twopitcheshigher
Timeless
Away From Everything. Have a Moment to Breathe.
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"The Loud And Proud."
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To you in 100 years
I followed my curiosity, and I am here. In solace we find heartbreak and pain and everything. I'm sorry I didn't know better. I got lost in trying to find myself.
I rejected the voice of God and listened to myself. I've long since carried my own cross, walked my own path, and followed my own path forward. Sometimes your mind is the greatest prison. Within its walls the real you is buried, and sometimes you don't know exactly who is the actor in your body. Why? why am I alive. Why am I here. What happened to the time that passed. Who is in charge here. I'm hurting and I just want to be okay. Is it okay for me to be here?
Silence is what you get in return. Silence is what heralds that in this microcosm of life there is only loneliness and stretches of infinity beyond what I can possible hope the grasp. I reach out to grab onto the reigns only to be hopelessly thrown off again. And infinity towers before my eyes taunting me to surrender.
When and why do I keep losing myself. I follow the compass, track my steps, remind myself to look around, and nevertheless I am so far away from where I hoped. Or maybe this road was what I was meant to take all a long. Who really knows? I'm sorry, I don't know.
And as time passes, I find that it all becomes a blur. All I know is the samskaras tell the story of my life. I tried to love, I tried to find family. I tried to fly but I keep finding my own strength lacking. Is it too much to want the world? I'm sorry I'm so weak.
We will be okay. I'm sure of it. A hand swept through the hair, a light graze of the hand is all I need to know of it. People are strong. But I'm so scared? We all are. Experience is the teacher of everything. We all have to re-learn how to walk once in a while? What is the meaning of this all? Who knows? But you are here. I am here. In this life. Isn't that a miracle? Go follow it. The voice of God. The stretches of your imagination. The river of time. Before you looms life. All of it is you. And it all envelopes me at times with warmth, with pain, with all the nuanced, ineffable feelings that pry at my heart. And it tells me that I'm alive.
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delete youtube, delete instagram, delete facebook, delete reddit, delete tiktok, delete linkedin, delete blind, delete everything that gives me information that I didn’t ask for and robs me of my attention.
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“The unknown gives me fear. And because of that I want to conquer it all”
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Sometimes life just feels like being drowned in a body of water. Each day an earnest effort of holding the breath and reaching desperately for the surface. It feels hard to open my mouth, to engage with anything without suffocating. And just as each chapter ends, you reach the surface gasping for air, just to realize the surface is just the beginning of an even larger abyss. An the immense chasm in front of you suffocates this time not with anything material, but the fear of the insurmountable. You are asked to move a mountain, yet you’re arms are too tired to even prop yourself up.
As time passes, I desperately wish that someone, something, or maybe my own actions could somehow finally emancipate me from that damn rat race. And I pray each time, naively, that this time, the turning of this chapter is finally the arbiter of freedom, rather than more to come. Engulfed in water, how are we to know that our tears aren’t natural. Our voices are muted, and we think it’s just us alone in the world.
Or maybe we already are free? We already are on dry land, yet we continuously choose to dunk our heads back into that pool, to continue to slave away against our humanity - we choose to drown. Isn’t it true that no matter how far we are from the supposed finish line, we find moments of happiness, snapshots of the things that we ultimately want anyway? We find memories that are supposed to be left for us in the promised land.
Coming off a period of self-growth and motivation my senior year of college, I thought I had it all - a good job, success in my final moments in college, great relationships. Signals, I though would’ve promised success in the years to come. Yet as all things with life, the good things never last, and in my introductory year at Google, I once again find myself lost in an ecosystem of complete foreign origins. The pressure of the environment once again overwhelming my own internal strength. With every stage of my life, I keep hoping that somehow my self belief could withstand the outside pressure, that somehow I could impress my own person on any external environment I’m in, that I can conquer it. And the hurt of being wrong makes me retreat into my own shell. I have to remind myself again that I am capable, that I am brave, and that I’ve done it before. That no matter how scary the world is, I will come out of it a stronger person. I can learn to swim. To choose to engage is a choice, as is with choosing to surrender. So I hold onto the promise of better things, the ideas they sing about in song, and trust that the gulf is not insurmountable because others have done it before me. Maybe the freedom I seek is already here, but it might take the climbing of the summit to realize that.
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as a kid -> everything is figured out, the adults have it taken care of .
Reality: Everyone is solely focused on the problems of their own age group. When you’re a kid you’re only looking at other kids, when you’re an adult you only look at other adults. So really, no adult is going to take the time to sit and think about what problems a kid is going to go through. Example: education is absolutely terrible.
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Do you ever think us as deeply as I do? We are only here for a speck of time yet it doesn’t sorrow me or dim my passion one bit. It is time that invigorates, the thought that the days come and go, but it never lasts.
And so it comes again. The start and end of a chapter. The breeze of spring flowing in to wash away the years and days and minutes - seconds gone by. This time with a little more familiarity with more comfort that this is just the way things work. Time that comes in relentlessly like a current to be withstood.
Sometimes I wonder about the days gone by. How the same me stood so many stretches back wondering about what would lay ahead. How at that intersection, I had made so many decisions, so many small seemingly meaningless yet completely meaningful decisions which congregated to push me to where I am today. I reminisce about the friends I had. Wondering how each twist and turn in that infinitesimal river of life had led them to the place they are now. Some too far away to be reached. Some with their paths cut too short.
The distance makes it more bearable. Is it wrong for me to care as much as I do? That’s something that I always wonder. Rolling the idea over and over in my head and sometimes never fully understanding why others don’t understand. I had certainly considered that those intersections could mean the end of some things, that the simple act of walking left or right would mean our paths might never cross again. Looking back it seems so much more understandable.
So I take in each moment, each look and interaction with those I call friends, cherishing it as tightly as if loosening my grip and letting go really meant letting go. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just the way life works.
I’m proud to say that no matter what comes, no matter the obstacles or the miles that will separate us in the future, that at this marking in time, I can call you friend. That at some forgotten part of history I loved, thanked, cried, and loved some more. It was all for you and you made it worth it. No matter what happens that at this moment in time, this was the truth and my truth.
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“In my dreams, I soar. I carry groceries and I take walks through the ubiquitous lights shining throughout the nights of the city. Their green and blue beams slice the sky into crystalline shapes. The lights fly across the sky, starkly contrasting the black veil of night. The tall city buildings climb endlessly into the sky, before vanishing beyond my vision. And I walk besides the river, on a sidewalk illuminated by the street lights dotting the road. I breathe in the fresh smell of water that still has a lingering taste of ocean salt. It's all real. So recent and fresh and present. This is my world, the world I can explore and traverse myself. I'm a free man filled with desire in a world that welcomes me with open arms and a teasing smile. And I wake up.”
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Focus and attention. Our real eyes into the world. Both the driving force behind what our physical eyes pick up but also gazing into depths beyond the visual. When I’m by myself its easy. The world, the room around me, the thoughts and chatter come and go with ease. Dissipating and reappearing again, on and on beginning with an urge from the body and then the focal point of attention shortly following. Alone means harmony, peace, unity and love with my own imagination and venturing into its corridors. But it’s safe. I know can calmly stroll or run along its terrace without fear of hurt and stumble. Cushioned by the soft embrace of rosy thought, I’m not afraid to jump.
And yet I love people. I love everything about the interactions from the big sweeping gestures to the small ordinary moments. Sometimes it goes fast, meeting and greeting and then forgetting. Sometimes the moments stretch into infinity, the light grazing of a hand sets the mind into tumultuous spinning. The world might not stop but you certainly do. Then there’s the bumping into your roommate in the morning, both unshaven and eyes drooping from waking up. The embrace of another after a long time apart. Still appreciating and taking it all in.
When I’m with others my focus flips. The shackles of my attention come undone, and it no longer follows me but the other. I no longer think or even feel the presence of my own mind but am solely entrapped with other people. Taking in their presence, their stories. Wanting to make them comfortable and to connect with them.
Meditation helps. The books we read and new age wisdom should tell us that much. It once again comes easy when it’s just me alone in my room. Breath in, breath out. Emptying the thoughts, then filling them again with emotion, desire, ambition, and vision. Sometimes I meditate in solace, other times in servitude of others. And then theres times where its just to hold my head high and remind myself that I’m enough.
But time to time I meditate with friends. And that’s when I notice it’s impossible. When I’m with others I can’t concentrate. Can’t think of the self without feeling the tug of attention back towards the people in the room. And I realize I can’t focus on what I need in the moment but instead am solely attentive to the needs of the people around me. I try and draw it back but it always seems to break away with even greater force.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe not. Or maybe it just comes better with practice. Guiding, soothing, pushing and resting my real eyes that perceive the world.
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always life on the edge and keep pushing forward. strong bold and fearless.
affirmations
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The best comfort -> To look into those eyes and have those eyes and your eyes speak more than your words could ever enumerate. Connection manifesting to comfort in the physical and in the warmth you feel, in the smile that grows on your face.
The worst pain -> To have it taken away from you. To wear the heart on the sleeve and trust the world not to hurt it and then it does. To then seem to have your friends, people who like you, your family, everyone around you , but to see nothing but cold eyes . To touch and hug and kiss even but to feel like you are a million years away.
To know that even after it all that only some would understand. That to talk with friends is to sympathize and share for hours. But to that person a singular hug and a beat of the heart and you both already know complexities that can’t form into logical thought in your mind. And the unfairness of it all, that this is true. That this is why it hurts. And you want to curl up and never open again. Cry at how weak you are. Then anger. And wanting to get rid of that weakness, pushing it down, never letting it see the world again.
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lights. The chattering of your friends as you drift off to sleep. The slow ticking of a watch that barely makes itself noticeable in your awareness. The stretching of hands at a concert. Moving or running. Jumping, sprinting, trying to fly. As long as you are in movement you can’t see what’s around you. The periphery’s blur, horizons blotch. You no longer exist in any environment or setting but in a cacophony of senses overwhelming you. The speed hurts but at the same time is so so beautiful and numbing. One pain dulls another.
I sometimes wonder if all I have to do is keep pushing forward. Press forward one step at a time as a carriage horse trudges on in its own respective blindness. If we keep yearning towards the future, then the pain of the past fails to reach us. Keep moving so we don’t have time to think or slow down. Meet new people. Find new experiences. Light new fires and make new memories and reach new heights. Press on mentally physically emotionally and just keep feeling. Dont stop. Dont think and for your own yearning heart don’t ever look down.
‘I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't.’ -Roald Dahl
And I keep making mistakes. Still just the same person hurting, loving, hurting, and loving again. Loving and hurting is really just as cyclical as day follows night. But I’m scared? Deep down still just that nerdy boy who loves magic and loves art and music and origami and solving puzzles and swimming in the ocean and dancing at night. loves making people smile and entertaining and connecting and serving. Young and dumb and naive - just someone who wants to make the world his stage and his life his canvas for creating and dreaming. Watching ghibli movies and playing pokemon and closing my eyes and trying really really hard to imagine that I really existed in those fairy tale worlds where there was only love and comforting song. Wishing there was something a little more magical about the world we lived in.
The past can never reach us. If life moves too fast then just outrun it. Run as fast as your legs can carry. Trip. Fall. Run again before you can feel the pain. Trust that God has a place for you and will take care of you maybe. And keep going and climbing onwards and maybe it will all make sense at the summit of it everything.
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Where did the fire inside you go? Where did your energy, your passion, the glint in your eyes?
“My life is good now, I have it under control. I found my balance and my path forward” I said to her with a tint of sorrow yet also a sense of achieving maturity. Since when did having it “under control” be a good thing? Just when did I become so agreeable? Professional, respectful? Where is that which makes me, me. In rare moments where I walk alone, under a dimly lit street light or humming to myself looking out my window, I sense it again - the small ember of which the dreams and ambitions which I adored.
“What keeps me going is the routine of life, the churning of the wheels and clicking of the gears. I wake up to know I have my meetings to attend and a slice of time allocated to working out, playing music and relaxing. My life is predictable and I have it under control”
Newtons 1st law of motion. I am in motion, so I stay in motion. I know what the day looks like ahead so all I have to do is follow the path shaped by my schedule. Is that all life is? Is it really my routines and habits which keeps me moving? I wonder again what happened to the raging flame in my heart which drove me to wake up. Not to face the world, but to make my mark on it. To listen, but to also speak up. Why have I become mute?
The fading lights of Nara, Japan. The soft but cold overlook we stood upon- my host brother, Sarah, Ami, the other Japanese girl. Our chilly bodies warmed by the light popping of the firecrackers. We cried, we reminisced and wallowed in the nostalgia. I think I felt it then. I think it was a time I listened to myself and trusted myself more than the outside world. I dreamed and yearned, heart wrenching for the future and aching at the present.
What do I want to say? Can I really feel it at all? I lightly touch the embers, the warmth, the overwhelming sense of comfort. The tears that say it all, the instant recognizability that it is still me. I reach out to cure it, to take care of it - live and even die with it? To dream and believe in that dream.
It’s all I know to do.
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talk is cheap, I want to see your blood sweat and goddamn tears
-self reflection
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We have to learn how to walk on our two feet.
Learn how to cry and make sounds that signal our attentive caretakers
Learn how to how to make friends
How to stop caring about useless things like video games and how to desire success and laurels
Learn how to fall and get up from falling.
Learn how to think.
Learn how to stop thinking.
How to focus. How to study. Motivate ourselves. How tell our friends “no” to play in favor of work.
How to get into the right mental space and concentration and place to work with all our focus.
Learn how to make habits.
Learn about ourselves. How to overcome our own blindness.
Learn how to stop and see that we’ve succeeded.
Appreciate.
And when we get an urgent call from a friend, or our cat meows for food, or our future kid/lover/parent needs our attention- how to not get annoyed and break out of our work and care for them.
Remind ourselves our friends are as important as our work.
Work on balancing.
Unlearn our love for money and for fame and success.
Learn how to be okay with not getting laurels.
Note down our realizations.
Life isn’t defined by the money we make or the amount of admirers we have.
Learn how to believe in our own realizations.
We stop.
Look at the person next to us with fondness and intimacy.
How to be present and care for those close to us.
Learn how to pass on the lessons.
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Small Ideas about Education
In the current way that the public university is set up, Students and Mentors don’t really have any relationship going on aside from a mostly superficial/surface-level one.
I’ve always been thinking about how to tackle the problems we face in education, but the solutions has always evaded me. Maybe solution is too small of a word for it, the problem seems to me something too big for one person, or even one generation to handle completely.
When I think about the incoming CS freshman, I want to warn them. To almost yell at them and say watch out and avoid the pitfalls that almost every incoming class seems certain to fall down to. In a one on one conversation, it’s so easy to speak the truth without any academic blabbering or round-about talk. It’s this class is hard, that stuff isn’t very useful, you need to learn this. Or beyond the technical, moral and emotional support that we’ve all been through this. Assurance that one isn’t alone in their struggle is one of the greatest motivators.
i think what the schools lack are deeply tightknit student-mentor relationships. Something almost paradoxical to structure of Universities. In our current education, the isolation of everything is almost all to apparent amidst a pandemic plagued world. Lectures held remotely, lecturers spewing out information without much thought about whether or not students really understand.
In war, soldiers are placed into individual divisions each with their own commanding officers. These officers are responsible for the soldiers in his units, and in return the soldiers help protect him and carry out missions successfully. In the Manga creating world, Manga artists and their editors form almost familial bonds- eating together, celebrating big achievements with parties, and are constantly sharing, and helping one another. The other party’s success is also their own.
When I take a look at the way our education is taught to us, I’ve always been a bit put off, but unsure why. I think now I realize that all these “mentorship programs”, “networking events”, are all missing something that is innately human- authentic connection. There’s nothing authentic about a mentor signing up to help an incoming freshman to boost his or her own credentials- eating a few meals with them before forgetting about them and continuing to live their own lives. And this isn’t necessarily the mentor’s fault, but rather the way the system is set up. The mentor’s incentives are largely misaligned with that of the students.
So we’re left with a distanced and isolated education. One which we struggle with our peers, and learn from our peers. When we get stuck, we turn towards others who are just as stuck-friends that actually do care, but also can’t help as much as those who know more. We turn to our friends because we share a genuine and authentic connection. And if we don’t turn to our friends, our second step is the internet, a place where strangers give immediate and sometimes reliable information.
My office hours experience, where we supposedly turn towards TA’s or professors for help and guidance, has also been mostly negative. While there have been good instructors, I can’t help but notice the irritating sensation and thoguht that “these guys don’t care about me, they’re helping me but they aren’t enjoying it at all”. One time, I could barely focus on thinking about my code and could only notice my TA checking his watch to see when his shift ended, and eventually leaving me to solve my own problems as “he wasn’t sure how to fix my code and I should come back to office hours”. He was clearly tired, wanted rest, and it just turns out that my time with him was right around the time he was supposed to get off work.
It’s not like a close mentorship where both parties benefit is something so mystical that doesn’t exist, I’ve had plenty of my own, it’s just that our society has structured our schools in a way that none of our incentives line up at all. I’ve had plenty of positive mentorship experiences-my Piano teachers who beamed when I performed well on stage, my friend Curtis(now married and several years older) who taught me guitar and how to be a better person (He told me he saw potential in me and me succeeding also made him happy, pretty nice guy), and almost every single familial relation where we look out for one another and will sacrifice almost everything to help each other. I’ve also had my own experiences mentoring, helping high school freshman because they were the future of our clubs, ad our teams. I’ve made a lot of friends with underclassmen and genuinely hoped for their successes.
At the end of the day, people don’t need to know everyone, but they do need to find a tribe of people they can thrive in. In this group, there’s those who are experienced who help others grow, and eventually those who develop also mentor their own group of friends (At least, in my eyes, this is one positive point about fraternities).
I wish I had someone who I could turn to in CS, the same way I was able to turn towards Newton, Kenneth, Curtis, Nathan, Enoch, and all my other mentors growing up. Because the honest truth is that I’m very lost. Maybe not as much as before, and I definitely have regained my faith in my own abilitie to figure things out and work my way through, but it has been a long hard process. I know I’m not alone in this, but it’s been so hard to comprehend or even to believe at times. I just wish that there were more helping hands and reassuring voices.
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