I Wanna Be
The very best, that no one ever was
I recently rewatched some old videos I had made back in my gaming days. (WoW & LoL anyone?) They reminded me of how obsessed I was with being the best, and how good I actually was, which wasn’t half-bad by most accounts. I was never quite the best, but it was enough for me to play with and be among them. That was all I really needed in life to be happy, the opportunity to keep playing the game.
Many years later, my preferences have remained mostly the same. I stopped playing video games in the hardcore manner of my adolescence, though I still gravitate toward activities that provide clear and immediate feedback like slacklining and practicing guitar. This makes writing and academic research difficult for me at times due to the implicit uncertainty and lack of encouraging signals, but I’m learning how to manage my energy and mind as a result.
What helps is knowing that I’m participating in a longer-term game. The goal isn’t to win, but to keep playing for as long as we can or want to. It’s easier to do so when the game is aligned with our core values and brings us a sense of fulfillment when we reflect on the ‘why’ of it all. But even then the doubts inevitably come from time to time, causing us to question our motivations.
Sometimes a shift is warranted and you move on and play something else. But how do you know when it’s time to make the leap? Many things in my life currently feel up in the air, which makes it hard to be present and happy in its perpetual, recursive unfolding. I’m thinking about my relationships, my career, the role of writing in my life and why I continue to labor over words and voice and style when so many other forces are demanding my attention. So it warmed my soul when my friend sent me the the message below:
I lost my maternal grandmother last Friday. Am still processing and grieving. Just wanted to tell you that I’ve been reading “My Light” from Seeds and it has helped me tremendously.
In finding reassurance and meaning in a poem I wrote awhile ago, she helped me see that my words and work mean something. That art, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has the power to help us see more clearly and heal. This was the reassurance and validation I needed to continue making things I may not see the impact of for years, if ever.
I wish I was purely motivated by enjoyment and curiosity in my pursuits, but it’s not as simple as that for me. I need more reassurance than I’m comfortable admitting. It gives my existence an extra layer of meaning to latch onto during hard times. Maybe I’ll never be the best at accepting it and many other things in my life, but I’m certainly trying. This puts me in the grace of the best company while still keeping me in the game.
- My Light
- When someone dies
- are they really gone?
- The apples in the garden
- miss your callused touch,
- and the Earth, it seems,
- can’t weep enough.
- Forever feels
- more real
- than the rain does.
- You’re gone
- but the story
- lives on
- in a bed
- of neurons
- you once said,
- electrical impulses
- with enough power
- to light
- entire universes.
- I wish you were here
- but you are there
- where stars like you
- are meant to burn
- like diamonds studded
- in the sky,
- your bright
- presence
- forever my light.
Links, Music, Miscellanea
Chess and Cognition. Below is a Twitter thread highlighting some research findings that suggest learning chess (and music and languages) has no “cognitive transfer” effects. That is, knowledge is domain-specific and being good at chess doesn’t make you better at math (and other intellectual pursuits). This makes me think about parents who force their kids to learn things as means to other ends, usually in the service of academic performance and college applications, which makes me a bit sad. (cough Many Asian parents amirite?) Maybe it’s well-intentioned, but the unintended consequence tends to be that these kids end up hating what could have been enjoyed for enjoyment’s sake. Rather than encourage and nurture their natural curiosities, parents push them – sometimes forcefully – to do extracurriculars in service of achievement. Not every parent does this of course, and I’m certainly not saying that we should never push kids towards certain activities – I’m sure all of this has been extensively studied elsewhere – but these findings suggest that maybe we should chill out a bit with our cultural utilitarianism and do things for the sake of doing them.
Previous studies suggested that teaching kids chess improved a range of outcomes, from math skills to logic to academics.
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) July 5, 2022
But it just isn’t true. Now, two large randomized trials, one in the UK & one in Bangladesh found no other benefits to learning chess. (except ♟ is fun!) 1/ pic.twitter.com/rgctzYcxKt
The (Potential) Pitfalls of Mindfulness Meditation. This is an interesting blog post on some of the potential pitfalls of mindfulness. Personally I’ve been meditating less over the years, not directly as a consequence of anything the author mentioned, but more out of an intuition that it really wasn’t helping me in the way I thought it would. I used it as a panacea of sorts for my personal issues, which ultimately turned it into an attempt to control and distance myself from myself. It can help you see your issues more clearly – and certainly manage them – but it doesn’t directly address the root cause of what may be bothering you. To be clear, I’m not bashing mindfulness meditation in any way. Just don’t overfit the practice and expect it to solve all your problems. On that note, here’s a study suggesting that an 8-week mindfulness-based meditation program produced no structural changes in the brains of the participants. Some people may take this as evidence not to meditate. But the reason you might want to do so isn’t for the brain changes. It’s, in part at least, to reap the benefits at an experiential level. Whether or not it leads to brain differences is besides the point.
FKJ Tiny Desk Concert. Funky. Playful. Eargasmic.