Category Archives: Miscellany

What Naked Feels Like

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I step between the easels, watching their carefully casual gazes glide past my body. They had pointed me to a changing room, as if they weren’t going to see me nude, anyway. Beneath the clothes I change in and out of from day to day, I remain, for the most part, unchanged. No need for such a room.

I step onto the platform and suddenly I am Art, beyond vulgarity and eroticism, just lines and contours, shadows and highlights.

They can trick themselves, but I know the truth.

One girl draws me waif thin with sharp animal eyes, while a male student does for my manhood what quack medicine has promised for centuries. I almost point out the disparity in size, and then I remember that models aren’t supposed to comment. Besides, what guy wants an artist to draw him with a smaller dick for accuracy’s sake? I don’t know, and I can’t think of anyone besides myself.

Some admire, some desire, and some despise my nude body. But even nude, I’m covered in layers. Every day, I wear my “Asian” eyes, my “gymnast” physique. I wear black, black hair, the pride of my Chinese heritage. I wear flat feet and delicate hands.

Nude, I wear what others proffer. They drape me with coarse fabrics – “Asian” and “male” and “athlete” – with or without my consent. When I am nude before photographers or pencil artists, I wonder what it is they’ve clothed me in. But I will not apologize for my nudity, because what I wear when I am wearing nothing isn’t up to me.

Clothed or not, we are always nude. But I don’t know if we are ever truly naked.

I wonder what naked feels like – to be exactly what you are, with no concealing layers. I imagine that it’s a lot like being invisible. I imagine that it’s a lot like walking in a crowd on a busy day, mutually oblivious of the people around you.

I imagine that it’s a lot like wearing clothes.

End of an Era

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Since before I could even read, a man named Steve Jobs was shaping the field of consumer electronics as we knew it. It took a while for our electronics to be more than just beige boxes, but Steve was ahead of us the whole time. It was never about the flower print or the typography – it was about us. The driving vision, the engine that hummed behind Steve’s eyes and drove Apple through ups and downs, was about providing the best possible experience.

Despite allegations of tyranny, tight-lips, and astronomical expectations, it was all a remarkable display of empathy – if I were to look at a computer for the first time, how could I expect to use it? Steve had the heart to go back to the beginning over and over again, make no assumptions, and cut out the clutter to produce only the simplest, most innately understandable functional pieces of art. My nephews have been able to use the Ipad before they could talk. Steve didn’t design computers, he designed extensions of life, as natural to pick up as walking.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

But that’s not all he did.

Steve was a rebel, a round peg in a square hole. He was a dropout, a loser, a nobody for a long time. But he showed us what was possible. Not just for a company, not just for design, but for a human being. From days in his youth spent dropping into college classes to fighting cancer in the media spotlight, Steve’s life has not been easy. It could have been. He could ended his laser focused attention to detail and the user experience with the popularity of the iPod, but he kept on going. He was a showman to the very end, remaining tight-lipped and using slight of hand to distract us from the surprise.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
-Steve Jobs to John Sculley

This time, the surprise was a sad one. I have no doubt that he knew ahead of time, and planned it like any other event. After years of asking himself “If today were the last day of my life,” I hope he had no regrets when the time came.

Steve, you have been the invisible guiding hand of consumer electronics since before I could read. You have shown us what it’s like to live a life that truly follows your dreams. You truly have changed the world.

The ones who Think Different will always remember you.

Rest in Peace, Steve.
10.5.2011

Do the Impossible

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On Saturday, I walked across a stage and was presented with a certificate. And so, after a long, tumultuous journey, I graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor’s degree in East Asian Languages and Culture.

My GPA is terrible. My major is irrelevant to my interests. I pissed off countless professors, organizations, and administrators. But I wouldn’t change a thing. Personally, I’ve had a rich and rewarding five years, full of friends who have taught me more than a college class ever did.

But if I’ve learned one thing during college, I’ve learned that life is exactly what you make of it. So how do we make the most of this tenuous existence, this brief mortal coil? I can’t say the exact right answer for you, but…

Here’s what I did, and what I’m still doing.

  1. Do everything.
  2. Do the impossible.
  3. Nothing is impossible.

I’m SURE you’ve heard the advice that you should do what motivates you, do what you like, and to follow your passions. That’s true…if you know what you like. If you don’t know what you like, that advice is pretty useless.

1) Do Everything

You don’t know what you want? That’s fine. Doing everything you can possibly think of should help you figure yourself out. Study abroad in Zimbabwe. Help feed the homeless. Tutor a child. Tutor an adult. Pancake club? Alright. Hang gliding? Skydiving? Bungee jumping? Great. Public speaking? Wonderful.

Try it and move on if it doesn’t work out for you.  Keep an open mind, but when it starts to feel shitty, move on to the next thing. There is SO MUCH to experience in this world, there’s no point in getting dragged into something you don’t want.

And when you find something you do want to do, you can always pursue it. You can always come back for it, to explore as deeply as you could wish for.

2) Do the Impossible

You know that thing you’ve always wanted to do, or try, or be world-class at? Or that personality trait that you’ve always admired in the person you look up to? Or an impossible dream of yours?

Remember your dreams. Make a list. Then title it “To-Do”.

It is impossible to jump into the air, spin like crazy, and land safely. It is impossible to silence people in an entire building with just your voice. It is impossible to learn fifteen dances in four weeks and then perform them.

It is impossible to write a novel in a month. It is impossible to walk from Urbana to Chicago in 36 hours. It is impossible to live out of your car for an entire semester.

3) Nothing is Impossible

Those are all examples of things I have done. I better than succeeded for some, I outright failed others, but overall, I learned more than I could have ever hoped.

When you set yourself to achieve something impossible, your heart races when you think about it. You get up to pace around the room.  You think about what you’ve done to prepare, and even then, you feel like you’re not ready.

And you’re not.

But that’s okay.

You will fail. It is not, in and of itself, something to celebrate, but if you truly challenge yourself, it is inevitable. Failure is only another word for not having succeeded yet. Babies fail  at our day to day activities constantly. We celebrate when they say a single word, take a single step, and then before you know it, they’re speaking in full sentences and running headlong into the future. Celebrate small successes, because they will build.

Learning from those failures, meanwhile, is something to truly celebrate. Sure, I didn’t walk all the way to Chicago. Was it the heat? Was it the time constraints? Physical preparation? For 6 years, I failed to complete National Novel Writing Month. I ran out of ideas. I didn’t give it enough of my day. I limited myself too much. Perhaps most traumatically of all, in another time and age, I failed in my role as Executive Chair of MAASUand resigned. I learned not to do what I don’t believe in. I learned not to take responsibility without accountability. I learned, much later, that the pain of failure is only a tenth of the pain of believing that you are a failure. But learn, I did.

When facing the impossible, failure is almost overwhelmingly the outcome unless you try harder than you ever have before. Train harder, run longer than you ever have for that marathon. Plan obsessively for hours to figure out how you’re going to put that performance together in three days. Seek out pivotal people who have been in your shoes, people who have started that business, reinvented that industry, changed the world. It’s the passion of panicking, and it’s incredibly powerful.

When you finally manage to do what you once thought was impossible, it’s like being given the keys to the world. Anything is possible. You’ll see that it always was, but you never imagined or never believed in your own potential.  You’ll curse the time you wasted and promise never to misapply yourself again.  You probably will, but that’s another story. After doing the impossible, you’re euphoric and triumphant and you have every right to be.

Do the Impossible. Redefine it. And remember, you measure your own success.

"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level."

The Torment of Solitude

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All throughout high school, I went to the dances “stag,” which means I went by myself.

I was a strange one. I still am. But I was never afraid of being “strange,” or “weird,” or “stag.” Growing up, “weird” was always a compliment. Being the third of four kids was like being in a club where the weirdest and the most unique flashes of personality were marks of belonging, to be worn with pride, in lieu of tribal tattoos.

I am only beginning to appreciate how much support I received from my siblings just to be myself. It takes courage to  be yourself openly, flaws, deformities, and scars all exposed to the light where everyone can see them. Open to your greatest critic: yourself. My siblings, without my knowing, slowly inculcated a deep-rooted sense of courage in me.

In her TED Talk, Brene Brown recalls the definition of courage as being “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”  This rang like a clarion bell throughout my memories, whether it was throwing myself against the sky attempting to express with my body my frustration with gravity, learning to sing for the world, or standing face to face with a thunderstorm. All my life, I knew that my advantages, whatever they were, amounted to one thing: Courage.

Yesterday, I ran a few miles in the rain. A tornado warning had been issued, so people were rushing frantically through the rain to get to their homes and safety. I had been through worse. But the real reason I was running was because I could hear Nature slamming against the rooftop, demanding my tribute. So I went.

Just before I left my apartment, I paused and tried to think of  someone who would go with me. Names and faces rolled through my mind, but I could not think of a single person crazy enough to defy a tornado warning, willing to get dirty and wet for the sake of exhilaration, a breath of fresh Life. I left without a partner in crime.

Outside, I wondered what kept people inside. Fear? Of what? Truthfully, the only threat was falling branches. A lightning strike is one in a million and the cold and the rain are bearable, if not enjoyable. If you keep an eye out for trees, then the likelihood is that you’re perfectly safe. I’ve done it enough times. As the bass rumblings of thunder rolled through Frat Row and across campus, I wondered – did our ancestors’ hearts race as this primordial bass line prompted them to find shelter? To run from true danger? Pitch black, gale force winds, and confusing rain could have separated families. Today, we have street lamps, jackets, and GPS to help guide us back. But we still dance to the sounds of thunder.

I realized as I ran that it was much like starting a business. Most of today’s population believes that starting a business is too risky. And yet, entrepreneurship is the basis of value creation. Without entrepreneurship, there would be no jobs to work. Every big company began with a simple concept and a handful of people at best.  They started out small. And if they can do it, so can we, if we just watch out for falling branches.

I also came to realize that, with running in the rain as well as with starting a business, I will be alone.

After so many years, and so many close friends, I’ve found that very few are willing to entertain the thought of going into business. Fewer still, are willing to entertain the thought of going into business with a partner. And none, none at all, will jump at one of my ideas, no matter how compelling. I understand this. No one will do my job for me. No one will create the visions that I have. That responsibility is solely on me. It takes a leader to follow, and I would not follow promises of something good until I saw the product with my own eyes. And until I create something, I should expect nothing more from the people around me.

I had heard that new ideas need to be shoved down peoples’ throats, but I had never understood, viscerally, that nobody cares about your ideas until now. Theft of an idea is hopelessly vain, because nobody cares enough about your concept to steal it or buy into it. Not even your friends.

Truthfully, we are all alone. Life is not cut and dry. At best, it is a game, but it is a game in which we decide what success means, and it means something different for everybody. We are constantly creating our own game and playing it by ourselves. When you throw out all the rules but your own, the game you’re playing is a work of art. The canvas is blank. You may not even be using a canvas, but raw marble, or a brick wall. Life is art. It is up to you, and you alone, to determine what that piece of art looks like, feels like, smells like. What it means. How you want it to be received. Where you put it. Where you take it.

We are always alone in this. If you rule out death, then we have no choice but to continue alone.

Someday, we may be lucky to find close friends to share our art, our lives with, but the struggle of creation is still ours.

So be brave. Tell your story. Run in the rain.

We are all struggling, united in the torment of solitude.

Shoring up the Sand

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Remember playing on the beach as the tide rose, making sand castles and divots? Do you remember watching as the water ran into the moats and tore down the shifting walls?  And then rushing to repair them before the next huge wave came pounding in?

Shoring up the sand.

That’s what I’ll be doing.

It’s been hard to avoid noticing over the years that dependability is my worst weaknesses, and yet it’s one of the most important traits to have.  For instance, the little community that has sprung up around the Champaign Urbana Tricksters (CUT) is primarily a function of my going to trick session every Friday.

There are countless examples, but that is the one nearest and dearest to my heart right now.

So, in order to shore up the sand and prove that I can be dependable, I’ll be posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Let’s start with this month and see where that takes us.

Let’s go!

What Flying Taught Me – Tricking for Life

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I am a Tricker.

This means that I can jump into the air, rotate 360 degrees along whatever axis I please, and land without damaging myself.

This is the least of what flying has taught me.

For me, tricking has a long history. If you boil tricking down to its essential concepts, it is simply:

  1. Jumping
  2. Rotating

I started both at a young age. In fact, many do. Both are very natural motions: jumping, and rolling, really. As a child, I copied a move from Sonic the Hedgehog while play fighting with my older brother. I employed the Sonic Dash (AKA front roll) on him until he sidestepped and I ran into a wall. That was tricking, pain and all.

Tricking was there when I started to copy moves from the martial arts movies I’d seen. The fancy kicks, jumps, and spins. Tricking was there when my brother taught me the butterfly kick, which I would tweak and improve through the years. But mostly, Tricking was there when I hobbled on a bad ankle, bruised shins/waist/knees, dirty and scuffed arms.

Tricking was there when I looked up at myself in my reflection and thought about how cool it would be to place a foot on a reflected surface, foot to foot, almost like my reflection actually was a real body, equally and oppositely balancing me. Then running at it, placing my foot beautifully just so, living that dream, and then, with nowhere else to go, flipping over backward.

A wall flip

Tricking was also there when I tried the second time and landed on my face. In fact, Tricking was laughing at me. I had failed the second time because I had hesitated.

What flying taught me was fear. Visceral fear. Fear of death. Fear of injury. Fear of the unknown. But most of all, what Tricking taught me was to be afraid of fear itself. Besides the cliche, the physical reality is that hesitation and fear must be erased from physical performance in tricking, otherwise injuries increase many times. Incomplete moves are much more injurious than completed or overly rotated moves. If you stop halfway through a backflip, you are upside down and headed for the hospital at 9.8 meters per second squared.

What flying taught me was to fear, then, as I picked myself up off of the floor, dusted myself off, and cataloged my injuries, to hate fear. To hate the small voice inside that clung to me as I leapt, froze my muscles as I tucked in tight, screamed bloody murder as I saw the ground rushing up for me, then smugly said “I told you so. Don’t try that again,” as I lie, broken, on the floor.

What flying taught me was to hate the weakness in me that limited me to what I knew. It taught me to assess the risks and the rewards. It taught me that when you rise to the occasion, you do so with your entire heart and soul or you risk pain and suffering and debilitating mental and physical scars. It taught me that to even barely succeed, you must first set your sights as high as you can, and then leap toward it with everything you’ve got.

That’s why I walked to Chicago. That’s why I lived out of my car for a semester. That’s why, every year, I write a book in a month. That’s why I will continue to live my life to the fullest that I can, because I don’t even know what I’m capable of until I push myself higher. And I plead that you do the same.

This is what flying taught me.

Life is Full

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     I guess a quick recap of my life so far would not be out of order.

     Running continues to be a boon in my life. Not so much running, as the excuse to get together with some buddies and chat while crunching miles. I’ll admit, I’m a social runner.

     Tricking is becoming a really big part of my week. With open gym available 4 days out of the week, conditioning Tuesdays, and open session on Fridays, there’s a lot of shit that I could be busy with. Not to mention trying to get the club to a point where I’m not afraid it will implode like ASA. Okay, ASA didn’t implode, but I don’t recognize it anymore.

     Dance remains as fickle as ever. But I think we’re drawing closer, she and I, in her own distant way.

     Working at the dining hall has taught me so many things. But chief among them is that, I don’t need to care about the job to work there, just the people. I LOVE my dining hall buddies!

     In the process of breaking my no-employment rule. I just suck and have not gotten around to it. I have very little time. The time usage transition will probably be very rough and I’ll need some solitude in order to get everything straight before I go for employment.

     I think I’m beginning to feel where I want to improve myself and where I’d be happy to let other people help me. I want to keep improving at dance, singing, spoken word, and being a better friend/person. Finding awesome people. What else? Writing. I’m on the fence about writing code, but I’ll probably go for it. In fact, I will. And let’s see…math up to DiffEQ and Linear Algebra. Other than that…I’m not entirely sure.

     People are always worth it. Taking more chances. Vulnerability. Courage. Stories.

     That’s my life.

Daniel Wrong

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     A couple of nights ago, my little sister and I were talking about middle school. As it so happens, middle school, specifically fourth grade in my case, was perhaps the most defining year of my life.

     My middle school, Daniel Wright, featured public humiliations by teachers, emotional abuse, betrayal by the people who were ostensibly there for our betterment. They even turned my own parents against us, so that the hell didn’t end once I got off of the bus. So I stayed home as much as possible. Played sick. I learned to hate everyone. I learned to disengage. I learned that trusting authority meant that authority could hurt you.

     Little did I know that my sister was going through a very similar experience at the same time, at the same school. We were almost unconscious of each other, I think because we were both very young and very focused on our own pain. Side by side, and both unknowingly going through the same things. But where my response was a middle finger to the sky, to anyone ontop, to God Himself, my sister’s response was probably a bit more constructive. Where I withdrew into myself and developed a deep rebellious streak, she became spiteful. She resolved to prove that, despite her teachers telling her she would amount to nothing, she would become successful instead. With the help of her relationship with God, she worked through it.

     I discovered only a core of Self, fueled by fury and hatred. But where do we stand today? My sister is a highly motivated and successful president of a club at UIC, a good student, and a devoted Christian. She has an ability to rally people. She has held a job for years and was offered a full time position there recently. I, on the other hand, have never held a job for longer than a year, if we’re being generous, and the number of organizations I’ve quit is about equivalent to the number of organizations I’ve joined.

     That’s one side of the coin. The other side is that I am dependent on no one for a sense of security. I am beholden to nobody except myself. If I fail, it’s because I set the bar myself. If I succeed, it’s solely because of myself. I could be a janitor and be happy, because I’d be doing my own thing. In many cases, I am interested in what I can do by myself, skillsets that I can improve on my own.

     But I’m beginning to think I’ve taken that “flip the bird” mentality as far as I can go and still be satisfied. Yes, it’s good that I am happy with who I am. But in order to develop further, I need to care about other people more.

     I was going to write “I need to care about other peoples’ opinions more,” but that’s farther than I’m willing to go right now.

Peace,
Brian Kung

PS, I’m no longer living in my car. Apartment living, woo!

Money

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     I have a problem. I don’t know what to think about money.

     On one hand, I believe that it is not necessary. There are many accounts of this, so I won’t go into detail. My basic hypothesis is something like this: The good that people can do for each other is incalculable in terms of economics. For example, a baker can make bread. He can either sell the bread for $2 a loaf, or he can give it to someone who is starving. For the person who is starving, the bread is worth infinitely more than $2. And the baker makes more than one loaf of bread per batch. Therefore, the baker regularly creates an infinite supply of value.

     If basic needs can be met this way, our wants can be met through time expense or bartering. We want what we can’t have. What we can’t have is that which is outside of our expertise to acquire. What we are paying for when we pay for a service is time – time spent learning, time spent executing said skill, time spent building or crafting. In this equation, time is almost literally equivalent to money. In an ideal world, bartering would work perfectly.

     Of course, I’m a dreamer. This shit doesn’t work. Just ask Communism. The root problem is that our needs and our wants are not entirely separable, as sad as that is to me, and those who won’t give up their wants for others needs jeopardize the entire system. But, as a dreamer, I would like to see the world progress toward the ideal. Someday, maybe, we can figure out how to get rid of this money business.

     On the other hand, if I am to follow the herd and begin to acquire currency, then I have to have justification for it. I have to have things that I want to spend money on, and this is primarily the reason that I’m awake and writing right now. What do I want money for? This is a basic question, but it conflicts with my other view that money isn’t necessary whatsoever. If I go with my usual answers, I will have to ignore that belief, which is a source of dissonance for me.

     Let’s do it anyway. What do I want money for?

  • My debts and my family members’ debts.
  • Basic needs
  • Food – because the appreciation of food is its own aesthetic
  • Creative ventures – cool, funny, or weird ideas I want to make reality and share with others
  • Among creative ventures we might as well place businesses and art.
  • Art – experiences that I appreciate.
  • Gifts – things or experiences that make people happy.

     A lot of those are almost interchangeable. Basically, in order of importance: basic needs, debt, and Art, though the latter two are arguable. Philosophically, I would prefer Art take precedence, but realistically, debt and repayment is more important to me. I can’t conscientiously ignore my debt to someone and continue on as if that extension of their faith meant nothing to me.

     On a side note, I like the definition of Art as an experience that is appreciated. With that definition, it makes a gift the natural expression of Art and Love, which, according to the Buddhist definition I subscribe to, is wanting others to be happy.

     That said, I estimate basic needs once I’m fully operational to be:

  • Rent (or equivalent): around $800 per month.
  • Food: Around $50 a month.
  • Water: Roughly $15 a month.
  • Annual total: $10,380

     Hypothetical debts for my entire family are probably…nearly incalculable. However, let’s just count my siblings. I’m going to assume $50,000 debts for college for all of them, excluding myself, because I will be at around $14,000 when I graduate. $164,000 for myself and all my siblings. And let’s say theoretically that my parents maxed out a business banking account for loans at $500,000. So, all in all, debts number around $664,000.

     In order to meet basic needs and debt, I would have to pull in $674,380 in a single year, or $2593.76923 per day, or $324.221154 an hour, assuming 8 hour work days and 260 work days in a year.

     I wonder how I could do that. Then again, assuming that all four of my siblings tackle it, it would be significantly easier. We’d only have to be fully employed at roughly $80 an hour.

     Anyway, once that debt is gone, I guess the rest of life begins.

     Suddenly, I am having doubts about my earlier prioritization.

The Art of Seduction

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     A few years ago, I was challenged by a friend to read Neil Strauss’s book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists. Basically, it followed the journey of the author, Neil Strauss, as he struggled to gain mastery over the art of picking up women. He made himself into a new person, with a new name: Style. No woman could resist Style.

     After reading through this tome and following the progression of Style from a zero to a pick up pro, I began to apply the concepts and strategies to my own life. It was difficult at first. It seemed like how to be rejected was the only thing I was learning. But slowly, I began to have minor successes, which snowballed into major successes and before I knew it, I had 9′s and 10′s fighting over me in clubs and making me eggs in the morning.

     Yeah, that was all bullshit. A nice story, though, right?

     I read the book, but what I took away from it was at once more and less than the Art of Seduction. What I took away from it was more like footnotes for something more important to me – the Art of Life. What had happened to change Neil Strauss was entirely his doing. The person he had become was completely himself, yet completely and thoroughly put together in a conscious way to attract women. This resonated with me on some level, but I wouldn’t know how to put the pieces together until I talked to a friend about it much later.

     Pickup made me uneasy. Pickup artists struck me as inauthentic, craven beasts who calculated every move. I would read someone’s opinion online that pickup artists viewed women as nothing more than masturbatory aids, and I agreed. It felt that it was demeaning to women and dehumanizing. There was a part of me that was tempted to try it out, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It didn’t fit with what I believed, it could end up hurting people, and I was too scared.

     Years later, I would meet a real pickup artist, though his days were behind him, at least for the moment. We became good friends. Finally, when the topic came about during a long drive, I asked my friend how pick up artists could be authentic, to which he responded that it was “about being yourself…about being your best self,” and furthermore that people only got hurt if you failed to communicate your intentions fully. He said he looked at it more as bringing adventure into girls’ lives. I began to realize that this was something I might be able to get behind. I began to realize that pickup and seduction could be a positive thing.

     But the biggest takeaway for me was that it was about becoming a better person by dint of your own hard work. “Better” was whatever you wanted better to mean…for pickup artists, that meant they attracted women. For me, while that may have played a part, the message was that wasn’t the best me that I could be…yet. And having a clearer idea of who that person was to me was a good first step. I figured if I was my best me, there’s no way I couldn’t also be attractive. Just live my life the best way I can think of, and everything else will fall in order. I still believe it.

     Recently, I began to delve into reddit’s seduction sub-community. After reading this guide and poking around the community for a bit, I found a post asking how pickup artists reconciled their seductive ways with long term relationships. There was a response about how everything was about power, which I didn’t think fully explained how an enlightened PUA viewed it. So I responded:

I’m responding to you because you seem to find this a place of darkness. Some things you should read up on:

Seduction – meaning “to lead astray,” or “to attract,” courtesy of quazzy.

Lifers v Gamers – Lifers use the game to better themselves, gamers use the game to take advantage of people.

With that out of the way, how I reconcile seduction with a real relationship very much so adheres to the definition of “to attract” and the goals of a “lifer.” The primary message of seduction, for me, is “to attract” by being yourself…not someone that you discover somewhere in the hinterlands of your soul, but someone who you create. It’s an uplifting message – that, whoever or whatever you consider yourself now, you can forge someone better out of it, better by standards that you set yourself.

I believe that you do not discover yourself. You create yourself. There’s a great book called “It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be,” and the same goes for your personality. It’s not who you are, it’s who you want to be. If you have that going for you, your confidence will be attractive by itself, and if you want to be even more attractive, you can be that as well.
As for how this works out for long term relationships, the more comfortable you are being yourself, the more agency you have in your personality, the more likely you are to click with the right person, because you are putting out 100% your own personality. The only thing left is to find the right person. And getting to know someone, getting them to open up, is an important part of that.

There is a positive, affirmative way to look at seduction. Just ignore the gamers and the gamer mentality and seddit won’t be as dark a place anymore. I strongly hope that makes you less depressed about this subreddit, especially if you’re going to stick around.

     Basically…the way I see seduction is that if you’re good at life, you’ll do just fine at love.

     Tweakin’ out because I haven’t slept in 25 hours, so I’ll just leave it at that.