounded out my first year at college. Throughout my freshman year, a lot about me changed for the better. I developed a much more positive outlook on life; I became more confident in myself, in more ways than one; and maybe most importantly, I became a little more philosophical. 

At school, I study an interdisciplinary major entitled Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). With this in mind, I don't see it as an enormous revelation that I've created a blog which, at its core, is intended for exploring the meaning of (my) life. However, I am someone who was raised without a strong sense for spirituality - this is as a result of my family background, a topic which I'm sure will arise in later posts - and as I've grown a bit older, I've discovered a need within myself to try and get a grasp on the "bigger picture." It is my intention that this blog will be a successful venue for doing so.

As of today, I'm nineteen years, four months, and fifteen days old. I'm in an age group that's generally regarded by older people as "the best four years of your life" (an expression that pains me for several reasons), and by younger people as something to anticipate ravenously. With that being said, I love being this age and, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's all downhill from college graduation, I'll admit that there are some realities to confront when you're 22 and it's May. So for the purposes of this blog, adulthood begins at college graduation. No, it doesn't mean that all college graduates are necessarily fully matured or capable (they're not), but there are a certain number of changes that occur upon entering the "real world" (that is: once college is over). So it is my goal that before I reach that point, I'll have figured out the meaning of life.

In my mind, the purpose of this blog is twofold. First, as most personal blogs are, it's an open journal. Our college years are important, and I think it will prove wise to try and document some aspects of this time in a reflective context. Second, I'd like this blog to be a kind of working experiment in understanding the "bigger picture." It's obviously farfetched to blanketly try and figure out the meaning of life (whatever that really even entails), but I hope that by writing about my experiences reflectively and embracing life's greater lessons, I'll come out with a better understanding of who I am, what I'm looking for, and how to live a more fulfilled life.

"I still believe in man / A wise one asked me why / 'Cause I just don't believe we're wicked / I know that we all sin / But I do believe we try ..." 

- Frank Ocean, "We All Try"