"Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It"

30 Nov, 2024

What would you think when you heard that you New Age Buddhist meditator friend turned out to be previously employed by a mafia gang?

Never happened, and not because I am employed by the mob myself. But that's what I feel when I read the book by Kamal Ravikant. A VC, a startup advisor, concerning himself with the most rational thing on Earth called finance, yet wrote about a touchy-feely self-help topic like this. Alas, a man should not be judged by his profession, just like a book should not be judged by its cover (which's awesome, by the way).

So, what's the book about? It's three-part.

1. A documentary of the time Kamal was close to killing himself, how he invented a ritual in desperation, and benefitted from it.
2. A manual for the ritual, which consists of 4 steps: The Loop, The Meditation (The Loop but you do it while sitting still with closed eyes and listening to soothing music), The Mirror (The Loop but you do it while staring into your left eyes reflected in the mirror while questioning your sanity), The Question (The Loop but you ask yourself rhetoric questions to choose the right not the easy answer). Included some advanced stuff that you may independently discover while meditating.
3. An update over coffee about the time Kamal coasted, and re-learnt the ritual.

The story is as ration as Alice in Wonderland. Yet, I got the feeling like I just read a world-changing scientific paper. It's full of conviction, and it's convincing. Trying is free. And truth to be told, I was disgruntled with life. If a daily 15-minute whatchamacallit helps, that's perfect.

That was right before October 1, 2024. 2 months later, what's the result?

By the end of October, I put a greyscale on the phone, indulged in distractions less, completed more at internship place, finished assignment 2 weeks before instead of letting it slip to just 1 week, did LeetCode everyday, completed LLM Zoomcamp, basically was more productive and less distracted. I did not feel like it's a miracle to be alive, but I did see my mood lifted. I sometimes indeed caught myself thinking, genuine, "I love myself". And I journaled, about the past traumas, about the pressure to catch up to my CS friend while keeping good grades in my major, about the loneliness of lacking a kindred spirit close by, about the shame of my indulgences in things that my generation regards as normal, SFW and NSFW.

Then I coasted in November. Anything I achieved in the one month came undone. I don't know what to say. If I could harden my negative emotions into a rod, Sun Wukong would be ashamed by his feeble stick upon seeing it.

Can I truly say that the method works? I think yes. I have not become filthy rich, I have not even landed a fresh grad job in Singapore that I prayed every day for. But I did feel more alive, the aliveness of having purpose, even conviction, of how you want and should live your life. Alas, it's simple, but not easy. We are excellent in finding obstacles to trip ourselves over. Just one occasion, and we can slide back exactly where we started climbing.

Funnily, that's actually the last lesson of the book. We, humans, fall. We, human, imperfect. We, humans, mortal. We live and make mistakes, then may die before correcting all of them. But, as long as we don't stop forgiving ourselves and getting up again, that's enough. And ultimately, we don't even want lottery ticket - we just want to feel "I am enough, hence worthy of love". So go straight for it, and give yourself that love now¹.

#post #thought