Tag: Inspired By Friends

thoughtfulness

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Two compliments in one

One of the highest compliments I can give to a person is to say that they are “thoughtful.” To me, a thoughtful person does two things:

  • Considers and expresses intellectual ideas with care. This manifests in a myriad of ways: articulating the nuance in a complex idea instead of glossing it over; listening and asking targeted questions to gather information instead of jumping to a conclusion, yet being unafraid to make clear judgments when needed; demanding rationality and consistency in one’s own belief system.
  • Concerns themselves with the needs of other people and takes action accordingly. This means listening for what other people like and care about and taking action with that information in mind. This too has multiple practical manifestations: helping someone with chores or errands during a busy time, carefully choosing the right words of praise for an important milestone, sending a specifically selected gift.

Unsurprisingly, “care” is an important word operating here. (Indeed, one of the organizations I led in high school had the motto “Caring — our way of life,”1 and this is still a value I hold today.)

When you use a word like “thoughtful” or “care,” do you think of this double meaning?

Two Chinese terms

I love finding Chinese terms that don’t have a succinct English translation. (Aside: My favorite word in this category is 巧 (qiǎo), which can refer both to a person’s “deft” and “skillful” hands as well as to an “opportune” moment. The word bounces when you pronounce it in Mandarin, calling to mind a graceful gymnast vaulting upward.)

Two Chinese terms of praise that don’t have succinct English translations reveal how the culture perceives thoughtfulness as being inseparable with thoughtful action:

  • 眼力见儿 (yǎn lì jiànr) literally translates to “eye power seeing.” Wiktionary says this term refers to “one’s ability to see what needs to be done,”2 but 眼力见儿 is not just about observation — it’s about proactiveness, too. Someone with 眼力见儿 proactively perceives what needs to be done in a situation without being asked, and then takes action to resolve the situation, all without being prompted. A common domestic example of 眼力见儿 is a child who notices that the dishes need washing and leaps up from their chair to start the dishes without anyone saying a word.
  • 懂事 (dǒng shì) literally translates to “understands matters.” This is a favorite phrase that Chinese parents use to praise children for behaving maturely. The implication is that a child exhibits adult-like behavior because they’ve built the understanding and empathy to know what they need to do. Note that the way you demonstrate 懂事 is not by speaking and explaining what you understand, but by taking concrete, observable actions that reveal that you have the understanding. I love that the character for “understand” includes the characters for heart (忄) and heavy (重).

Thank you to Renjie for inspiring this post.

the visitors

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The Visitors.jpg
A scene from Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors. Photograph taken by the author at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 2017.

There is a beautiful work by Ragnar Kjartansson in which eight musicians are filmed in eight different rooms of a mansion, all independently playing the same song, using a colored-pencil score, all in one take. The result is striking, moving, wondrous, and left me with a gracious envy and desire for musical connection.

On view at the SF MoMA through January 1, 2018.

Also notable were Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s soothing, zen temple-like clinamen v.2 and Brian Eno’s New Urban Spaces Series #4: “Compact Forest Proposal” which created a Turrell Dark Space-esque discovery experience.

Thank you to Tanay for recommending the work and to Sang for experiencing it with me.

EDIT (2023-03-20): The Visitors has returned to the SF MoMA and will be on view through June 2024. My emotional experience was just as deep the second time. I can’t recommend going more highly.

prompting interesting conversations

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Inspired by The 36 Questions That Lead to Love and Table Topics, we created cards to inspire conversations at our own apartment.

2017-02-19-18-24-11 edit 2017-02-19-13-50-15 edit

Level I

Questions you could ask anyone at a cocktail party
  1. What’s a highlight from this past week?
  2. What’s a lowlight from this past week?
  3. What’s something you’re looking forward to in the upcoming week?
  4. What have you been listening to lately?
  5. What have you been reading lately?
  6. How did you decide to come to New York?
  7. What do you love and hate about New York?

Level II

Questions that you could still ask in a work environment
  1. What’s an irrational behavior that you have?
  2. What’s something that has recently changed priority for you?
  3. What’s something you value more than others?
  4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
  5. Tell your life story in 5 minutes.
  6. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life so far?

Level III

Questions that require a personal answer
  1. What do you know so far about your life purpose?
  2. What’s your “hamming problem” — the biggest problem that you’re trying to figure out for your life right now?
  3. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
  4. What is your relationship with your family like?
  5. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

Level IV

Questions involving our uglier sides
  1. Who’s someone with whom you have a disagreeable relationship?
  2. What kind of people do you envy?
  3. What’s something you’ve done that you regret?
  4. What are you afraid of right now?
  5. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
  6. What is your most treasured memory?
  7. What is your most terrible memory?

Level V

Questions best asked when you’re already comfortable
  1. Who are the 5 people you spend the most time with? What kind of people are they?
  2. “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” – MLK Jr. What is a dark or unhappy part of your past that has constructively shaped who you are today?
  3. Draw a “lifeline” where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is happiness. Discuss the highest and lowest times in your life.
  4. Share something you think is a positive characteristic about the other person / the people next to you.
  5. Share a personal problem and ask for advice on how they might handle it. Also, ask them to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem.

Thank you to Jennifer for gifting the blank cards that inspired this project.

the future: a best-guess summary

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What will the future look like? Here’s a minimal-effort (read: no research) attempt to summarize the different trends discussed by popular media that I have reason to believe will be true.

 

Digitalization

Computers will replace most repetitive jobs

Factories began automating manual labor, and future technology will automate service jobs too. Expect everything from truck-driving to elder-care to be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence paired with “big data.”

The languages that matter will be programming ones

Native languages will exist, but few people will need to learn languages other than their mother tongue; computers can do the translation for you.

All money will be digital

Goodbye physical currency.

People will have to worry about cybersecurity

Today, cybersecurity as we hear about it is primarily focused on governments and companies. Tomorrow, people will have to worry about cybersecurity of their data in the same way that they worry about the physical security of their homes.

Science

Global warming will screw us over

Yeah that’s a thing.

People will live longer

Disease will become much more rare because of genetically targeted medications + cure for cancer. As for how much longer, I don’t know.

Designer babies will be better than normal people

Social justice

Wealth inequality will increase

Urban centralization will increase

Educated people will centralize in the ~20 alpha cities where global innovators live and work. Only cities have the scale and infrastructure so that ideas, labor, and capital can move around fluidly enough to make things happen.

Less participation in government

People will find privatized ways of disseminating information and enacting change; e.g. blogs & private companies (respectively).

Stereotyping (e.g. racism) will continue

At its core, stereotypes are about noticing something different and attributing it to some reason that you can identify. Opposition to immigration will continue to pervade wealthy countries.

Female working roles will grow

Despite the fact that stereotyping will continue, women will continue to have increasingly important roles. Smart countries will take advantage of this massive potential workforce and capitalize on the economic gains.

Mind and society

Awareness of flaws will increase

As information becomes increasingly available, people will be more aware of flaws, both in other people and in products and systems that they interact with. Another consequence is that people will spend more time highly curating product/brand image and personal image for others, so that others do not perceive those flaws. On the other hand, information considered fatal to one’s image today will be less damning tomorrow. Finally, people who are able to come to terms with their own flaws and each other’s flaws will be happier.

Opportunities:

  • help people process large quantities of information for further use
  • help people curate or spend less time curating a public image/persona
  • help people build mindfulness and come to terms with flaws

Traditional marriage will decline

Many will still be married for life, but it will become more societally acceptable to have multiple relationships throughout one’s life, and to have multiple relationships at the same time.

Less participation in religion

People will rely more on mindfulness/meditation and non-deity philosophies 

Life will get lonelier

People will communicate more and more through digital means and short-form communication. (Think Snapchat.) Long-distance friendships, family relationships, and romantic relationships will increase. When in need, people will rely more often on paid services. Without as much physical connection and communication context, people will more easily feel sad and get hurt.

Opportunities:

  • create living communities in cities more similar to college dorms for people to stay connected
  • give people ways to cope with sadness and loneliness

Attention spans will decrease

People will find it hard to focus on any one thing for an extended period of time.

 

Thank you to Raymond for inspiring the exercise behind this post.

tarnishing the golden rule

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andrius_maciunas.jpg
Image courtesy of Andrius Maciunas / iStock

The duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule.
— Leonard Cohen, “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong“

Nearly every religion and ethical tradition contains a concept of the golden rule or law of reciprocity — that we must treat others as we wish to be treated.1 For me, this is not enough: love demands an even higher stage of empathy.

Stage 0. I exist
In our emotional development, we begin by acknowledging our own emotions. I like the teddy bear; I want to play with the teddy bear.

Stage 1: Other people exist, and are different from me
When we first realize that other people exist and may have conflicting emotions, we see the other-ness of their emotions. I want to play with the teddy bear alone; John also wants to play with the teddy bear; John and I are in conflict; I want to keep the teddy bear to myself.

Stage 2. Other people are like me
Over time (and, often, multiple times), we realize that other people often react similarly to how we would respond if we were in their position. It makes sense that John wants to play with the teddy bear, because I also want to play with the teddy bear; if I were John, I’d want me to share the teddy bear in some way.

This is the golden rule stage — realizing that you could just as easily be in the other person’s shoes as in your own, and that you ought to act well toward others if you expect them to act well toward you in turn.

In my view, however, love asks that we take our empathy even further:

Stage 3. Other people are only sometimes like me
We are not all the same person — we uphold different values, we are motivated by different interests, we have different past histories, we react differently. You like talking with her every day, even though she would rather see you just once a week. You don’t mind when he goes on friend dates, but your 1:1 dinners with others spark his jealousy.

With our closest relationships, our “duty” is to continually learn how a person is unique and different from ourselves in order to treat them with love. Tarnish the golden rule — treat people not how you would like to be treated, but how you’ve learned they would like to be treated.

Empathy is a natural skill for some, and an intentionally-developed skill for most. Some ideas and frameworks that have powerfully affected how I perceive empathy:

  • The Fundamental Attribution Error. We underestimate how important other people’s circumstances are when we evaluate their behavior, and we overemphasize how important our own circumstances are when we look at our own behavior.
  • The Five Love Languages. Different people need different things to feel loved, and different people have different ways of expressing their love.
  • Four career foci. Different individuals may be primarily motivated by company (winning and being successful), people (helping people around you grow and develop), society (making the world a better place), or growth (learning or getting promoted).
  • Difficult Conversations. In complex situations, people often have different perceptions of what’s happening. This is compounded by how people feel and how they think the conversation reflects on their identity. If you approach a conversation with your foremost goal being to listen and understand, you will often learn valuable information that will help you act constructively and spare you significant pain and misunderstsanding.

Thank you to Isaac for sharing the quote that inspired this post.