a corner on the edge of the internet I call home

what does it mean to be all alone by yourself. to attain true freedom. to live without boundaries, judgement, preconception, limitation.

how do we stop ourselves from limiting our own vision, our own sense of reality, our own capacity for love, compassion, and understanding.

about me

I grew up as a single child in a wealthy household in a third-world country. I became fluent in English early on in my life, went overseas and had the opportunity to see the world and be unbound by the financial necessities of life that most people my age were subjected to. I used the generic term ‘people’, instead of ‘peers’ because, for better or worse, they weren’t my peers, my peers had the same background that I had - they had wealthy educated parents who sent their kids to cram schools, ultimately to get into public elitist competitive magnet schools.

During my late teenage years, I became involved in a lot of intellectual circles, went to many conferences, academic discussions, and became ingrained in the intellectual scene that was a product of deep Buddhist traditions, a millenium of Confucian education, and decades of French imperialism. That was me, that defined me.

At the same time, I met someone that changed my life forever, again, for better or worse, someone that would come to help shape and motivate my vision, my motivation, my hope and dreams, and push my capacity (at that time) to the limit. They were an inseparable part of my life, someone that would turn everything in my world, my family, my friends, my social life upside down, for four years.

Now I live in a post-modern capitalist individualistic Western society. I have become so different over the years, some of my friends couldn’t believe that I am still the same me that they knew.

Now, I work in STEM, and I stopped talking and thinking about the arts, the humanities, my cultural roots, and where everything was heading for years.

I’ve found something that is akin to peace, and that thing is with me a lot of the times.

I’m no longer bothered as much by grand aspirations, strong needs for a deep existential search for meaning, nor an ambitious prophetic plan for a great social bonding.

In other words, I’ve become chilled. I’ve enjoyed chilling, and I have somewhat understood the ‘values of chilling’.

Yet, here and there in my heart still loom the little sparks that peek out and drop the most random and intense reach in my tummy at any given moment in the day for something more, something out there, the need to feel connected with something that is bigger than me, something that would root me deeper into earth.

I rebuke myself occasionally at the thought. My promethean impulses were met with their sirenian counterpart - that which limits being, delimiters the ego, and draws the horizons:

“I am too extreme”, “they don’t really understand what I am talking about”, “they are not going to go to the length that I am willing to go to”

Deeply inside, I just want to feel belonged. I just want to feel like I am part of something, I just want to feel that I have made the most use of my life - that I’ve squeezed my existence to the last drop.

“Live for something, die for something, something to look forward to, some reason to have to feel justified for having existed.”

That’s the meaning of existence - a hook that binds us deep, deep into the earth, a hook that binds us into life, into its nectar, and into its thorn, a willing acceptance of life in its completeness. An embrace of everything that can happen for us.

So, this is my search, this is my search for that meaning, and this blog documents my realisation, and understanding.

Thank you for reading,

the fish.