So it turns out that it’s not a good idea to stop everything else and work on just one problem.

That means that even when a really big event happens in life, you can’t just focus on that. The everyday things still happen. You still have to go to school/work, you still have to eat and drink, you still have to do the dishes and laundry, you still have to spend some time every day with friends and family. You can’t ignore any of these ‘tiny’ things just because something ‘big’ happened.

In TV series’, there’s usually only one big problem every episode that the hero needs to fix. He can afford to forget about his daily chores while he figures out how to solve that one thing. Life doesn’t happen like that. Everything else still goes on.

It took me a long time to realize it; that you don’t have to solve the problem before you can get back to your life. This way of thinking is one of the cores of the perfectionist mindset. This mindset was slowly destroying me.

If I don’t complete it, I can’t move on from it, and therefore, I can’t move on with life.

False.

It turns out that any problem can be ignored and life will still go on. It might not go on well, but it will still go on. You can fail exams and life will go on. You can have cancer and life will still go on. Loved ones might die and life will still go on. Your life will go on and the life of everyone around you will go on.

Right at this moment; as you’re reading this; a whole bunch of different thoughts are flying through your head. Most probably you’re disagreeing with what I just said. That’s okay; it’s what I call your ‘first reaction’ to whatever I just said. Catch as many reactions as you can, write them down before you forget. What did your mind say to counter the concepts I just mentioned? Here are some common ones (and by common, I mean what went through my own head):

1. That’s not fair.
2. I shouldn’t have to deal with other things when I’m down/vulnerable.
3. Why isn’t the universe stopping for me? I need time to deal with this heavy stuff.

Life might have its own rules, but I don’t think anyone has figured them out yet. So what makes you think that one of those rules is for life to be fair? What makes you think that when you’re down for the count, the whole boxing match should stop until you fix your life and you get back up? Why does everyone need to be “understanding” of what you went through and treat you specially?

These were the questions that I asked myself when these ideas first occurred to me. This is an example of me “taking the red pill”. Ask the questions that might make you realize that all this time you might have been living your life wrong.

I realized then that I had somehow started believing that I deserved some of these things I just mentioned. That it was somehow a right that the world was obliged to give me. That the world should ‘pause’ for me. And if I didn’t get it, I felt betrayed by… by ‘something’. And I didn’t know why…

When problems happen, we press pause and tell ourselves that we need to fix this issue before we move on.

Pressing “Pause” for the big problems

At this point, you’re probably thinking to yourself,

That’s ridiculous, people don’t try to “pause” life. And even if they do, I never do this kind of thing.

Well, let’s see then. Have you ever crammed for an exam? Crammed to the point where you didn’t bother socializing or doing your laundry or thought about your family for a few days? Then yes, you’re ignoring normal life and expecting it to “pause“. After a few days, you expect to come back to normal life and “un-pause” and just continue on your merry way.

Or have you spent a few weeks working on a big project and ignored everything else in your life during that time? It’s the same thing. You’re “pausing“. You expect to “resume” life later.

Or perhaps you have a family problem where you need to be off from work or school for a while. You expect everyone and everything to let you off, and that you can just forget everything in life while you take care of this problem. You feel that you deserve it because if not life “wouldn’t be fair”. Ok, so let me ask you again:

Do you think you might have “paused” life before?

Now, let me make it clear that I actually agree that it’s great when people make allowances when you have problems. And help you out. Or give you space. But it becomes a problem when you start to expect it and feel that the universe is obliged to pause for you and help you out when you are down.

When we start to feel like this, we start to behave as if life “pauses” for us automatically when we have a problem.

Everyday pausing and procrastinating

We do this on a smaller scale in our everyday life. When a small problem comes, we don’t move away until we deal with it. Then another problem comes and we rinse and repeat.

Let me tell you a story:

This is the story of a young man who wanted to get into shape. So he told himself that he would, just as soon as the time was right. After a few months, New Year’s rolled around and he finally said to himself, “This is the perfect time to kickstart my exercise with a New Year’s resolution“. But then, he has to find a good gym to join.

So he looked for one, and after many weeks, found one. Then he thought to himself that he needs the right workout clothes (because you can’t just look sweaty in any old clothes now, can you?). So he went out and got himself the right ones.

Then, of course, he wanted to make sure he was doing the right exercises, so he just HAD to spend a few weeks first researching an exercise regimen online.

That vaguely fictional story is a story that’s repeated around the world. We lie to ourself. We procrastinate. We ‘pause’ our exercising because we convince ourselves that we have to solve a problem first before the plan can go on. Just like we sometimes convince ourselves that we have to solve a problem first before life can go on.

Don’t forget the big picture

Life is killing you, one detail at a time

Okay then, here’s what I’m really trying to say from all this. Don’t forget the big picture.

Don’t get caught up in looking for a job so that you can save up money to buy exercise clothes so that you can exercise. When you worry about those details and put everything in a sequence like that, you’ll never get anywhere. You’ll waste so much time worrying about the details that in the end you forget that the whole point of this whole thing was to get some exercise…

Small problems occur all the time. This means that your time will be so filled up with handling the details that you miss the big picture. This is the humdrum of daily life. Everyday, you’re focusing on these small small things and worrying and obsessing over every single one.

Like in this xkcd comic here, sometimes we find a method to solve the problem. Then, rather than solving the original problem, we zone in on that ONE SINGLE method and spend an ungodly amount of effort trying to execute that method perfectly. We forget that we can just ‘ring the doorbell’. We forget that the original purpose is to get the guy to unlock the door, instead of trying to figure out how to remotely change the volume on a computer through the internet.

Conclusion

Let’s recap.

Life doesn’t happen in a nice sequence like a TV series.

1. Problems don’t come to you one by one and you can’t ‘pause’ everything in your life to solve this episode’s problems.
2. When you tell yourself that you HAVE to do something first before you move on to the next step… check again. Maybe you can already do the second step even if you haven’t completed the first.
3. Make sure you’re solving your original problem. If you find yourself fixated on sending out resumes when your original purpose was to exercise, then you just might have a problem…
4. Yes! Have priorities. No, don’t forget everything else.
5. It’s ok for the world to pause for you and give you space when you have big problems. Just don’t expect it and then feel betrayed when it doesn’t happen.

Well…. so far this made sense in my head. I wonder if it made sense to you?

You only feel strong emotions for something that you care about (whether good or bad).

However, it’s not always good to follow your emotions. You can’t always trust them. Sometimes, you have feelings that you misunderstand. And you start thinking that you love skydiving when, in truth, you actually love the rush it gives you. We’re pretty bad at understanding why we feel something.

Emotions can lead the way and point you toward things that make you feel alive. But then, it’s your job to use logic to figure out which part of that activity actually makes you feel that passion.

The opposite is also true. Sometimes your emotions and desires tell you that you don’t want to do something. But why don’t you want to do it?

Do you NOT want to do something because it hurts you? Or because you’re scared of it? It’s hard to figure out sometimes because our mind’s defences often just want to block out that we are weak. It’s called denial.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I didn’t really want it that much anyway“, when actually you were tearing up inside? Rather than confess that we’re weak/scared of something, we’d rather just say that we didn’t like it anyway.

There’s the problem though. Our mind has already associated fear with weakness. When you’re afraid, or scared of something, it means you’re weak, right? Wrong. When you’re afraid and give in to that fear, that is the problem; but only fears that stop you from living your life and achieving your dreams.

Don’t face your fears

People always say:

You should face your fears

However, I say that you should only face your fears when they stop you from living your dreams. That’s because some fears are fine. Some people are scared of cockroaches, or snakes or spiders. That’s fine; it’s not really a big deal.

For these people, I’d say that having fears is normal. Normal and even healthy. If you aren’t afraid of guns then there’s something wrong with you.

But sometimes… sometimes you’re scared of speaking in public when you really really want to be a good manager. Or you’re scared of publishing your writing even though you really want to share your ideas and make the world a better place. Or you’re scared of opening your own business even though you have a great service that you think will really help people.

THIS is when your fears stop you from living your life and achieving your dreams. And this is when you’ll feel internal conflict. ALL THE TIME. “Torn between two lovers” and all that. And the reason is because you yourself want to do something, and you yourself don’t want to do it.

In that case, the only solution is to change yourself to be yourself.

So what do you do when your fears and dreams conflict?

Priorities: Fears and Dreams

A lot of people have empty dreams. There’s a big discussion that’s going on about the difference between dreams, goals, resolutions, plans, etc. I was sucked into the debate for a time, but now I’ve realized I don’t really care about the definition of the words themselves. I care that people understand that when you want to achieve a goal (plan, dream, whatever), you have to have an extra step, which is to set out the way you’re going to achieve it.

But even before that, you have to know what you’re getting into, if not you’ll never have the motivation to even start. And if you push yourself to start anyway, you’ll lose that motivation before long. Haven’t you noticed how many people make New year’s resolutions and never follow through with them?

To know what you’re getting into, one of the ways is to look at your fears and dreams together, and see whether you’re willing to still chase that dream if you have to face your fears.

Take an afternoon to yourself. Sit somewhere that’s nice and lonely like your bedroom or a grassy field. Don’t do anything but let your mind wander and imagine. Imagine chasing your dream. Imagine what you would be doing on a typical day of you chasing your dream. Then imagine yourself facing your fears as you chase that dream. How would it look like?

Is it worth it? Would you be willing to go ahead with it?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. And neither do you. At least not until you sit yourself down and imagine for yourself whether you’re willing to go through 2 hours of training every day for the next year so that you can get better at basketball. Or whether you can spend 30 minutes a day, 4 times a week, to learn a new language. Or whether you can summon the courage to stand up in front of a small crowd to practice your public speaking skills.

You won’t know until you figure out how important that dream is compared to your fears. Once you figure it out and have your priorities straight, you’ll then have a good idea of which one wins. If your fears scare you more, don’t bother facing them. The dream wasn’t really that important to you anyway (or maybe that fear is just too deep). Or maybe… maybe you just have other more important things in life bigger than that dream. I can definitely respect that.

HOWEVER!, (and this is a big however), if that dream is worth it to you, it’s time to think about ways to face your fear, because that fear is what is keeping you from being a man who feels complete.

It’s not an issue of whether you achieve your dream, or even whether you’re good at it in the first place. You can chase a dream even if you know that you have a high chance of failure.  The issue is about you chasing your dream. When you don’t; when you shy away from that thing in life that calls you like a beacon; you stop believing in yourself. You stop trusting yourself.

And that is something that breaks my heart every time I see it.

Let me put it another way.

How can you be a trustworthy man if you don’t stick to your principles?

Because that is what your dream is; it’s a way to realize your principles (what you truly believe in) and make sure that they happen in the real world.

If you don’t, all you’ll do is regret your life the whole way through and you’ll be one of those people who always talk about “one day” living your dream. Don’t be one of those people. I’m in the journey of moving away from this myself.

Conclusion

So to recap, it’s fine to be afraid of something, when it has nothing to do with your dreams. Because then, it doesn’t really bother your life or affect it in any way. But when fear stops you from living your dream, it’s time for you to work it out.

You don’t owe it to me or anyone else. You owe it to YOURSELF so that you can start living life and stop regretting it.

Once you reach happiness, will it stay with you forever?

It’s impossible to be truly happy all the time. Honestly, that would be a bit psychotic. Can you imagine a person who was smiling all the time? Even when problems happened or someone close to them died? I’d want to put that person in a mental asylum. Life comes with it happiness and sadness, and it’s only human (and healthy) to feel the full spectrum of emotions rather than just being happy all the time. So then, is happiness a stupid goal?

Is happiness a stupid goal?

If happiness comes and goes, why then do we put happiness as our final goal in life?

We still want happiness anyway. And it’s actually fine. I’ve personally divided happiness into two: the feeling and the environment. Happiness is a worthy goal to have, but the goal shouldn’t be just to have that feeling. Rather, your pursuit of happiness should be a happiness of an environment where your innermost needs and desires are taken care of. You’ll still be sad when a loved one dies, but it’s not the sadness of living a life where you haven’t fulfilled your potential and made a difference.

So aim for a future where your inner needs are cared for: security, love, respect, health. Once those few needs are taken care of, everything else is just icing on the cake ( I don’t know why people say this, I like the icing more than the cake). Can’t go to Disneyland? You’d still be a bit sad, but life is still good. And when something truly wonderful happens, then you can freely be happy without feeling like there’s something missing in your life. THIS is the kind of happiness you want.

Why that kind of happiness?

Have you heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It’s classic management theory that tells us that a person has to fulfill his basic needs of food and sleep before he can think of looking around for higher aims. It’s a little flawed here and there and doesn’t work perfectly all the time, but it’s a good rule of thumb that you can use.

And it does make sense to a point. When you still have to worry at the back of your head about your innermost needs, you can’t truly be happy because you haven’t achieved everything you truly need yet. Simple example: how can you celebrate a promotion and be happy when you haven’t eaten or slept in 3 days? It’s just not as important. Or when your son is hooked on drugs? Or when you have $300,000 of debt?

So how can I enjoy my happiness?

Tiny bursts of happiness pale in comparison when truly large problems exist in the background. And this is what I’m saying. The happiness we should be working towards isn’t those tiny bursts of happiness that come along from day to day. The happiness we should be working towards is the happiness of an environment free of major problems. Once you’ve cleared most of those problems, you’re free to not just be happy, but to truly enjoy that happiness when it comes.

That little bit extra…

In physics, and in math especially, you require an extra skill besides just “understanding” to fully understand something. In debating, I never faced this problem. When I joined debating in my undergraduate days, it was a simple process of listening to something in a debate and understanding it. And using that understanding, you could pretty much explain and debate the next time. But the sciences require an extra skill. The skill to know if the answer is reasonable.

This is an odd thing to say, but I’m sure it’s true. When you take up law or economics or political science (themes debated heavily in varsity tournaments), you’re bound by reality. There are no moments when you would ever think of a person being able to float, or walk through a brick wall. The hard sciences are slightly different. In order to understand the universe, we have to look at it on a different scale, either very big (physics and cosmology) or very small (biology, physics and chemistry). It’s beyond a human to properly understand those concepts so we do it the only way we can. We cheat.

How do we cheat?

We cheat by not imagining everything at once. We forget the magnetic fields and the sunlight and whether there’s a brick wall in our way and just look at the muscles moving in a person’s leg. Does it matter if he’s walking off a cliff? Nope. We cheat by thinking of tiny atoms where you can apply “energy” to it and it will move faster and faster, without ever asking, “what energy is this”? We cheat by making things so abstract, that they lose their link to reality. So what happens is a situation where you make up a question about a boy running 200 meters in 5 seconds. Impossible, I know, but there you go.

And this is why answering questions are so important. It lets you practice questions and get a feel of their limits. What numbers are reasonable? How should the calculations look half-way through? What are those numbers you’re calculating?

I don’t have to calculate! That’s what my calculator is for!

In this day and age, we have powerful calculators and computers to do the dirty work for us. When I say “calculating”, I don’t mean adding and subtracting. Calculating is about understanding the numbers you’ve put on the paper and knowing what they represent. If you don’t know what the numbers mean, you’ll never be able to use them at the right place and in the right way to make meaning out of things.

Taking that previous example of a boy running 200 meters in 5 seconds. That’s a real question I did. In the middle of my calculations I had the number 200 and 5 and I was supposed to calculate speed. So I divided 200/5 and got the answer as 40. 40 meters per second. Ok, no big deal right? Then suddenly I looked back at the question and realized what I was calculating. This wasn’t a car or airplane moving at high speeds. This was a simple boy. And somehow he was moving over 200 meters in 5 seconds! 40 m/s! That’s crazy. And most of the time I wouldn’t even realize what I was calculating because it’s been abstracted so much. I later found out I messed up a step and it was supposed to be 200 meters over 80 seconds. Much more reasonable.

Answering the question

So what happens once you’ve “answered the question”? It means that you took the question, understood the meaning of it, were able to extract the relevant numbers, and use them appropriately in the calculation of the answer. This SHOULD mean that you truly understand. Congratulations.

Hold on…

Wait a second, now that I think about it, it applies in life too. There are so many concepts and quotes that are spouted all the time. But we never follow them even when we “understand” them. Worse, we don’t follow them even when we know them to be true.

Life lessons you’ve heard before:

1. Be good to your parents
2. It’s easier to take care of things on time (Don’t wait till the last minute)
3. Love what you have
4. There is nothing to hold you back, except yourself (Be confident)
5. Know what you want
6. Sometimes you have to say no (Be assertive)
7. Ask questions
8. Your health is your life (Take care of your health!!!)
9. If you never act, you will never know (Take risks sometimes)
10. It doesn’t matter how much you know unless you can explain it (Learn to speak well)

Unfortunately, a lot of these things we only know intellectually. We think we understand them, but we don’t really. It’s only when, one day long after you first heard it, something big happens to you and you go, “Oh wow, my mom was right”. That’s the moment you really understand the importance of that life lesson. But some people will forget it again afterwards. They’ll have a brief flash of understanding, then they’ll just forget again. It’s only when you apply it that you can truly be counted as having learnt the lesson.

So don’t just listen to all that excellent advice your parents have given you. They love you, you know? “Answer the question” and apply these life lessons.

Then, and only then, will you “understand” life.

We all want more choice in our lives, more opportunities. Unfortunately choice has a confusing paradox; When you have a lot MORE choice, you become LESS happy.

Crazy ain’t it?

Decision Paralysis

When you have more than about 7 choices, you start getting lost. Which choice is better? Will you have to try each choice to see which is best?

What happens then is that you’re paralyzed and can’t make a decision until you “get all the information”.

Not making a decision means not making  a choice that could be making your life better. You become LESS happy.

Opportunity Costs

In the old days, there would only be 1 type of jeans. If you wanted to buy one, that was the only one. Nowadays, you walk into a store and see 100 different kinds. So now you just have to try each one to get the best.

Imagine 2 stores. One only has 3 types of jeans. The other has 100 types of jeans.

You waste sooooo much more time trying 100 jeans than just 3 jeans. Therefore, you won’t ever try out all 100 jeans.

When you finally DO pick one of those jeans out of 3, you can choose the best one. When you choose out of 100, you might only try on 10 pairs. So you lose out (opportunity cost) on 90 types!!

You therefore become LESS happy because instead of gaining on one pair of jeans, you’ve lost out on 90 pairs. Because any of those 90 pairs could have been better than the pair you just tried on.

And the problem duplicates itself when buying cars, or houses, or even just choosing what to do with your life. When you have SOOO many more options, life becomes tougher, because it becomes harder to know if the choice you take is the best.

Then what should I do?

So what do you do? Stay tuned for my next post; “Satisficing: Why it’s good enough”

Conflict is often necessary

Conflict is necessary because humans will never see eye to eye with each other perfectly. It is crazy to assume that we will all want the same thing. Agreed? Therefore, we’ve got to come together and negotiate something that would be acceptable to all parties. The dictionary term for this negotiation where each party wants different things is “conflict”.

If you don’t want conflict you can avoid it, but it generally means that you’re letting the other person have his way. That’s fine when the matter is a small one, like when someone takes your pen without asking you. It’s not fine when it’s something bigger like trying to hurt you or humiliate you. This would be a situation where I would advise for you to engage in conflict, and not to shy away.

Levels of conflict

Conflict has many levels. It can mean verbal conflict which includes calm discussions at a negotiation table or shouting matches between the bedroom and the kitchen. It can also mean physical conflict where you punch the lights out of someone (or he punches your lights out).

Either way, conflict is good. It settles disagreements. And humans will always have disagreements. The only real problem I see in conflict is the problem of calibration.

Calibrating your response

Any disagreement should see the appropriate response of conflict from you. Borrowing your pen without asking might just require a few soft words of warning. A person trying to rip off you might require a little yelling. A person trying to hurt you would probably require a bit of hurting back.

A group of people trying to jump you in a dark alley would probably best be responded with a baseball bat and the willingness to beat them half to death. Although some people would just say to me, “Violence breeds violence. Just respond with peace.”

Respond to conflict with peace?

I feel that this is complete bullshit. You can sit there while someone is pounding your face in. Or hurting your family. Or insulting your faith. I believe in having a bit of conflict. Even in marriage you’ll have conflict with your spouse. It’s impossible to agree 100% with each other. Ideally you’d engage in a little conflict and work things out. Or you could say “OK, honey” and grow a seed of anger deep inside.

Embracing conflict

If conflict comes to you, don’t avoid it, embrace it. Use it to ensure that your side is heard. Don’t run away from it. If someone is pissed off at you, don’t avoid them, go and meet them (unless you pissed of a Jedi. Don’t mess with Jedi).

However, all things said, conflict is still unpleasant for you and the other party. So do yourself a favour. If conflict comes to you, embrace it. But don’t go looking for it. After all, why would you WANT to make your wife/family/friends pissed off at you?

But because of those few first experiences, you can develop a mindset where you know you can push past your comfort zone and deal with something and it won’t be so bad.

After all, how bad can it be to ask a stranger for directions? And if you can do that, you can also speak in front of some people. If you can do that, then drama and acting in front of an audience is a breeze.

But it takes that one incident where you thought to yourself, “oh my god, can I do it?” And you went ahead and did it anyway.

When you’ve had that moment in your life, even once, it changes your entire life. It changes everything that’s possible for you. It changes you from a sniveling coward to a person who can actually push past your limits and embrace new experiences.

Sure, it’s a scary thing. Honestly? It’s very scary. It takes guts to put yourself (your pride, honor and reputation) on the line and just hope for the best. Logic has little to do with it. Reality has even less hold on the matter. It doesn’t particularly matter that you’re performing in front of a bunch of strangers who will probably never see you again (or even bother to remember your face), it’s the act of baring your self and soul in a moment where your past experiences can do nothing to help you.

It’s that act of faith in only your own self that you are strong enough to overcome this new thing. And it has to be faith. Since you’ve never done such a thing before (out of your comfort zone), you can’t rely on your own experiences to tell you that you’ll make it out alright.

That act of faith in yourself is what will grow your personal seed of courage. Courage that says, “I can do it, no matter what new things life throws at me. I can do it, and I will prevail!”

It’s so worth it! Those of you who’ve had the opportunity to push past your comfort zone (in whatever way), a whole world of experiences lies before you.

There are many who limit themselves by saying, “It’s just not my style”.

Don’t be that person. Don’t limit yourself.

It’s true you know. School is supposed to teach us to learn. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even do that very well. But there’s more to learn in life.

There’s academic literacy, which school can teach. But then there’s spiritual literacy that you often have to find at home. There’s communications ability that you need to have as well. But then, there’s one that most people don’t ever even try to look for which is financial literacy.

How surprised was I to hear that, “You can be broke and still be rich. Broke is temporary. Poor is eternal.”

It doesn’t completely make sense because the person here uses the words rich and poor with a slightly different meaning than what we’re used to. But it basically means that to be truly rich, you need to have the skill and motivation to change your financial ability to become better.

Schools need to start teaching financial literacy.

But it’s something I have surprisingly few regrets about. It’s such an enriching experience to learn, not just how to stand up and speak, but to do it in a focused and structured way.

1. It taught me where Iraq was.

I confess. I was horrible at geography and history before this. I could tell you that I had heard of North Korea but I wouldn’t have been able to accurately point it out on a map.

Because of debating, I can safely say that I can at least point out a few countries.

2. It taught me to never stray from your objective.

You should never ever explain more than important. Because they’ll stop listening to you anyway after they hear what they want. And all you’ll end up doing is wasting everyone’s time including your own.

And the importance of having a clear objective becomes that much clearer. Now, I utterly hate people who do things or say things that don’t help them achieve their objective. Ok well, maybe I don’t hate them. But it’s so frustrating to hear them blabber on and on about irrelevant things, or to see them do so many things that are pointless.

Of course, to only do things relevant to your objective, you have to have an objective in the first place. Over 4 years, debate drummed it into me that you must always have an objective.

3. It honed my skills in explaining complex ideas in an economy of words.

You only have 7 minutes to explain how you want to save the world before bedtime.

Let’s say it takes 5 seconds to say a sentence. That’s only 84 sentences you can say to describe the political situation in some country on the other side of the world and explain why aid is the worst thing you can do to the farmers in the area as well as put forward your own solution for the problem at hand and of course defend it from the arguments of your opponent.

Did I mention you have to find the flaws in what your opponent says and attack those too? 7 minutes is waaaayyyyy too short.

4. It made me meet so many kinds of people.

There are a number of awesome people in this world. It seems that a huge proportion of them are in debate. Not only that, you get to meet so many varieties. I don’t just mean in terms of race or culture. I also mean in terms of people who are just different. Their styles, their personalities, their very outlook on life.

And where else could you find such a diverse group who would be more than willing to talk and talk and talk and…

5. It allowed me to get away from the calculator.

I’m in engineering. The hard sciences don’t give much room to discuss world issues in class. In law or economics or sociology, you discuss world issues all the time. So I stepped out of my classroom and tried to be a little more well-rounded. I didn’t want to just be a guy who knew how numbers worked. I wanted to know what those numbers meant.

Engineering is supposed to use science to solve real world problems. How do I do that unless I know what those “real world problems” are?

So…

If you’ve got the time, join debate. It’s so worth it.

If you haven’t got it, make time.

We measure time emotionally

We measure time emotionally.

Months can pass by without anything major happening. Life goes on as usual. When we look back on it, it’ll seem like that part of life just passed by in a flash. But when those months are filled with emotional ups and downs, then looking back will give you such precious memories of that time. It will seem like so much happened.

Going through a lot of new and emotional experiences in a short time can make that time seem longer. It’s why we can feel like we’ve known someone our whole lives when we’ve only met them a few hours ago.

We crave it

It’s also what we crave for. Personally I go for adrenaline-inducing, heart-pounding  things. Yeah, i’m an adrenaline junkie. Others go for sappy love stories, korean dramas, haunted houses, video games, etc. We crave the emotional ups and downs because it makes us feel alive.

Or maybe it’s  just me?