Category Archives: Thinking Out Loud

The Worth of a Word

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Family comes first.

I carefully wrote down each thought, each idea, each quote. They were like little gems handed to me from ages past, from the greatest thinkers and the wisest sages.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

The little shreds of paper were like oversized fortune cookies. It was somehow disappointing that these ideas would even deign to fit on them.

 Be yourself and I promise people will enjoy it. And if they don’t, forget them.

Each one fluttered to the bottom of the bin in a different manner, some twirling like helicopter blades, others tumbling, some dropping directly while others looped in circles.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.

My hand was beginning to cramp up. I hadn’t written anything in a long time. Nothing by hand, anyway.

There are three choices in life: Be good, get good or give up.

I swept my arm against my shirt to soak up the sweat. The sun arched overhead, hot and humid.

Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

When the wind picked up, it was like a giant dog panting at my back. I could feel the air, heavy with its slobber, wetting my clothes against my body.

Love is wanting others to be happy.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. The metal bin was filling up.

What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? In a month? A year? Everyone dies. Only a few truly live.

Sometimes I didn’t realize where the thoughts had come from, or how they’d affected me.

People first.

Sometimes, I didn’t remember who had said it, where I’d read it, what it even meant. Just that it was important.

Courage, originally meaning to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Like tattered photographs of relatives I barely remembered, but photographs that made my lips turn upward in a smile nonetheless.

Who would you be, what would you do if you could not fail?

I took one final look at the words that provided guidelines for my life, words that have comforted me in times of sorrow and driven me to strive against my limits.

Ideas are worthless.

I took one final look into the bin and then lit the match.

Execution is everything.

The Path to Success

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Stick to the path, reap the rewards

I rested my hands on my navel, glancing briefly at the empty plate before looking up at my long-time friend. I had sworn off eating here years ago as a result of working there and ruining my taste for it, but the memory was beginning to fade. It really wasn’t bad.

“So what does success look like?” I asked.

He and I had been on separate tracks in life for a long time since we’d met as children, but I felt like our paths were, if not converging, then moving in parallel.

Needless to say, we left with a vivid picture of what success looked like, and the steps to get there. Much like on the Katy Trail, where we had trailheads to mark our progress. We could rest there and gear up for the next couple of miles.

The thought stuck with me. Sometimes we were forced to go off the trail, but we always returned. Success became a glowing golden line in my mind, a treasure map. Yes, there was a destination in mind, but it was impossible to get there without taking it step by step. Then it struck me.

Success was not a destination. Yes, that was part of it, but it was a very small part. Ninety nine percent of success was the path itself. To succeed was to be on that path, and though we could diverge from it, as long as we returned or charted a new path, then that was success.

Where are you headed? What steps do you need to take? Take just one…and taste success.

Be a winner. Start today.

The Things We Own

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Just as we considered moving the dresser, the lights went out. The entire house had gone black, devoid of its electrical pulse.

We carried the dresser into the kitchen and left it there. There would be no navigating the stairs with such a heavy load in the dark.

We fumbled our way around the house and found the matches, lit the candles and brought them to the far corners of the house, lines of light trailing out from the center like the explosion of a firework in slow motion. We lit up the crucial areas: the bathroom, the living room, the hallway. We settled in for a bit, expecting the lights to come back on at any minute. But they didn’t.

In the dark, it became obvious that the light of day had faded. A simple observation, but when was the last time you saw the world go from being lit with the fire of the sun at dusk to the soft black curtains of night and the gentle caress of the moon? Beyond our walls, lights, and computer monitors, we unconsciously slide into the shadow of the earth every day.

In the darkness, there was only the flickering of the candles to illuminate this or that thing, as if we’d never owned anything else beyond the small circle of light. The things we owned metamorphosed from inert possessions to ornery wildlife living in the darkness, eager to strike back at our shins and feet for years of callous, dispassionate ownership.

I was reminded of a short story I’d read years ago. With the invention of electricity and the incandescent light bulb, families everywhere had been forced to clean house in the austere illumination it provided. Perhaps we could do the opposite and just forget about the things that inhabited our home. Let them go free into the night.

My parents went to sleep. My sister and I stayed up and told stories.

We told stories about dreams, about family, about adventures. We traded – here, have this. This is what happened to me then. This is what I thought. These are my friends. These are the events that made me. This is what the future will look like. These are my stories. Take them.

We told real life stories – we were too old, too mature, our imaginations too prune-like to wring tales of pirates and skeletons and zombies from the fertile darkness. Instead, we merely took the ones we had and set them out, each one a little lightening of the spirit.

Maybe another day, during another blackout, we’ll recount the things we own.

New World Order

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I was just going to move the phone. Where it sat on the floor, in the middle of the piles of books, clothes, and other pieces of my life, just wasn’t very accessible. Ironic, because its enormous dial pad was adorned by inch by inch-and-a-quarter numbers. An elephant could use it to dial home. Somehow, I had more doubts as to the abilities of the aged demographic it was targeted toward than the elephant’s.

The problem wasn’t the phone. It was the trio of tennis balls right next to it. If I could just leap to the phone over the pile of belongings I had left on the floor my Sophomore year and not land on the tennis balls, I would be alright. Or maybe it was my Junior year, piles and piles of papers I would never look at again, stacked against the wall, that was the limiting factor. Or the two mattresses from the bunk bed I had disassembled when I was bored. They took up a good chunk of my room and they weren’t even particularly comfortable.

I had to move the phone.

So I had to move the tennis balls. And in order to clear a path to the tennis balls, I had to shift my Sophomore year out of the way, and to really clear a space, I had to get rid of Junior year, too. And while I was at it, I tossed Senior and Freshman year in the trash. My fifth year in college didn’t count – I had checked out by then. I had graduated on time, I was just bogged down by bureaucracy for a year after that.

I bumped into middle school and elementary school and found them a home with college and high school. They had swirled around, vagrant for decades, and only now could I usher all these scraps, like little puppies yipping for attention, into their respective cubby holes. I gave each a reassuring pat on the head before I bid it good night, to be cherished another day. What remained, I simply tossed out. I didn’t have time for memories that didn’t love me back. And I didn’t have time for objects that didn’t have memories associated with them.

I tore down the corkboard in a fit of pique and discovered a hole in the wall that my house uses to breathe. The picture I hung over it flaps idly with the house’s tidal exhalations.

I stood back and looked at the work I’d done. My room stood, empty and barren, like the first time I’d seen it at seven years old.

I lay down in the middle of the blank room and looked up at the ceiling. The tiles were scarred by a sabre blade. Some things, you couldn’t get rid of. You just had to clear your mind, mind your scars, and move on. After all, there was so much more left to do. So many more things, carefully chosen and carefully placed. It was the beginning. Another beginning.

It’s time to start again.

The phone would need a desk to rest on. It was a rather large phone, after all.

Trail Etiquette

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A day after our journey, some habits stuck. I found myself walking up to random strangers. I found myself wondering about who they were, where they were going. I found myself wondering if I could help somehow.

All along the trail, we’d found generous, kind people. Wells had joked early on that Missourians were either very nice, or very drunk, and we never encountered the latter kind. There was just a warmer kind of people than you encounter in your day to day life.

I asked a man on the bus in Champaign if he was alright and he said “Yes,” then asked, “Why?” suspiciously. But on the trail, there was only “Yes,” and “Thank you.” There was Bob the Brewer and Kansas City man. There were store owners who would leave their stands completely open and unmanned and trust on the goodhearted nature of the bikers to pay anyway. We stopped to ask for directions and a woman handed us ice cold water bottles from the rear seat of a truck, completely unasked for.

Wells and I got into the habit that most everyone on Katy Trail had been practicing the whole time we’d been biking. We got into the habit of kindness.

When I think back on it, there’s only a few other times where I’ve experienced such camaraderie, the most recent example being the 2011 Illinois Marathon. There’s something about doing difficult things that brings everyone together. We all fight our own demons on the trail, or on the track, or on the road, but the fight is easier knowing that someone else is there with you, that someone else has come before you, and that you pave the trail for those who come after you.

That’s why we smile when we see each other on the trail. “Fight the good fight,” we urge each other, “I’m rooting for you.” And if we can, we help each other out. We tell each other about fallen trees along the way, abandoned towns to avoid, and we tell each other about “bug hour.” We stop worrying just about ourselves and we worry about each other, because we’re all in it together. You and I becomes “we.” And that mentality is what is so strikingly missing from our day to day life.

Think about the last time you saw a stranger and you thought something negative. Maybe you thought they were a bad driver, or had an annoying voice, or that they had no sense of style. Maybe you thought that whatever it was, it just made them a bad person somehow, someone not as good as yourself.

It saddens me when I catch myself thinking this way, and I think that way plenty. But why? Why do we think like this? Because in reality, we are all toiling away at something difficult. We are all on some sort of path – a life path. We know the destination. We know how the story will end. It’s incredibly hard work to make what comes between worth it. We are in it together.

I have stopped feeling the urge to go up to strangers and ask them how they’re doing, what the weather is like, and inquire how I can help them. I have stopped practicing trail etiquette. I have stopped practicing the habit of kindness.

That’s something I’m working on.

By the way, the road ahead is rough, but the sky is bright and the people are kind.

Family

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Whenever people ask how it’s been living with my cousin, I’ve found it pretty difficult to explain. I instinctively want to say, “It’s like living with family,” but I’ve found more and more over the years that family, tragically, does not mean to others what it means to me.

My earliest memories are of family. They are of kissing my newborn cousin. Running with my cousins through the halls. My uncle’s scratchy mustache. My aunts and my grandmother cooking, beautiful aromas wafting through the house. My dad coming home at 11:30 and me and my siblings staying up (so late!) to surprise him. Running underneath the tables of a restaurant during a family gathering, playing tag with my sisters and cousins, and then being carried out of a car, only semi-conscious, afterward.

Then, as we grew up, we cousins figured out how to buy candy for each other. Remarkable how money worked to share joy! And then we grew into our other shared passions – pogs, Pokemon, and videogames. We held sleepovers as much as possible when we discovered how the phone worked. My aunt’s house is the first number I memorized, and it’s still in my muscle memory. In this day and age, where cell phones dial for us, I still remember most of my cousins’ house numbers.

To me, it’s simple. Family, and I mean my extended family as well, means tranquility. Peace. That is our shared story. I can always tell my family the complete truth. I hold no ill will toward any of my family, and none, I hope, hold any toward me. I have been amazingly lucky and blessed.

I recently graduated. It’s a turning point, I suppose. But I have such a strong sense of peace from the idea of returning home that I feel relief and joy rather than fear, as so many graduates do.

So when people ask me how it’s been living with my cousin, Kevin, I respond, “It’s like living with family.” And I know that I need to explain that, but I don’t. There’s too much to explain. Too many funny stories, too many family camping trips, too many proud moments.

Thank you. You are my family. You made me who I am. You inspire me to be someone better.

And sometimes you forget and leave me in gas stations, but that’s alright.

It builds character.

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."

They Call it a Race

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This weekend, I race against myself.

It’s funny how these things turn out. I challenge myself to a race and I end up figuring out so many other things. I may not have everything under control, but I can always pivot, turn, and take another chance at something.

Never be afraid of failure. Just fear the mindset of failure.

Today, 5 kilometers. The worst is running through my mind right now, so I won’t make any promises. I hope to make it mine, though.

Tomorrow, 26.2 miles. Wish me luck. See you on Monday.

Capitulation

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Yesterday, I registered for graduation ceremonies.

Dammit.

To me, graduation represents all the pomp and unnecessary bullshit that universities, bureaucracies, and accreditation organizations around the world are scamming my generation for. Years of toil, hypocritical educational environments, the associated hyperinflationary costs.

And for what? A degree. Another certification. A piece of paper that means, ultimately, nothing. I paid a lot of money. I got adequate grades. I passed.

So what, ultimately, does all of this mean to me?

It means a year and a half of community college and three and a half years of university. It means a struggle with defining myself. It means countless, countless failures. It means hundreds of friends and acquaintances, some lifelong friends, some bright flashes, many of whom I will meet again. It means getting to know Dance. It means Tricking. It means graduating and watching my friends scatter to the winds…twice. It means pissing off countless professors. It means changing majors 5 times. It means realizing that none of this matters.

It means realizing that what you get out of life is what you make of it.

So what did university teach me that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise? I don’t know. I have nothing to compare it to. But I’ve done the numbers and, for people like me, university is a scam. Thankfully, I put in an appropriate amount of effort, which is reflected in my GPA, but the fact remains that I don’t like it.

So why participate in graduation?

I am in a lose-lose situation. I don’t believe in this institution that I’m attending, but I attend anyway, for my parents, for societal expectations. Cognitive dissonance, it’s called in psychology – a discrepancy in belief and action. If I attend, I am untrue to my belief that college is a crock of shit. If I don’t attend, I miss out on the resolution to years of shared experiences with friends and family. I miss out on a chance to celebrate my escape.

Cognitive dissonance, kids. Don’t do it. You lose either way.

I am going to convocation.

I aim to misbehave.