Light (Where am I now, pt 2)
First order of business. My friend woke me up at midnight after reading my last post. He thought that I was crying for help. Rereading it now, I could understand how he came to the conclusion. But it was not the intention, so I wish to clarify that.
Are you...?
No. I am not thinking about ending my life. But yes, I do think about death, always. More about it later.
Kafka?
He is to me who Ryan Gosling to you, "literally me". He is not the only one. I sympathized with souls struggling to feel loved and belonged and understood in their living time in this world, because that's how I feel. My life (thankfully) has not become Kafkaesque. But in the dark moments, like while I wrote the last post, he came to my mind.
What exactly were you trying to say?
I want you to tell me that I am loved, and you love me. Not romantically, but human to human. I was having a hard time, and needed that reminder. The rest was just me messing around, because I feel embarrassed. Now I feel better, thanks.
Where am I now?
I said before that I was struggling to pen a reflection on my 5 years in Singapore. Well, that's over now. I just need to talk about the most important lesson: love.
I encountered Kamal Ravikant's book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It two years ago. I sensed immediately that this could be the most important book that I may read in my life. I did not know why but now I understood. My core problem, a common, oh so common, problem plaguing much of humanity, is I want to love and feel loved, but I don't think I deserve it.
As a student of engineering worth his salt, I have looked for how others have tried to solve this same problem. The sad answer is that most people would do anything but actually solve it.
People can cope with distractions. You can open TikTok, or Youtube, or Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter), or Reddit, or Instagram, or Substack, or Netflix, or Shopee, or Amazon, or a bazillion other methods engineered to distract you from the waking nightmare that is your life. Before these modern shenanigans, we also have food, alcohol, drugs, and sex.
If we somehow avoid getting lost outside, we can et lost inside.still get lost inside. I don't think I ever can list all the lies that we tell ourselves when it comes to love. But a common one is indulgence in pain. It's when we tell ourselves that we need to be deserving of love first. That is just a recipe for a lifetime of fruitless pain. At best, you die a miserable achiever, having gained the world, but still not "deserve the love".
Witnessing all these follies, I want a more simple solution.
So you want to be loved? Great! Me too! We just need to answer two questions: "Who?" and "How?". The answers I suggest are not innovative. Kamal already said it years ago. It's you that need to love yourself, and you do it by showing it. Let's think of a person who love themselves. They would walk around the world full of thoughts like "I love myself! Yippie!" right? So the most idiotic way is just following their example. Silently (or loudly) repeat "I love myself" every waking moment. Then do it in more visceral ways. Ask yourself "If I love myself, what would do instead" and then do it, full stop. And then one day, we realize we have achieved the goal - we finally accept the love we give ourselves.
I know it sounds so stupid. The fact that it came from a book with title cannot be more new agey while written by a venture capitalist (whose brother is another venture capitalist, perhaps more famous) helps little. But it's the only thing I know that brought any kind of results. Am I loving myself yet? My last post would not have suggested otherwise. But without this practice, I don't think I will even think about this problem, let alone admitting to people and myself that I have a problem. And I think that naming and embracing the dark things inside, whether pain or fear or trauma or just limiting beliefs, is an inevitable step along the way.
It's still a long way for me to go in the future. But I know that I am in the light now. And with my luck, what I want may come faster than expected.