everybody wants community
a verbal onslaught (5,210 words) of reflections + learning what the most important thing in life is about
i grew up kind of lonely, i think.
the furthest back i can trace this feeling is in elementary school. i was one of the few asian kids in a predominately white school, coupled with having an overly paranoid, tiger-like, helicopter mother who was scared of everything. “come home when school ends! no signing up for extracurriculars! no spending time with kids outside of class!”
to her, anything past the confines of our four walls was unsafe or a waste of money; “why go outside when everything you need is at home?” family trips were something i wished for, and i spent many childhood summers indoors. i wondered why my mom made the family shut-ins, but as i got older, i realized that coming off the vietnam war and having to immigrate to canada, it was due to being in war-torn times surrounded by uncertainty. i know this now, but she just wanted us to be safe where the family was under her (ever present) watchful eye.
for these reasons, i fell hard into the technological trap where a computer was my only friend growing up. my dad had four jobs, and one of them happened to be repairing computers. when i was ~6, enough spare parts were laying around for me to have my first one. for that age, i spent an exorbitant amount of time on the web: playing browser games on kongregate, watching flash animations on newgrounds, wasting time on msn, neopets, omgpop, and especially mmorpgs like maplestory. this was a game i spent way too much time on (~4 years) because it was one of the only ways i actually talked to people and felt like i belonged to a community. as a byproduct of being surrounded by screens, i quickly got absorbed into gaming. it was one of the only things i was decent at, and i liked the feeling. my mom had a habit of comparing my cousin and i, and while i wasn’t doing better in math or science, i certainly was better at any video game you could name. i think this sparked an early superiority complex in me — i wanted to be good and i wanted to win. i liked being competitive, and this is still true today. much of my time was spent being raised by technology; not so much learning how to socialize or make friends.
in school, i (unfortunately) was a typical noisy and annoying kid; the classic trope of “any attention is good attention.” given my isolation, acting out was how i announced my presence to the world and how i felt seen. in elementary, since i only had a handful of friends (read: acquaintances that tolerated me), in high school, i got the idea to fill this void by making as many connections as i could by floating around different groups of people. i developed a relentless desire to know tons of people and be liked, which ended up being a fatal flaw that would later cause me a plethora of issues. while i finally felt i had friends and sequestered the void, i didn’t have many i was close to, or a community where i felt like an integral component. i had a tight-knit group of ~7 years from 2014-2021, but i wasn’t aware of how to be a quality friend at the time. i made selfish decisions and hurt those around me, and we haven’t been as close as we once were. i know this was entirely my fault, and most importantly, preventable!
the idea of floating to bandage loneliness ultimately became an innocuous thought turned constantly recurring phantom that plagued me for an extreme period of time (all the way until graduating university and pending my move from toronto to new york). it was a deeply rooted issue i wasn’t registering as a problem; i would constantly rifle between the notions of feeling lonely and not belonging in cliques, to trying to patch that by sparking new conversations. in retrospect, i should’ve devoted time into nurturing better relationships with those i knew, instead of meeting others. i had concrete circles i spent time with, but it wasn’t until graduation that the detrimental feeling of being a floater manifested for me. attending my last lecture was a regular friday. writing my last exam was a regular thursday. i thought i’d be celebrating these moments with those i grew alongside for the last ~4-5 years, but none of it happened. in the communities i was part of, i often felt gaps or that i was slightly more adjacent to everyone else. as embarrassing as it is to admit, i don’t think i knew what it meant to be a good friend for a long time. aside from wanting to be visible, i wasn’t thinking about how i impacted those in my blast radius, or how i made them feel.
kimberly describes it best: good friendships are more than the partying and drinking. it’s in the mundane of helping someone move or supporting them in breakups; texts that you’re thinking about them on random tuesdays, or of a dog spotted on your commute to work — these consistent and spontaneous interactions. i didn’t see splitting time amongst so many was problematic, because while i choose to do that, those who chose to continuously spend time with the same people fostered stronger bonds. i’m more cognizant now of where my efforts are going; i always had great people an arms length from me: my siblings, cousins, people who grew up on the same street as me. yet, they received little of my attention. i thought that if they’d always be around and that these were my “default relationships” i was born with, i didn’t have to nurture them further. but, often i’ll talk to someone about this, and we land on the same thought: i wish i was closer with {person, family, old friend}. watering your garden is an active and conscious effort. you need to want it enough for it to happen.
april 2023, i flew to vancouver. i had a panic attack on a rainy day at the sands of english bay beach, which ended with me buying a second flight back to toronto and cutting my trip early. this is colloquially what i refer to as the instrumental event that kicked off a string of other events which crammed years of learning and growth into one action-packed year. so, what caused it?
there were many radical life changes happening in parallel. i graduated october 2022 and i was moving from toronto, a city i grew up in for ~23 years, to new york, a city i’ve never been to before. i interned in a few cities during my undergrad, but the idea of permanence is scary. i was a student for almost two decades and it’s all i knew for a long time. the future is exciting, i was also worried about my parents in my absence.
i had a mild identity crisis about who i am + the person i wanted to be; the hobbies i want to invest time into and the types of people i want to be surrounded by. i strongly felt i was “living passively” and would just do my tasks for the day then waste my time otherwise. there were things i wanted to do — i just wasn’t being disciplined enough to put time into it.
i traveled solo and was staying with my friends abir + amy. we spent a lot of time together, but on days i did spend myself, i realized i hated solo traveling. i care more about the company than any destination i’m at. i don’t care for sightseeing or museums in my own capacity, but i’d happily go with people. when i later went to portugal, all the fun things i did with catherine + jeffery like walking the tops of castle walls or going on food adventures, wouldn’t be half as fun if i was alone.
i was working through the emotions after a breakup with my girlfriend of 2 years, who was also my first serious relationship.
finally, the largest axis: it dawned upon me i spent too much time and energy nurturing the wrong relationships and i had prioritized time with temporary, “friends of convenience,” over the people i cared more about. i was graduating and picking up my whole life to move to a different country, and i saw i didn’t care to maintain the upkeep with many of the people i had here. i was surrounded by friends of convenience; the notion we’re only friends because we saw each other daily for years (or similar means). there were other relationships i should’ve invested time into instead. i felt i was now paying a debt for the price of a really long-winded series of poor decisions.
kyle explained the beta regional paradox to me — the concept that we endure things that are okay, but this is also what stops us from flourishing into better situations. the idea is that a bad position is sometimes better than an okay one since it might be what finally pushes you to move and get on your feet. at first, i didn’t understand what this meant, until i found myself in mediocrity: not bad enough to change, but not good enough to make me feel fulfilled. that being said, i’m grateful for all the shitty things that happened to me this past year. though, i wouldn’t extend this notion and say “everything happens for a reason.” if i got shot in the shoulder, i’m not going to be thrilled about it (i’d be pretty inconvenienced), but instead, it’s more accurate to say “in most things that happen, there’s some good you can extrapolate from it.”
for a while, the vancouver events played deeply into my negativity bias; that it’s easy to narrow in on the bad things happening in life and fixate on them when there’s also a myriad of good things happening in tandem. often i lose sight that i’m privileged and blessed i got to grow up in canada, have a loving family, access to basic life resources, education, and have two amazing older sisters (who time and time again have always been there to bail me out of bad times). negativity bias aside, it’s hard in the moment to say “this will end up being good for me,” since between my vancouver meltdown and later crying in a church in spain, that wasn’t what was going through my head. i used to curse my position over and over, but looking back, all of these things pushed me to grow in some capacity. everything was working out exactly the way they were supposed to. the cards were unfolding just right. i’m in my own time-constrained environment and it’s not me vs anyone, it’s just me vs myself. life is better with appropriate struggles. sunny days are more enjoyable after torrential downpours.
june 2023, i moved to new york for my first job out of university and the first months living here were like peaks and valleys. i leaned heavily on quinn, one of the only two people i knew here and a pivotal conduit for me to meet others. starting as a new grad in june is early compared to the more common august / september start date. since it was intern season, i spent a lot of time with him and making intern friends. though, i knew that mostly everyone i’d meet this summer would be gone in a few months when their jobs wrapped up. that’s what ended up happening early august; people left, i was pretty lonely, and it felt like i was back to square one. i felt overly frustrated with this “habitual sine wave” as things constantly felt up and down, but during these times of drought it occurred: what i wanted was stability. a stable routine, community, and just no more sine waves. the entirety of 2023 felt like there was no pause and there was always some character development arc going on. conclusively i mature from all the difficulties that transpire, but could i just get a brief moment of respite?
i went through a mild depression the middle of august until the end of october. during this time, i still didn’t know / was close to many permanent people in new york, and i felt like an invader trying to assimilate my way into existing friend circles. i had never been so out of place, like an npc in everyone’s life. i deluded myself into believing that if i left new york and flew back to toronto, no one would notice. if i was around for a gathering it was nice, but if i wasn’t, no one was going to bat an eye over it. (in the least needy way possible) i wanted to know my presence mattered and people chose to spend time with me. this might be misconstrued as wanting attention, but this is beyond that. i think everyone wants to know they’re valued and has community they belong to. for clarity, i don’t blame anyone for how i felt. everyone’s busy living in their own world, and it’s better to attribute to being unaware / ignorance instead of malice. on that tangent, i’m a “brute” in the sense i hate the time march category of problems. when issues crop up, i want to take actionable items to resolve it. but, what can you do if there’s nothing except waiting for the passage of time? i hate the feeling of twiddling my thumbs, but yes, as everyone can expect, settling in a new place where you know next to no one takes effort, luck, being at the right place, knowing the right people, but also just time.
carol sent me a video called the friendship recession. in summary, decades ago, people didn’t move around. where you were born is where you grew up, studied, found a job, and got married. this leads to knowing the same people in the same city for years and developing incredibly long relationships. though, the technological era has made people move instead of staying in one place (e.g. it’s common to go to college in a different state, move to a new city for your job, etc.) and this leads to breaking these long form bonds. it also mentions the idea that friendships are becoming gatekept by financial status: common ways of meeting people in gyms, sports, clubs, etc. and spending time by dining together and planning trips are things you can’t do if you’re not fiscally able. she reiterated to me that breadth means you’re doing a lot, while depth means you’ve been somewhere a long time — neither are necessarily better or worse. when i was moving, my mom didn’t understand why i had to go when i could’ve found a job in toronto. it’s true, but to that i say, now isn’t the time to be complacent. it’s a time to be in uncomfortable situations where you can flourish.
abir says that love should be easy. that your relationship is simple, you get along, and you’re both on the same team. that’s not to say a relationship won’t have its share of strife as dealing with problems as they arise is inevitable, but the default state is one of happiness, freedom, and ease. i extend this levy to friendships: friendships should be easy, add a net boon to your life, and aren’t stressful or hampering. there was a period this year where i developed a minor social media anxiety. whenever i’d open instagram or see the bereal notification drop, i’d think, “who will i see spending time without me?” — it bothered me the first few times in my insecurity, but as i matured, placed less emphasis on social media, and felt more secure in the friendships i was building, it lessened. though i think the feeling is common to experience, i had this incessant need to be included.
cindy tells me she is a lover girl and that she loves love. she says she doesn’t want the feeling of heartbreak to get easier, and she doesn’t want to feel jaded. i wholeheartedly agree — i always advocate for don’t stop getting attached. it’s good to experience the full range of human emotions: to know extreme happiness, frustration, sadness, anger, excitement, love, everything. i don’t want to become detached or apathetic. processing your emotions teaches you a ton, which is why i say things can be worth it just for the story. make a (mildly) illogical decision for what it ends up imparting to you, even if it ends in tears and bottle in hand. don’t stop getting attached, don’t stop exploring new avenues. i have learnt an abundance about myself from less-than-intelligent decisions.
jian ying told me the one thing that would make him feel the most fulfilled, the one thing that would tell him his life is complete, is having grandkids. when he told me, i didn’t comprehend. what about the other aspects in life? your career, family, friends, personal ambitions? i didn’t know how to respond, but there were certainly a bunch of other things i cared about first before remotely thinking about grandkids. though, in time, i’ve come to zero in on why this is his “life goal.” to this day, i don’t care about achievements or climbing the corporate ladder. when i die, the things that would give me the most fulfillment would be being able to say, “i was a good friend,” “i created inspirational media that will outlive me,” or “i raised good kids.” it sure as hell won’t be “i wrote code for jeff bezos and mark zuckerberg.” after mulling around it more, i realized what would bring me the same fulfillment is also having a large family. i felt lots of safety and happiness growing up as a kid when i got to see my extended family at events, so i pray to continue this lineage.
veritasium’s what the longest running study on happiness reveals makes a great point in the first minute — people aren’t good at describing what makes them happy. for a time, i was living passively (vs living actively). i didn’t have a heightened sense of what gave me joy until i started journaling more aggressively in union with having the mild depression. going through my struggle periods is when i realized what truly made me content (i.e. when deprived of everything, what will you seek the most?). to get it out of the way: does money buy you happiness? — money won’t buy you happiness per se, but you would be miserable without it. distress hotlines aren’t always going to be what prevent crises. it’s having a stable income, access to healthcare, education, affordable housing, not having to worry where your next meal comes from, and more. in my case, i index on the importance of community because 1) solitude fucking sucks, and 2) i’ve become aware it’s one of the things that provide the most happiness. there’s no worse feeling than isolation. to be on a planet with ~8 billion people, where there’s constant happiness and neurons firing off, families are laughing and memories are being made, while you’re just there. the happiest people i know are the ones with a strong sense of community and support system. the times i was happiest was when i felt camaraderie and had a place i belonged to. two months after i had moved to this city, there was still lots of entropy, loose ends, scattered thoughts, and old issues whose dust hadn't fully settled yet. it’s december now and life has improved significantly, the main catalyst to getting here was introspecting about every minor detail. once i discovered the root causes of issues, i sought how to remedy it (and often, the answer was doubling down my efforts on what mattered most, cutting what mattered least, and knowing where each priorities goes).
i’m fortunate this post gets to end on a happy note. i’m finally wrapping this project up on december 27, 2023 after initially drafting in august, putting it down, and picking it back up three times. it’s been ~207 days since i moved to new york and i did end up finding community in the places i wanted. i first found it through work: the other new grads and full-timers (they make the office fun to be in). we started going to the gym three times a week which boosted my mental well-being. i leaned heavily on friends back in toronto and we would call often or i’d find myself in a pc cafe playing valorant with them as we caught up. more friends moved to new york which began a sprawl of meeting friends of friends of friends. i went rock climbing regularly with a few people. i joined a chess club. i got invited to attend a weekly writing club. i’d meet friends on sunday to cowork. i pushed to be out of the house most waking hours. i’ve journaled the last ~9 years and always wrote in private, but i was compelled to publish this one to pay homage to all that i’ve learned and discovered about myself in the last two years.
i recently celebrated turning 24 with several friends i’ve made since moving, and i’m grateful to have went through all the trials i needed to help me focus and see what i wanted out of my post-grad life. to summarize three main takeaways — after being on the planet for (at time of publishing) 8,776 days, i learned most importantly that:
learning to be a truly empathetic person has made me significantly happier. i vehemently believe no one is inherently evil, and no one thinks they’re being a bad person. when people treat you poorly and you rationalize why they’re acting a certain way, it makes you less upset. people have reasons for doing the things they do (even if objectively they aren’t right), and understanding why someone behaves humanizes the other party.
i better understand why people have acted so erroneously to me before, since i’ve been that way to others. this year i went through a /bunch/ of things and in my down periods, i realized, “oh, only now do i get why people have treated me the way they did in the past — they were hurting the same way i am now.”
side note: in challenging times, you see things you normally don’t. you don’t see how much love and support you have, or how hard your friends rally for you if you’re well 100% of the time. if you were going through painful times, only then would you see their softer sides (a shoutout to dan and leo).
everybody wants community. this entire post was largely about the importance of belonging and relationships in your life. how to find community, nurture it, and the importance of prioritization. the ability to maintain long term connections is a skill and requires a conscious effort, almost the same amount of effort people put into their romantic relationships.
the first 23 years of my life were just practice.
to end off, i’m saying sorry to everyone i affected on my pursuit of vanity. i’ve done a lot of wrong, hurt many, and severed what could’ve been generational friendships. i was unpleasant to be around while i was hurting. often, i only looked out for my own best interests. i stand atop the backs of those who continued to support me even when i didn’t deserve it. i won’t make excuses, but will promise to do better.
bonus section: a long collection of notes i wanted to write about, but didn’t know how to incorporate them eloquently.
it’s possible to do things 100% right and still lose.
ainley taught me about the train of life. people get on and off, and you can’t make people stay. through the years, i’ve had people come at seemingly the right time, serve a purpose, and then fade away. thank you to those who filled their role.
don’t regret your past, and realize former decisions were made with information you had at the time. if you look back on your past and wince, you’ve grown.
there were times i had no problems in life, but i still wasn’t happy. the absence of problems doesn’t imply a good life.
you have the rest of life to make money. if debating between an extra 2,000 in the bank or a trip to japan, the trip is worth it. an old manager taught me this one.
summer 2022 i spent an internship in seattle and it was one of the best semesters i had. when i first moved and didn’t know anyone, i was jumping between groups a lot. once i settled into a place and spent consistent time with the same people, my summer elevated. this is one of the first seedlings that spurred my growth.
emily taught me about the chart of vulnerability. learning to be vulnerable first is one of the easiest ways to make quality, meaningful friendships.
the pistachio theory. the shelled ones taste better because you put in effort to eat it. if things got handed to you, it’s not as satisfying compared to working really hard for something you want.
no one wants to “do the work.” no one wants to trim the grass and no one wants to go to couple’s therapy. but, you do it anyways because you care. you put effort into the things that matter.
at his 29th birthday party, justin bieber gifted a souvenir to his guests that said, “i’m so happy i didn’t end up with what i thought i wanted.” looking back on this year, there were things i thought i wanted, but i’m happier it didn’t end that way.
aldous huxley: “it is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’”
i acknowledge that there won’t be one friend group that fits all. i have a group for playing video games, gymming, work friends — the idea is maintaining a proper balance so everyone important to you gets an appropriate amount of time.
the secretary problem and optimization theory. you can’t optimize every aspect of your life, don’t ruin everything in an attempt of doing so.
meditate and realize you don’t know what’s best for you. if you broke your leg you’d be pissed. if you missed a plane to your vacation you’d be even more pissed. if that plane crashed, that broken leg would be a blessing.
it’s okay to be sad. but, know the world keeps progressing even if you’re not. the sun still rises tomorrow and trains will operate. the universe won’t grind to a halt while you put yourself back together.
confucius: “a healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.”
aadil’s tweet about not testing friendships, that friendships won’t always be 50/50, sometimes it’ll be 90/10 with you needing to put in more effort at times. “if you feel consistently unloved, talk! don’t test.”
internal vs external locus of control. don’t make it a habit to blame environmental factors when things don’t go your way. you control a lot more than you know.
i rely on my friends. socially, for favours, for support, but especially to correct me on my misbehaviour. if i do something wrong and don’t realize it, i’m trusting you to tell me, rather than let me to continue to suffer in silence.
much of my successes came from luck or knowing the right person at the right time. little of my achievements came from entirely me.
“we know we can’t stop you, so go make whatever mistakes you need to make, and we’ll be here to pick up the pieces when you’re done.” some lessons are best learnt through getting hurt; my sisters know me best.
being straight-laced is cute and moral, but bending the rules and being conniving has gotten me significantly far.
dripping water eventually pierces a stone and time grinds mountains to pebbles. a small and dedicated effort will get you where you want to go.
growth is event-based, not time-based. i’ve experienced such immense growth and cliffs and hills in the last 1.5 years than i did in the last 22 years, largely due to the shit hitting the fan all the time.
it's not what happens to you. it's how you handle what happens to you. you can’t control how you feel over something, only how you react.
it’s beneficial to learn from your mistakes, but others as well. seeing what other people do and observing the results has swayed me from doing the same.
john f kennedy: “don’t pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men.”
“fomo” has driven me to do lots of stupid shit. if things have to be forced, chances are it’ll end in disaster. the psychology of your 20s has a great episode on this.
there’s two way to participate in the game — either play to not lose, or play to win.
maintain a baseline level of happiness that starts with you, so that you only accept things into your life that continue to bolster this.
joey taught me about crimes of passion. sometimes, you do / say things wildly out of character when emotionally charged, and it’s not indicative of you as a person. at times, this helped to alleviate remorse i was harboring.
nyc has made me brave. i unabashedly reach out to make plans, i join new clubs, and sign up for whatever ad hoc events i see on twitter and instagram. one day i’ll get tired of it, but for now, i love the energy and electricity of this city. the friends i’ve made are an incredibly large component of why i like it here.
i used to be opinionated, argumentative, and had strong beliefs on many things. as i grew, it lessened. my answers to questions became less of law and gravitated more towards “it depends” and empathy.
i prefer painful truths over comforting lies, but i’ve learned there’s times where you don’t need either.
on the topic of cartography and information exchange. i will charter my own course, explore my own quadrants, and you will do the same. we will talk, share ideas, collaborate, and learn from each other’s lives. i will learn your life lessons and you will know mine. we will both flourish from our conversations.
some people will be stuck in their ways, stop trying to see the good in people in exchange for your well-being. often, i was the person stuck in their ways.
josé maría nieto: “the new year will bring flowers, because i am planting flowers.”
all my love,
christopher
