soos_mite_ah

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Posts posted by soos_mite_ah

  1. Posted

    37 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

    Those are all good examples. Maybe what I wrote isn’t such a big factor but still to some degree maybe it could apply. In the west tho isn’t motherhood becoming less and less central , I was thinking about that , hence why I wrote specifically referring to the west because it’s extra hypersexualized here with looks and sex appeal in the focus. Some Other cultures have motherhood and marriage as more central . Not denying it’s existence here but it’s not as central in mainstream society anymore

    I do think that hyper sexuality is more emphasize in the west but even though there is more mainstream and feminist push back around the notion that a woman's sole role is to be a mother, it's still very prevalent especially among my parent's generation (boomers/ gen x) which then bleeds into mine and we need to unlearn a bunch of things. 

    But the whole notion of someone being less of a woman because they didn't have a natural birth (took an epidural, had a C-section etc.) or chose not to breastfeed is like the epitome of first world problems. I've never looked at a person and been like *oh that guy was a C-section or formula baby.* So much of it is women policing one another and I feel like it has parallels with the first world incel guys who are like **men aren't real men any more because we're not dying in war and struggling.** Because people who are forced to give a natural birth due to a lack of alternatives or shipped off to war aren't going to romanticize it the way the people who have a choice do.  

  2. Posted · Edited by soos_mite_ah

    Yes women are talking about this. You just aren't in the communities where it's being discussed. There are women who talk about being high value woman (as cringe as it is at times), not being a pick me (basically someone who throws other women under the bus for male validation), and there are a lot of social pressure around milestones like getting married and becoming a mother. As unfortunate as it is, there is a subset of women who will look at you as if you're less than or not womanly enough if you don't have a boyfriend or aren't married after a certain age or if you decide not to have kids all together. And even then, when you go into like the black hole that is mommy blogs, there are women who think that you aren't as much of a woman if you decide to get the epidural vs natural birth or if you want to feed your child using formula because you don't want to or you can't breastfeed.  There are women who don't see you as womanly enough if you look a certain way or ascribe to a certain beauty standard (and a lot of it has roots in racism as well). 

    And if you're still not convinced, just search up finishing schools. We might not have the same language as y'all have about being a "real man" but that doesn't mean that we aren't having these conversations as well. 

  3. Posted

    Upper Middle Class 

    I feel like I'm more swayed by rampant consumerism these days because I actually have money of my own whereas throughout my teen and college years, I mainly used my parent's money for necessities like textbooks, groceries, and the occasional lunch out with my friends. Even if I did treat myself to something, I was always careful with my spending since I was under the impression that this was their money and not mine so I have to be responsible and reasonable with what I was spending my money on and how much it was for. And I don't think this is a bad thing, quite the contrary. But I guess it's hitting me that even though financially I'm upper middle class both in terms of my own income, how it compares to my bills, and my savings and I have grown up upper middle class for most of my memory, I'm not socially upper middle class. And I think that I have this sense of morbid curiosity towards the spending habits of some upper middle class people that i guess I could afford but wouldn't do myself because I don't prioritize the same things. 

    Even though I grew up with financial security without having to worry about how I'm going to pay for college and how I would deal with any emergency, including health emergencies, and I could afford most things, I could not relate to the other upper middle class people I went to college with. I think there is some diversity among upper middle class upbringings. A lot of the people I grew up with and the people I'm cool with now, they might be upper middle class but they had more of a middle class upbringing because 1. they were around some degree of socioeconomic diversity and 2. their parent's had middle class habits and life styles because they lived below their means and passed that mindset on to their kids.  In other words, they have touched grass. 

    Sometimes I walk into stores and feel like I don't belong there. I will use Sephora as an example. Like... who tf do I look like spending $25 on lipgloss and $50 on skincare for one thing?!?! And it's not like a feeling of inferiority. It's more of not being able to relate to a certain life style or habit of consumption. Like that $50 is gas money. I'm not spending that on a moisturizer when I found a moisturizer that works great and lasts me for 8 months for like $12 at Walmart. Then there is Wholefoods. You can get the same shit from the organic section of a grocery store like Target, Walmart, and Sprouts and have it taste the same for less money.

    There's also the bougie hipstery restaurants. You know, the places where they use arugala for their burgers, you have to order on a pin pad and the customer service people probably won't talk to you and will ask for a tip on the ipad they're using to run you up. Also, they don't accept cash and their burgers are like $20 and aren't really all that, and they all have the same generic Instagramable hipster vibe. It's not a question of authenticity. You can have hipster and fusion places that are unique and interesting and that make good food. But a lot of them just scream gentrification and they give me the same vibe as a Millennial from like 2013 with a moustache tattoo that is lecturing you on craft beer. 

    There's the people who can Doordash 3x a week and comfortably be able to afford that. Even if I could afford (and I can), it's just so financially wasteful. Everytime I open the app, I immediately delete it after rethinking my life choices when I see a McDonalds meal that is like $20 after delivery fees and tips. I have occasional days where I crave something that I can't really replicate or I just really don't feel like cooking but in my mind, if I don't want to get up and get it myself, I say to myself that I don't want it enough to justify having it delivered through a food delivery app. 

    There's the normalization of various beauty treatments for women who are upper middle class that's like getting your brows done, getting waxed, getting your nails done etc. And all I can think of is how much that shit adds up when you're doing it twice a week on repeat. I get wanting to treat yourself every now and then or if you have a special occasion, but when this is your regular, it just doesn't compute in my mind and the priorities I have with my money because you can literally do all of this by yourself for a fraction of the cost. And with social media there are people who are getting medical grade facials monthly which can run you like $100 to $200 each and botox is getting normalized like they're a pair of acrylics. 

    Speaking of social media and the over consumption there, I feel like there is so much more social capital to be had with mindless consumption for the sake of trends for those who are upper middle class as opposed to those who are middle class and lower. I'll use the Stanley cup as an example, a $40 water bottle. I feel like lower middle class people and lower will see this as absolutely ridiculous. Middle class people will see it as overpriced and ridiculous but might get like 1 or 2 (1 for the house and another for the office) if they really like it. But they'll think about it first due to the price and they know it's not that deep. Upper middle class people will buy a collection of this so they can coordinate with their outfits and so they aren't like left out of their peer group since EVERYONE has one and spending that kind of money isn't really a big deal. I'm obviously stereotyping here but basically, I think upper middle class people are more prone to overconsumption because they actually have the money to participate in such trends and if enough people in their social circle are doing something, they just give in because it won't hurt their wallet. 

    Financilly, I can afford that type of hyper consumerist life style to a certain degree. If I wanted to, I could get my eyebrows done and nails done 2x a month, get doordash 2x a week, and buy random shit I don't need but I'm not about that life because I believe in living below your means when it comes to consumer spending. I might have an entry level job but I'm fortunate enough that I don't have student loan deb and I have a car that is paid off because I'm using a hand me down from a relative. And I live in an affordable area. But I don't even want to engage in that life and it feels weird that people in my social class has normalized things like this because I can't relate and I feel out of place despite the fact that the math is mathing on paper as far as income and assets go. 

  4. Posted

    8 hours ago, IronFoot said:

    Thanks for all of this advice! I have never made a CV before as I’ve only ever used Resumes and Cover letters.

    CVs and resumes are more or less the same thing. A lot of other countries say CV while in the U.S. we use the word resume. But I do believe the slight difference is that CVs put more of an emphasis on the education section whle resumes focus more on years of experience. It's a cultural difference from one part of the world to another if you ask me. 

  5. Posted · Edited by soos_mite_ah

    A Littile Mid-Year Check In 

    Positives first:

    • I have figured out how I feel about my family and my dealing with my family relationships going forward. I have communicated things with my dad and we figured out a plan for the future. I will say that this gave me a lot of peace of mind emotionally and financially. 
    • Gained some clarity around my romantic realtionship. 
    • I have a better reltionship with food since I'm working with a nutritionist. 
    • I have a less restrictive and over all healthier view of money, finances, and spending. 
    • I'm getting better at cooking for myself and others. 
    • I have hosted get togethers at my place a couple of times. 
    • I fasted for Ramadan successfully and got some growth out of that particularly around feeling present. 
    • I've been posting on tiktok somewhat frequently and I have been enjoying the process while addressing my anxiety around being seen lol. 
    • I've reached 70 days on my Duo Lingo Spanish streak 
    • I've been working through my insecurities around my feelings about mediocrity and humility. I've also been reconnecting with my sense of purpose in my life. 
    • I'm planning for my trip later this year across Asia.
    • I've been working through things regarding my feelings around life purpose, the absurd, and how my life feels like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a mountain.
    • I haven't been feeling a constant underlying sense of dread as I did earlier in the year. But I will say, I'm not too excited about the upcoming election and I do find myself getting irritable at times when I see the news because it pokes at my feelings around instability. 
    • I've been feeling more confident in my image of myself as an adult (I was dealing with a bit of *I feel like a 23/24 year old teenage girl complex earlier this year and around my birthday*) 

    Negatives: 

    • I've gotten in the habit of isolating myself and it's been a little difficult getting out of it. 
    • I've lost the habit of working out regularly 
    • I've been dealing with some low grade depression due to seasonal things, a lack of purpose, hormonal issues etc. 
    • Health hasn't been great.  Recently I've lost my appetitie and my hormones feel off. 
    • I haven't been volunteering as I wanted to this year. 

  6. Posted

    Found a few quote under a youtube video that I liked and wanted to take note of: 

    Quote

    "Your point about the fake radicalism of travel blogs really reminds me of something Slavoj Zizek said in a Vice interview: "Ideology is not just the world we live in, but especially the wrong ways we imagine to escape it."

    That is to say, capitalist ideology is not just what surrounds our daily life and the problems we face (especially alienation from our work), but it is actually strongest in precisely the ways that we fantasise about escaping it. Our fantasies of travelling to popular tourist destinations, of buying overpriced organic produce, of dressing talking eating and behaving differently from others et cetera, are not a genuine reaction to capitalism, they are part of its reproduction mechanism."

    Quote

    "I took about 6 months out to go backpacking around SE Asia and India in a really typical mid-20s middle class guy kindof way. I learned mostly that travel wasn't the experience it was really made out to be. It is, for the most part, not challenging, deep or even that hedonistic. It definitely did not leave me with a feeling of being changed.

    Tourists live in their own ecosystem. There is a whole economy designed around keeping you comfortable. It is actually quite a challenge to break out of it. While I met lots of people from the UK, EU and US, I had barely any real conversations with locals. While I made some effort to read about the countries and visit the museums, most backpackers did not. Your engagement with the culture feels limited to eating food, walking around town, visiting a temple and going to bars.

    Travelling from place to place so quickly means that nowhere has a chance to really affect you. Same with the people that you meet along the way. If you want a profound experience, you have to stick with it for a while. Its like the difference between a series of one-night stands and having a partner. The one night stands might be fun and some people might respect your high body-count, but its only when you are with someone for a while that you really learn about each other, you bear your soul and hopefully push each other to be the best versions of yourselves. Anthropologists spends years as participant observers to learn about a culture.

    Finally, its not as fun as its made out to be. If you like going out drinking every evening in clubs playing the most generic pop EDM possible, you will probably be ok. I went travelling in 2016, so pretty much every night I was listening to Justin Bieber, the Chainsmokers, Skrillex and Kygo. I went to the Full Moon Party, expecting some wild hippie gathering, and it felt like Tiger Tiger but on the beach. I could find better parties happening on my street than most of the parties I attended while travelling. If you indulge in narcotics, then you would also do better to stay home; when you are passing through, dealers have no incentive to give you good product.

    I would encourage anyone considering backpacking to reconsider. If you want to learn about different cultures, pick one place, choose an activitity that integrates you into the community somewhat, like working, volunteering or learning a skill particular to that area, and stay there at least a few months."

    Quote

    This comment made me think of the discourse around passport bros: 

    "A couple of months ago I fell into the YouTube rabbithole of male travel vloggers and watched a few of them to find out what they were about. So yeah, there's a specific genre of this that is decidedly "male" in the same sense that this video seems to get criticism for alluding to, i.e. toxic masculinity. I suddenly found loads of guys traveling to poor places, sensationalizing poverty, crime etc, exoticizing their problems without appreciating the culture, pretending to have chance encounters with young, conventionally attractive women right in the streets and hanging out with them as if it was not obvious that they payed them to play the overly friendly stranger role etc. You will spot these easily enough by their fixation with emphasizing "dangerous" on the titles, or pretending to make "brutally honest" presentations of things like homelessness (invariably trying to inspire hate against homeless people) or by their constant inclusion of "hot women" in the thumbnails. Some of these men make not so subtle comments revealing this is a thinly veiled exercise in sex tourism, or that they were aiming to place themselves as idols for incels (the guy who scores everywhere), or that they enjoy poor countries because in their view poverty would render most women more submissive and themselves as western demigods because they are able to throw some money to their faces. This can also be served with the pseudo-antisystemic sauce of presenting the West as a decadent, failing part of the world, with developing countries being where one should go to live their live to the fullest - assuming that one can still be paid by western standards and use their economic privilege to take advantage of the locals, that is. Of course you can be a guy, do travel vlogs and be a far cry at least from promoting harmful ideas, but I can hardly think of a clearer manifestation of toxic masculinity in the context of travel vlogging than these guys that seem to have inundated YouTube recently."

    Quote

    "I worked with teenagers for over 20 years. I'm glad you tempered this with the "when I was a teenager" discussion. It's really hard to distinguish rebellion from transformation (particularly when you're young) when you've only grown up in a modern, capitalist economy. Sometimes it takes a while to realize what a "real" life really is."

     

  7. Posted

    Integrating the Life Purpose Course

    I have taken Leo's Life Purpose Course three times, once when I was 19 after my first year of college, another time at 21 during the pandemic, and most recently at 23 after getting my first job. Each of these times I took the course I was coming from a place of feeling lost or uncertain about my future and what to do next, you know, the typical feelings people get in young adult hood. And honestly, I think it's great I took this course multiple times because it felt like a good frame work for figuring things out. I don't think it was a failure on my part to revisit it so many times because I feel like when you're young, there is so much variability regarding how you are growing and all of the things you're experiencing that's giving you new information and insight about your future and what really resonates with you. 

    While I didn't retake the Life Purpose course a fourth time, I did revisit the list of videos and reviewed a few of the topics. I found myself reflecting on the topics that were discussed and how I felt as if I intellectually grasped the lessons at 19 and then emotionally grasped the lessons at 21 and 23. I think as I'm getting older, different things are coming up in my life along with different existential crisis. I think my last post can be summed up by me rethinking the concept of mastery, commitment, the 10,000 hour rule (though I didn't discuss it in the post above I did contemplate it a lot during my recent existential crisis) to name a few.

    The best way I can decribe it is that the concepts in my life purpose course were seeds that were planted in my mind at 19 and then at 21 and 23 I gave it more fertilizer for it to grow. And now, while I did have the concepts and frameworks in mind, I'm more easily able to articulate the insights I'm having as well as grounding what I know intellectually and emotionally into my life experience. I can't say that I have my life purpose figured out. At times I feel like I have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me and I'm still trying to draw connections so that I create the picture that I want. I feel like the picture is a work in progress but as I integrate these insights into my life experiences, it's helping me draw more connections. 

    I will be honest, I do feel a little silly that after doing the course three times that I still haven't figured my purpose out. The process of integration is long and I think it's taking a few years because well, I have some growing up to do and I'm still figuring out the various opportunities that are out there and how the adult world functions. As a result, a lot of things are shifting and changing when it comes to my goals in life and it doesn't hurt to contemplate and remind myself to water the seeds that were planted years ago and check up on them. 

  8. Posted

    May 2024 

    I've been having an existential crisis for the last month/ month and a half and as a result I've been mildly depressed. I haven't been journalling about it here mainly because my offline journalling was so all over the place that it didn't feel cohesive enough for me to create a post in my journal. 

    I’ve noticed that I have this tendency to base my worth on my ability to perform. I think this takes it’s root in my childhood where my mom would always tell me that if I’m not good in school that all of my friends will eventually leave me behind. I was fed this notion that if you didn’t get good grades, go to a good college, and have a lucrative job that you will be starving and homeless. I was told that I had to be competitive and the best academically and professionally. And while I pushed back against this notion as a child, I think I still ended up internalizing it on some level unintentionally and it’s bubbling up despite the fact that I’m in a relatively stable place in my job.

    I feel like I need to perform in order to be loved and valued.

    • As an employee, I have to do an amazing job in order to be valued at a company.
    • As a friend, I have to be the one who is reaching out and I have to be interesting and engaging.
    • As a girlfriend, I feel bad if I'm not performing well sexually which is a whole thing that I need to unpack tbh. 
    • As a daughter, I have to care for my parents even if they treat me badly.
    • As a student, I have to get good grades, do a bunch of extracurriculars to show how well rounded and good at multi tasking I am, and manage to keep down a job or two to support myself and show that I’m not a privileged spoiled brat.
    • And finally, as a person, I need to be having some great impact on the world and be doing something that requires exceptional work ethic and talent or else I’m just wasting my life and being an NPC. 

    I think I’m just dissatisfied with the type of work I’m doing right now and it all just feels very purposeless and that is manifesting as feelings of insecurity. I look at my job and I just think that it’s kind of a bullshit job because I don’t think it really contributes to society much and even though I have ways of advancing, I guess it feels dead end to me because the ways that I can advance does not interest me all that much. Then I got to thinking about all of the jobs that my head thinks is worth a damn and I came up with this Venn Diagram.

    venn.jpg

    Upon further reflection and unpacking in therapy, I have come across the following conclusions.

    Prestige: I think this factor impacts me because of the way that education is seen as a status thing to a certain extent in South Asian communities. This isn’t happening anymore but my mom has come up to me on various occasions being like *so when are you getting your masters, everyone else your age already got there’s* And I know that a masters degree doesn’t make sense for me right at this time but I guess there is a part of me that feels less than because I struggled in college and I don’t think I could get into law school or med school or an exclusive career like working in D.C. Like my friends are out here doing these big things with their lives and I’m stuck in a silly little office job because I don’t have what it takes to do more. My mom also in the past said things along the lines on how I lack discipline and a work ethic because I have yet to commit to a path. I also just can’t help but feel that everyone around me are going to be well established and be  successful within the next 5-10 years and I’m just going to be stuck in this type of role because I don’t feel like I’m working towards anything meaningful or that requires a lot of specialized skill. It is this notion of proving to myself that I am smart enough, capable enough, and remarkable enough to get a position like being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. I feel like I just crave the feeling that I’m working towards something that feels worthwhile for me and that I wish I had the discipline that the other people in these careers have. Basically, I think amidst my self deprecation, I think there is this desire to master something and work towards it. I guess I didn't see the value of that as much as I do now.  And I guess that makes sense because another thing I found myself doing lately is watch videos about people working towards and acheiving goals that I personally don't find myself pursuing ranging from training for a marathon, visiting every single country, hiking on the Appalacian trail for 6 months, etc. with the awe of doing something for the long haul for the sake of mastering something you care about. 

    Helping people: When I think of careers that help people, the first jobs I think of are teachers, nurses, and service workers. And while I don’t want these exact careers, I do want to feel some sort of purpose at my job in regards to doing something worthwhile. Another thing I think of is how these jobs are also often overworked and as a result, my first thought is that I’m not built like that and I’m not capable of putting in those hours and dealing with that kind of bs. That’s the thing that makes me feel less than, the fact that I can’t put in long hours towards something that is selfless and worthwhile in society. It makes me feel like I’m not all that capable of making an impact and helping people at a larger scale because I don’t have the skills to work under pressure, to deal with difficult people, and do something that involves actual stakes. In my cushy corporate job, I have the privilege to say that so many of our work emergencies are fabricated because in the end of the day, it’s not like we’re saving lives. And while that gives me a sense of relief and perspective to not freak out over something insignificant in the moment, I think in the long run it can feed into this notion that my job is not important or worthwhile. And to be honest, it probably isn’t. If my position and company disappeared into thin air, the world would be fine. Maybe inconvenient for property managers and their financial statements, but generally speaking, they’re fine. The same cannot be said about doctors, grocery store workers, and postal workers.

    Making Money: I think much of this has to do with my economic anxieties when I unpacked this in therapy. I think out of the 3 circles, this is the least impactful to me because I don’t look at investment bankers and think about how I wish I had their careers since the lifestyle associated with it seems so miserable. But I have this mean girl voice in my head that’s like *is it that you don’t want to do it or is it that you aren’t capable of doing it and you’re just hating from outside the club?* And I feel insecure about not being the type who can work like 60-80 hour weeks. I know this isn’t something to be glorified because it’s literally labor exploitation but I guess it’s easier to beat yourself up for not being able to meet certain expectations because some people do appear to carry the burden well than to criticize the system for overworking people. Like I feel inferior to investment bankers and consultants to an extent because there are times in my cushy office job that I feel tired from working 40 hours in a week. a lot to do with the hustle culture illusion that just because you’re making a lot of money from long hours that this somehow makes you more hard working and more important compared to others and that you’re somehow contributing more to society and your money is evidence of the market righteously rewarding you. And this sense of righteousness tied to your financial status is indicative of how we put a moral value on how much we work and make because ~~~***cApiTALism BaByyyyy***~~~Like the mean girl voice loves to tell me that I don’t have what it takes to be successful because of the ways that we associate success with working long hours or even have what it takes to get one of these types of jobs. And by having what it takes, I’m referring to how I didn’t do a million extra curriculars in college, how I had a mediocre GPA, and how even by the grace of god if I got an opportunity like that despite my stats, I wouldn’t last 2 months much less 2 years. A lot of my friends are working 60-80 hour weeks, even if they aren’t investment banks and consultants, and while I feel bad for them and I wish they had the same work life balance I have,  I also sometimes look at them and think how they are so much more stronger and more hard working than me,  that they can withstand it while I sometimes struggle with the workload of my standard 9-5. I guess sometimes I feel like the only way to be successful is to work an unsustainable number of hours and since I’m trying to do things sustainably, that I’m some how weak, or slow, or overly sensitive, or not ambitious enough. 

    Conclusion: Besides these 3 Venn diagram circles, a common theme that you may be picking up that all of these careers have in common is that they require a lot of work and a lot of hours. And I suppose this is where my internalized sense of capitalism and ableism comes in because I’m basing my worth on how well I can perform and how much I can produce. And since I’m one of the few people in my friend group who isn’t working crazy hours, I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to be alright careerwise. I see my friends who are working towards law school or who are gaining a lot of valuable experiences (and money) in consulting, or who are working in D.C. with a ton of opportunities and I can see how that is setting them up for success. And I guess, my path seems more unclear and it sometimes lead me to feel like I’m going to be working a dead end job even though that isn’t even the case with my current role since I have promotion opportunities. I guess it also feels dead end because the promotion opportunities in question don’t seem exciting or interesting to me and in a way it seems nice to have a path like med school where you’re motivated towards an end goal that excites you (and imo you have to at least somewhat like it because that shit takes forever and the student debt ain’t a joke).

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I also feel like the middle class lifestyle that we grew up with is becoming more and more unattainable. It’s like the middle class of the past is basically the upper middle class today and that the upper middle class of the past is upper class now. I’ve also been feeling this constant state of instability for the past 10ish years due to the circus that has been politics. I also feel like Sisyphus because of how some things feel so unattainable. For boomers, they did have a mountain but they were able to roll the boulder up the hill and acheive things like homeownership and having kids. Meanwhile, Millenials and Gen Z it seems unlikely for most of us unless we had some sort of safety net or lived with our parents for a few years after getting a good job so here we are rolling up the boulder that is having a job or career without ever really reaching the top. And even if we do get close, there will be some sort of disaster or economic crisis that will cause it to roll back down. That's in the collective. On a more individual note, I feel this way about my corporate job because even though I like it and I like feeling productive and having a sort of structure to my day to day, in the end of the day, no matter how many calls I take and clients I help, there will always be more and that kind of leaves me feeling like *wtf is the point of this job and my role in it?!??!* I'm basically experiencing Alienation in a Marxist sense. 

    Upon watching various videos about Sisyphus and Albert Camus’ whole thing about the absurd, I think the way that I hold careers that make a lot of money on a pedestal has to do with trying to have control in a meaningless and out of control world. And it makes sense right, with inflation, the pandemic, and the feeling I get with the constant instability around me where I encounter another uNPreSiDentED eVEnT. There’s this quote that I got from a youtube video that I posted earlier in this journal:

    “'How could we apply this in our own lives? We could just deny the unreasonable world.' This is the most common way to accept the world around us. Everyone makes up their own rules, their own goals. An example of this is religion, finding peace knowing there is an afterlife or monetary gain finding peace knowing that you'll have financial stability when you retire. But Camus rejected this idea of thinking one day we will be free. Instead, we should recognize that we're free at every moment, that heaven is on earth, rejecting the idea that one day we will understand the world, we will overcome death, or be happy one day. It's a lesson to remember. We must live our lives as much as possible rather than as good as possible because what is considered good is just another metric we humans made up. We don't chase after things for the heck of it. It's because of the experience of it in the same way that for Sisyphus, it's not about getting to the top, it's about the satisfaction of the task while you're doing it. Our lives are not far from similar to Sisyphus' punishment. If we're striving for money, when will it be enough? If we're striving for happiness, when will we be happy enough? What about power? It's never enough. It's just an endless race with no finish line but that's okay as long as you live in the moment." 

    And I also found myself engaging in mindless consumerism which isn't really typical of me but I think it comes from wanting to fill the void with something materialisitcally satisfying to aspire to in a weird way. I didn't do this but I found myself watching videos of people spending hundreds of dollars on Sephora and Target self-care purchases. I did take myself on a little, much more tame, shopping spree and I do think that scratched the itch and demystified the fetishization that comes with advertisers and commodification. I think there was a part of me that wanted to take part, even if it's a little part, in that feeling of upper middle class abundance as something to aspire to and find meaning in. 

    I found myself thinking of Sisyphus a lot but more importantly Camus' notion that one must imagine Sisyphus happy rolling a boulder up a hill to not have it be a horrible tragedy of a story. And it got me thinking about what my “rolling a boulder up a hill is.” What would I like to do for the sake of it? What do I want to master, not for the success that it may bring, but for the sake of expressing a very natural, authentic state of being. What is something that I can see myself easily put 10,000 hours into not in a sense that I’m trying to rush those 10,000 hours and be world class as soon as possible but something that I want to build at over time and really enjoy my journey with.

    I guess my main takeaways are the following:

    1. You need to ask yourself what you want to master for the sake of it and create a situation where your inner Sisyphus is happy. You need to find long term goals that feel worthy of pursuing and that you’ll primarily enjoy the journey along the way.
    2. You need to ask yourself how you want to help people and what feels like a worthy contribution
    3. You need to address your internalized ableism about working long hours and doing something deemed important and perform in order to be worthy.
    4. You need to pursue your sense of purpose in a financially sustainable way which can be difficult given the instability around you. 

  9. Posted · Edited by soos_mite_ah

    "So like as Sisyphus' task lacks any ultimate purpose or end, he argued that the same could be said about the human experience but rather than running away from the absurd, Camus tells us to confront it directly. We should revolt against our absurd condition by embracing life, creating our own meaning, and living authentically. There we can find happiness. Sisyphus has no concept of a better day or an afterlife. His experiences are tied to the here and now. Sisyphus embaraces the task and gives it his all., revolting against nihilism and despair. This allows him to be the master of his own story. He is free even in his punishment. Sisyphus is the hero in the story, a tragic hero at that. Camus imagines Sisyphus smiling as he goes down the mountain to start his task over again and gives us the picture that there's joy and contentment in embracing the struggles of life even though at the end of the day it's meaningless.

    'How could we apply this in our own lives? We could just deny the unreasonable world.' This is the most common way to accept the world around us. Everyone makes up their own rules, their own goals. An example of this is religion, finding peace knowing there is an afterlife or monetary gain finding peace knowing that you'll have financial stability when you retire. But Camus rejected this idea of thinking one day we will be free. Instead, we should recognize that we're free at every moment, that heaven is on earth, rejecting the idea that one day we will understand the world, we will overcome death, or be happy one day. It's a lesson to remember. We must live our lives as much as possible rather than as good as possible because what is considered good is just another metric we humans made up. We don't chase after things for the heck of it. It's because of the experience of it in the same way that for Sisyphus, it's not about getting to the top, it's about the satisfaction of the task while you're doing it. Our lives are not far from similar to Sisyphus' punishment. If we're striving for money, when will it be enough? If we're striving for happiness, when will we be happy enough? What about power? It's never enough. It's just an endless race with no finish line but that's okay as long as you live in the moment." 

  10. Posted

    A lot of elected officials are a bunch of old geezers with a ton of Cold War trauma due to the Red Scare blacklisting people as communist left and right, running through drills in the event of a nuclear detonation, and the threat of a nuclear World War 3 if Russia and America get into direct conflict. You also have the demonization of social services under the Reagan administration and the stereotype of welfare queens. And even though left wing populism and socialism =/= communism, old people tend to conflate the two. As a result, a lot of them resonate with right wing populism that plays on their racial and gender biases (i.e. women and immigrants are taking all of your jobs away) because it appeals to their economic and racial anxieties. 

    Of course there are exceptions like Bernie who is basically appeals to the populism from the left. But it's important to note that back in 2016, when he first ran, waaaaay more people thought he was an insane communist than they do now. Before 2016, you couldn't say shit about capitalism without being looked at as if you have a third tit because it wasn't as much a part of the discourse for people who were center left.  Sure, the right still has that communist grandpa image of Bernie, but center left leaning people have calmed down on that by a lot over the past 8+ years.  

  12. Posted

    16 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

    Yes, flexibility is always the solution. All those "protocols", typically stage orange, fail to see the flexibility requirement of a successful integration. Anyway, notice how the "habits" you adopted weren't out of dumb, sheer repetition and force, but out of a simple understanding of the place of such practices in your life. Or at least, that's my whole hypothesis: I believe if you just don't see the point in doing something, there's no amount of repetition that will make you indifferent to doing that thing. And this would mean the whole habit thing is... BS. As a method of integrating new practices, not the fact that changing behavior is BS, to be clear.

    I think you have a limitted view of what a habit is and you're mainly coming from a stage orange perspective. You can have a habit and still have it be flexible. Whose to say that getting ice cream once a week on a Tuesday is a habit but getting ice cream once a week but the day of the week doesn't matter isn't a habit. Sure, habits that aren't rooted in some form of authenticity is less likely to stick but it is still something that is possible. There are plenty of habits that I have, particularly related to my job, that I don't particularly like or see the point of, but I still continue it because sometimes being an adult and taking responsibility means doing things that you're not quite fond of doing and sometimes, flexibility is not the solution. Sure sometimes sucks at first, but eventually you get used to it and your brain gets used to certain pathways it created. That's where the indifference comes from and hell, sometimes you end up liking the once new behavior because your mind adapts in such away that it likes the comfort of familiarity and it got into the habit. 

    17 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

    I believe if you just don't see the point in doing something, there's no amount of repetition that will make you indifferent to doing that thing. And this would mean the whole habit thing is... BS.

    Yes, this can be the case sometimes but just because it's true sometimes doesn't mean the whole  of the habit thing is to be discounted. 

  13. Posted

    It took me like 9 months to where I started saying it frequently. I think the first time I said it was when we were 7 months in.

    The first time he said that he loved me we were about 5 months along. I told him that I really liked him and that I'm heading towards that feeling but it's just taking me a little longer and that I'm no quite there yet but when I say it, I really want to mean it. He was very understanding and understood that just because we're on slightly different speeds that it wasn't a threat to his ego and it doesn't have anything to do with him or the relationship. 

    It's also worth noting that when we started dating we barely knew each other so we were really getting to know each other from complete scratch so we took things slower in the early part of our relationship.

    I have a friend who she and her boyfriend started saying I love you about 2-3 months in mainly because they grew up together so they already knew each other pretty well but not necessarily in a romantic sense before the relationship. They were also seeing each other fairly frequently (like 3+ times a week) so they got to know each other pretty quickly in a shorter period of time. In contrast, my boyfriend and I during our first year of dating would really go on dates like once a week initially because I was busy with school and later because we lived about an hour away from each other. 

    The point is that there is a variety of factors that go in to when it's a right time to say "I love you" from personal preference and the pace you tend to develop feelings, how long you've known each other, how much quality time you have spent together etc. So long as y'all have took the time to really know each other to the point where you're past the point of romanticizing them (basically when you've gotten to know them and not just the idea of them), I think it's fine to say I love you because a huge part of loving a person is knowing them. 

  14. Posted

    3 weeks Post Ramadan

    I wanted to give myself time to recover health wise from fasting, deal with the ego backlash I was experienceing, and just letting my takeaways marinate for a little bit before journalling about how I feel like Ramadan has been affecting me. Here are some points I jotted down: 

    • I feel calmer about the future. I think me taking a month where I was forced to be present and focus on myself helped me rewire somethings mentally. I remember before Ramadan I was going through my gloomer phase of sorts which I have previously wrote about. I still encounter like a gloomer mood with current events but it isn’t this constant thing in the back of my mind as it used to be. The gloominess comes from thinking of past bad events and the prediction of that continuing or getting worse in the future. It isn’t focusing on the now, being mindful, or letting yourself be. And I was aware of it back then to. But fasting helped me I guess emotionally integrate that notion.
    • I like how fasting has made me more mindful of how I spend my energy. This is because I didn’t have much energy to begin with during Ramadan and as a result, I had to get real with my priorities. I only really had enough energy to do my job, do some basic chores, and call my friends here and there. This forced me to cut out a lot of extra stuff that I was doing day to day. When it comes to some of the extra stuff, it was things I realized that I didn’t care much about but for other things like working out and hanging out with others, it made me realize how valuable it was because it was something that I couldn’t wait to get back to.
    • I think it was also nice to be intentional with one thing for a month and be really disciplined with it. It was nice to look at other areas of my life and think *hey, I can press pause on this for a little bit, it will still be here after a month* whether that be for career stuff, social things, hobbies or any other little goals I have and just focus on my sense of spirituality.
    • I have a new found appreciation about my health. After getting out of fasting and giving my body the time it needs to bounce back, I just feel really grateful for the energy I have throughout the day and the energy I have to do things such as work out and spend time with my friends.
      • I also had a lot of issues with food and dieting over the years and even though it’s mostly handled prior to me fasting, I think fasting, in a weird way, helped have a better relationship with food. Going into it, I was skeptical about fasting because I was afraid it was going to trigger me but honestly, it helped me appreciate food as an energy source and as something that helps me get through my day instead of demonizing it. I also think that this greater sense of appreciation for my health has made me want to not diet in the future. It’s a bit counterintuitive but I think the way that my body reacting negatively to not eating enough during Ramadan and also how it took me about a week and a half for me to bounce back due to my hormones being out of whack because of the fasting (PCOS and restrictive diets with fasting does not fix well imo), made me think about the long-term damage I’m likely causing my having restrictive tendencies with food.
    • I feel like I am more gentle with myself. I feel like I really had to be more gentle with myself during Ramadan due to my inability to focus at times, my low energy levels, and feeling like I'm stagnating in certain areas of my life. I am of the belief that gentleness and discipline have more in common with each other than not and I think for me at least, I tend to be more disciplined when I am gentle with myself. I think it's good that I got to work on my gentleness muscle more lately. 

  15. Posted

    I think for me, the key to lasting habits is setting realistic goals and finding ways to work with yourself rather than against yourself.

    For example, I know it's popular to wake up at 5am or earlier in some productivity circles. For me, that didn't really work because I can't naturally fall asleep until 11/11:30 at night which meant that I was usually working with 6 or less hours of sleep. As a result, the habit of waking up at 5 that was supposed to make me more productive had the opposite result for me. As a result, I made a new goal to wake up at a time that made sense to me, like around 7 on week days and 8-9:30 on week ends because that is what is most sustainable for me and in that schedule, I do end up getting enough sleep, thus making me productive. I would say that despite waking up at 7 on most days, I'm still just as productive as someone who wakes up at 5 when you look at everything I've done by the end of the day. And yes, this is a habit that I had to create because if I gave myself no structure, I could easily stay up til 2 in the morning and wake up at 10am which I could get away with in college but this wouldn't be helpful now since I have a job and other responsibilities. 

    Then there is working out. For me, working out 7 days a week is not sustainable because my body needs time to recover and I also have a changing schedule day to day. Instead, I aim to get 3-5 days of working out in where the days I choose is not set in stone but is flexible. If I don't achieve this, I still try to incorporate in some kind of movement throughout the day so that I don't feel sluggish from being too sedentary on a day to day basis.

  16. Posted · Edited by soos_mite_ah

    A National Park Wedding 

    For some reason, weddings are all that I could think about today. I don't know why. So I thought I'd journal about it. 

    Ever since I found out that national park weddings were a thing, thing just clicked for me. I've never been the type of kid who fantasized about their wedding day. Weddings just seemed stressful to me, I don't like being in the center of attention like that, and I feel weird about grand romantic gestures or anything that can make an intimate relationship into a spectacle of sorts. And not to mention the cost of weddings. 

    But instead of spending thousands of dollars on a venue, you're telling me that you could get something like this for $50-$200!!!!!

    national park wedding 3.jpgnational park wedding 1.jpgnational park wedding 4.jpg
    national park wedding 2.jpeg

    Like it feels like a no brainer. I think the whole concept of a micro wedding got popular during the pandemic since you couldn't have large gatherings. And I'm here for it. For as long as I can remember I wanted a small wedding or just a simple elopment where we sign some documents and call it day. And with national park weddings, I think there is like a 50 guest limit which just feels perfect for me. I really don't like large parties in general because I find them over stimulating and it's hard to spend quality time with people and I definitely don't want that for my wedding day. I also don't want to deal with the financial and emotional stress large weddings can bring. I know people who after their weddings were like *I'm so glad that it's over and done with because wedding planning is stressful and your stressed and anxious the whole day because you want it to be perfect.* And I think that is so tragic to feel that way leading up to your wedding and on the day of.

    I want to spend time with people I really care about, enjoy myself, and be carefree. In the end of the day, I'm not going to remember the small details of the silverware or the invitation or how fancy the flowers were or the specific party favors all that much. But I will say, I can't think of anything more magical than getting married in a national park. Again, I've never been the type to fantasize about my wedding, but I can't help it when I see pictures from national park weddings. In a practical sense, you don't even have to stress about the details of decorating all that much because backdrop is already so magnificient. 

    I also do want to do some more traditional things regarding my Bengali heritage. I do want to wear traditional desi clothes and do my makeup as such. I do want to do all of the traditional Hindu rituals as well. 

    national park wedding 5.jpegnational park wedding 6.jpg

    I love the makeup and the head piece in the first picture and I love the florals on the lehenga. I want to incorporate a lot of florals to the dress to go along with the naturey "venue" and have it be that classic red that you see in Desi weddings. 

    For the guests, I would say they can wear what they would like so long as it's formal. It can be a formal dress you see in American weddings, something Desi, or something else formal from your own culture. Also, it's going to be a dry wedding since I don't drink and it's going to be child free because I don't want to deal with kids who get bored and might do something crazy out in a natural park. 

    For the cake, I really like the naked cakes and cakes that are decorated with fruits and flowers. I feel like it scratched the cave man part of my brain and it just looks delicious. I can also just see myself taking the time to make a cake myself and with my groom since this is relatively simple to put together. Basically, something like this but smaller: 

    wedding cake.jpg

    I've also of course thought of the 25 people I would want to invite for my side of the wedding. I can fit my close friends and some family members in there. So the 50 guest limit thing seems very do able. I also made a little pinterest board and a playlist for all of my little thoughts. I hope I don't look back at this and cringe in like 10 years since it's kind of a trend now where people post about their cringy wedding or wedding pinterest boards from like 2008 to 2015. Tiktok is filled with videos like this lol. I saw a lot of coral and turquoise paired with chevron print.... Big oooofff. 

    I also love the idea of having a live painter. I want to do the photography stuff with me and my husband in an earlier date so that we aren't caught up with it on the day of and just have the rest of the photos be taken by family and guests. 

     

  21. Posted

    2 hours ago, Someone here said:

    But today I wanna discuss with you guys the most important philosophical question in my point of view ...and that is "why does pain exist ?".

    To keep you alive in a relative egoic sense. Pain can give us an indication of what is going wrong in our lives and what we need to focus on. Whether we go about in a healthy or unsustainable way is on you and which one a person chooses can have a bunch of different factors involved. 

    2 hours ago, Someone here said:

    .why isn't reality 100% pleasure?  This god (which is me ) is so stooooopid to create pain when his all-powerful ass is capable of creating endless heaven. 

    God created pain because god doesn't have an agenda. God is not limitted by survival because by definition god is infinite. God created all of this because God / Consciousness wants to experience everything even if in the relative egoic it conflicts with what it identifies with. In the ultimate level, God wants to experience everything from the stomach ache you had last week to someone's traumatic child birthing experience. God wants to experience what it's like being the oppressed and the oppressor which is why both are created and both are given Consciousness. Because in the absolute sense it's all love even if some forms of love are more crude than the others. The point of life is to be experienced and God is experiencing it all, the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain, because God/ Consciousness is part of everything. 

  22. Posted

    Places I feel like I don't have the guts to go to 

    • Mauritania: this was the last country to abolish slavery in the 80s but it's still practiced there and I've heard stories from women travelling there and then having trouble coming back home.
    • Eritrea: heavily militarized, basically a military state 
    • Djibuti: again, heavily militarized 
    • Syria: war 
    • Lebanon: not exactly war but now it's not a good idea to go considering what's happening in Syria and Palestine. I can see myself going in the future
    • Jordan: same as Lebanon. But I feel like I could have gone about a year ago and it would have been fine. The country is pretty chill but the neighbors are kinda crazy. 
    • Israel/ Palestine: war but also, even though Israel is relatively safe, I don't want my money going to apartheid and be a tourist while people are literally being genocided a few miles away. That's just fucked up. 
    • Iran: not super great to women + Ayotollah and morality police
    • Iraq: same as Iran 
    • Afghanistan: it's under Taliban control 
    • North Korea: I'm terrified of making the wrong move and ending up in jail where god knows what would happen
    • Turkmenistan: high corruption, sketchy police, is basically North Korea lite 
    • Sudan: there is a genocide happening 
    • DRC: genocide 
    • Azerbajan: genocide / war 
    • Armenia: genocide/ war 
    • Egypt: Not only have I heard of a lot of sketchy things happening, I've also had a friend get into a pretty dangerous situation there 
    • Yemen: war/genocide 
    • Somalia: very unstable 
    • Russia: war 
    • Ukraine: war
    • Kazakstan: not really war but they're dealing with a lot of issues due to the war in Ukraine 
    • Libya: closed off to travellers and journalists unless you try to do something sketchy to get in

    Basically, a lot of the more unstable parts of Africa, the Middle East, and the area around the Ukraine war. I would have to do more research into other countries before I add them to the list but this is just the stuff I could think of off the top of my head. But yeah, I can't imagine having to travel to these places, much less living there. I have a lot of respect for the people who did complete the journey of travelling to every single country. 

    As I was making this list, I was thinking about my limitations when it came to skill to get around, the degree of open mindedness I had, and how much I'm willing to risk. That list is just the list of countries I wouldn't go period. There is also a much larger list of places that I would be very hesitant to go unless I was a more experienced traveller or I spent a good amount of time preparing ahead of time. For example, I would be hesitant to go to most South Asian countries unless I was meeting with family or I was travelling with another person, preferrably a man. I probably wouldn't want to go to many South American countries, South East Asian countries, Eastern European countries, or Central Asian countries until I gained more solo travelling experience and got more comfortable with that. I'm actually planning a trip to North Vietnam later this year and I'm planning on doing a little tour group/ package since this is my first time travelling alone to a less developed country where I don't speak the language. Depending on how this trip goes and my comfort level after it, I feel like that could be an area where I could really gage where I'm at in a safe situation without diving into the deep end prematurely and then decide on future trips. 

    I'm pretty comfortable with going to any first world country by myself, even if they don't speak English. I'm also planning a trip to South Korea and it's not freaking me out in the slightest. Part of it is that I've done this before in France and the Netherlands and I was fine. It was a little bit of a challenge to get around but I had google translate and reliable public transport so I was fine lol. Language barriers and cultural differences don't really freak me out. Like I can think of one country in each region that I would feel comfortable travelling to: Qatar for the Middle East, Japan for East Asia, India for South Asia (because I have family there), Fiji for Oceania, Chile for South America, Czech Republic in Eastern Europe, Mexico and Canda in North America, Uzbekistan in Central Asia, Nigeria in West Africa, Morrocco in North Africa, Kenya in East Africa, and Namibia in South Africa etc. So I don't think I have a bias in terms of region of a world or any negative ideas of the people inherently being a certain way in a certain place. Like despite the Islamophobia that I was raised with and the anti-Black seniments, predominantly Black or Muslim countries aren't inherently scary to me unless there is like an active conflict happening. Rather, I have a bias for my own sense of safety and peace of mind which I don't feel bad about in the slightest. But I will say, I do have a preference for places that aren't super hot since I grew up in Texas. Also, I have the obvious travel preference of not wanting it to be rainy. But generally speaking, I can plan around that (i.e. don't go to Qatar in August and instead wait for the winter so you don't cook in the sun and don't go to Thailand during rainy season).

    As for fears, even if violent crime is out of question due to rarity, I'm also terrified of being in a foreign country and having my passport, wallet, and/or phone stolen or just being stranded somewhere (still unlikely but also very possible). Then there is the communication gap if there is a language barrier and also, wtf do I do if I need to call the authorities, or hell, if I'm in a place where the authorities are REALLY sketchy. That's another thing that is in the back of my mind, though I would say that if I'm planning on going to a first world country, I'm not as worried because I'm sure that instances like that are pretty rare. 

  24. Posted

    Travelling to Every Country

    I have been binging on Drew Binksy's videos for the past 2 ish weeks now. I started with this 1 hour 45 min video about his travels in Iran and I've mainly been watching his longer form content. I guess two weeks into this, I caught myself thinking about my own biases and things that would freak me out. I consider myself a relatively open minded person but it takes a lot skill to go to all 197 countries and take in everything mentally and emotionally. 

    My first thought tbh was how simply by being a woman of color, there are a lot of countries that would be a lot different for me to navigate compared to Drew. As beautiful as it was to watch this video on travelling to various parts of Iran as whimsical the whole experience felt as they explored the culture, I know that the rules would be very different for me especially considering the morality police and the Ayalltola. I'm not trying to make this a limitting belief since I know there are women who have travelled there and are fine but there are extra precautions I would have to take and extra social things for me to consider. Drew also did a similarly long video on travelling to Afghanistan which I have yet to watch but it take no mentioning that since the Taliban takeover, that going to Afghanistan is out of question for me. 

    I have also watched another video about the time he got stranded in Yemen, almost got killed in Chad, and lying to get into Libya

    I can't imagine having to go through something like that as a traveller and navigating through these high stress situations. I've had a couple of travel mishaps where I had to figure out something on the spot but nothing like this. I know travelling is a skill and that navigating through a 3rd world country is very different from navigating in a 1st world country from the language differences, safety, infrastructrual differences, logistical difficulties, etc. but dealing with dangerous situations face to face requires another level of bravery, street smarts, quick thinking, and more. I know most travel experiences aren't like this despite the fear mongering that you sometimes get from other people but shit does happen and it's important to be safe regardless of location. But I can't imagine going to places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, North Korea etc. willingly. 

    Things that I think will leave me squeamish that I've seen on Drew's videos include the following: 

    • Encountering cannibals 
    • Going to really conservative countries even if they are considered safe, as a woman
    • eating things like bugs (snails, crickets, larva, worms etc.), brains, animals I would consider pets, eyeballs, balut, intestines, sardines, anything with blood, organ meat, or things that look like snot. I also just generally speaking, am not too excited when it comes to mushy foods. 
    • Global poverty to a certain extent: I have encountered a certain degree of that in India from when I was very little but even though I have some exposure, some things are still hard to stomach right then and there in the moment. I'm sure I haven't even seen the worst of it. 
    • This isn't something I've seen in Drew's videos but I'm not sure to what extent I would be able to travel without some guide of some sort in a lot of poor, developing countries where I don't speak the language. Figuring out how to logistially plan for something like that feels anxiety inducing as someone who has never done something like that. Gonna be honest, this is a skill issue for me lol
    • Anything involving an active war zone

    I also found some interesting demographics about world travellers in https://nomadmania.com/people-who-visited-every-country/ . Granted, not everyone who has travelled to all the countries are recorded due to privacy reasons, not being on social media etc. But this is based on the records that are kept.

    • 85% of the people who travelled to all the countries are men, 15% are women
      • "More than half of the women achieving it in the past five years indicates a longer-term equalisation of gender."
    • 87% are white, 8% are east or south east asian, 3% are south asian, 2% are black
    • average age of completion is 53 years 
    • "In terms of travel styles too, UN Masters appear to come in all guises. Some achieved the feat while travelling in groups or with agencies who took care of many details. Others are hardened individualists who attempt uncompromising solo adventures. Billionaires who fly on private jets, or those on meagre budgets who have succeeded through getting sponsored by large organisations – UN Masters come with wallets of different sizes too."
    • I also found the LPI (Low Passport Index) section where they recorded people who did this feat despite travelling with less powerful passports. I found that section to be particularly inspiring regarding the drive and dedication these people have. It's already hard visiting every country in the world, it's another thing doing THAT on hard mode. 
    • This isn't from the website, but the number of people who have visited every country is about 400-500 people. The number of people who have been to space is 681. And the number of billionaires is 2,781. 
    • According to Pew Research "In the U.S., while roughly three-quarters have traveled to at least one other country, only 11% have been to 10 or more." And according to the graph, 15% have gone to 5-9. 

  25. Posted

    A Wealth of Experiences

    After watching Leo's video on When the Left Goes too Far, I caught myself contemplating about the part where he talks about how it's a privilege to be left leaning because of the life experiences you've had and that you have enough material comforts to not be focused on brute survival, which is why you can focus on higher ideals like equality, gay rights, freedom of speech, mental health etc. And while I, as a child of immigrants who has parents who lived through much harsher life circumstances, I am very much aware of the later as I have to manage my ideals and sense of authenticity and autonomy with that of my stage blue/orange parents who have had very different life  experiences, values, and opinions due to their upbringing and survival circumstances. I've had to learn, understand, and balance a lot of these types things and see how their upbrining contributes to their world views, and how they're not just simply crazy or dumb. 

    However, while I'm aware of my privelege in survival as well as how being born in an upper middle class family in a major U.S. city  plays a role in my experiences, I wanted to explore the wealth I have, not only from privilege, but from my life experiences. I have thought about this in the past prior to me thinking about it in this context. There have been many times over the past few months where I have really taken a moment to appreciate all of the places I've been and what I did there. My parents have screwed up a lot in my upbringing, but one thing they really got right was the emphasis they put on education, travel, and learning how to assimilate into different communities (side note: When I talk about assimilation, I'm not just talking about assimillating into White culture as a lot of children of immigrants feel pressure to in the U.S. Assimilation also means learning to adjust to things I encountered abroad with my family as well as the different communities I have encountered over the years). 

    Visited 27/50 of the U.S. states

    • Went to the major cities in Texas (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Galveston and you know damn well that I won’t forget the Alamo lol)
    • Went to Vegas 
    • Visiting various national parks like Yosemite, Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Devils Tower
    • Visited the Christmas towns in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine and saw the Green Mountains (drove throughout Vermont)
    • Went to California, saw LA, San Francisco, and drove on highway 1
    •  Visited major cities such as NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore
      • NYC: saw the empire state building, statue of liberty, mainly stayed in Queens and visited relatives there, visited a few universities I was considering, central park
      •  Boston: visited universities, the Kennedy presidential library, went to the Boston harbor and saw a little reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, enjoyed the public transportation system. 
      • Saw Gettysburg, various things in Philly
      • DC: went to the White House, Congress, Smithsonian, National Mall, the Smithsonian saw cherry blossom season
      • Baltimore: mainly went there for the Bengali cultural conference and also saw the harbor area and has some good seafood
    • Went to the islands in Hawaii. Saw the volcanos and the beaches 
    • Went to Disney world as a kid
    •  Visited the forests of Arkansas and explored the caves (and saw too many confederate flags lol)
    • Have gone to New Orleans a couple times, tried the food, and saw the French Quarters.
    • Saw various places that preserved Native American History in New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma
    • Went to Roswell New Mexico and saw the Area 51 alien museum and where they tested the atomic bombs
    • Went skiing a couple times in New Mexico. 

    India:

    • Going to Bihar, staying in an ashram for 3 days, doing religious rituals with my parents for my grandparents, and seeing people keep hard copies of genealogical data
    • Going to Kolkata every other year growing up + saw the Victoria Memorial, the Howrah Bridge, downtown Kolkata, and the Ganges River
    • Saw the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, the entirety of Jaipur, Jantar Manter, and Delhi

    UAE:

    •  Visiting Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, went to the Dubai Mall, went to the beaches and the palm islands

    Bangladesh:

    • Went to Sylhet, Dhaka, my ancestral home in Mymensingh, visited my dad’s friends and relatives

    Went to Costa Rica, and saw the rainforests + did a tour of San Juan

    Europe:

    • Went to the UK: studied Indian history there, stayed in Oxford and London, saw the British Museum, Tower of London, London Eye, Brick Lane, the William Morris House, the Roman baths, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, Windsor Castle, and Parliament  
    • Went to France: Saw the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Versailles, and Remy the rat along with his whole family in the Paris bus stop. I also went to the beach and spent some time in Bordeaux.
    • Went to Amsterdam: went on a cycling tour, went to a boat tour, the Ann Frank House, and out door market, and a place that was mainly populated by middle eastern immigrants. I also went to the red light district and went to a sex show which was interesting.

    Food Experiences:

    •  I have a thing where I try the Mexican food wherever I go as an experiement of sorts
      •  Tex Mex
      •  California Mexican food
      •  Mexican food in DC, the UK, and Vermont
      •  Mexican food in places like New Mexico and Galveston
    • Salvadorian food
    • Brazilian food:
      •  Brazilian Steak House
      • Brazilian / Italian / Portuguese fusion food
    •  Costa Rican food
      •  Lots of chicken and plantains
    • South East Asian Cuisine
      • Thai: tried various noodle and curry dishes
      •  Malaysian: There is a restaurant that I really like in Dallas
      •  Vietnamese: I’m kinda basic but I’ve mainly tried Bahn Minh, Pho, and rice paper rolls
    • East Asian Cuisine
      • Chinese Take out
      • Chinese Dim Sum
      • Sushi: ranges from sashimi, various roll styles, sushi in fancy restaurants, and grocery store sushi 
      • Hibachi
      • Ramen
      • Kimbap 
      • Korean fried cheese 
      • Various East Asian snacks: sweet sandwiches, boba, various chip flavors, Korean fried chicken, anything with matcha, various cookies, mochi
      • The French pastries in the bakeries next to the east asian grocery stores
    • South Asian Cuisine
      • A whole lifetime of Bengali home cooked meals and lessons on how to eat elish maach
      • North Indian and South Indian food
      • Various snack and junk foods
      • Street food
      • Indo Chinese food
      • fusion foods including Korean+Indian and Mexican+Indian 
    • Mediterranean Food:
      •  Went to Italian, Greek, Turkish, North African, Palestinian,and Syrian places
      • Had gyros, shawarmas, baba ganush, fatoush salad, tabouli salad, Greek salads, various lamb preparations
    • Barbeque
      • Texas BBQ
      • North Carolina
      • Kansas
      • Australian
      • German
      • Korean
      • Brazillian
    • French food: croissants, crepes, the pizzas there, beignets, various cheeses and breads
    • Dutch: Pancakes, stroopwaffles, fish, croquettes
    • UK: fish and chips, meat pastries, Shepard’s pie, beans on toast, full English breakfast
    • Maine lobster + Crab cakes + crab and lobster rolls
    • Tried a lot of seafood in general: fish, lobster, crab, shrimp, crawfish, calamari, squid, mussels, oysters, caviar, fish curries, raw fish, fried

    The people I have met

    • Grew up in an area of Dallas that is predominantly black and Hispanic with a good bit of African immigrants from the Caribbean, West Africa, and East Africa
    • Would frequently go up to North Dallas where there is a lot of south, east, and south east Asian people
    • Got exposed to a lot of Middle Eastern people through my friends and in college
    • Know a few immigrants from Europe (mainly UK and Germany) as well as people who are connected to their Italian, Scottish, Irish, and English heritage  
    • Met some Eastern European people growing up and in college  
    • Met a few Jewish people as well as a couple Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, and Jains. And of course, I know a good deal of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus who are religious to various degrees and practice various forms of each religion (Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Sunni, Shia, Hindus from various castes in the north, south, and east India)
    • Met exactly one person from Central Asia (he was from Kyrgyzstan)
    • Political Ideology
      •  Liberals
        • Southern Liberals / Liberals from red states
        • East Coast Liberals
        •  Liberals from blue states
      • Conservatives
        • Rich conservatives
        • Poor conservatives
        • Southern conservatives (typically boomers and suburban Karens)
        • Rural conservatives from various parts of the country (ranging from rural Texas, Arkansas, to even rural Maine)
      • The occasional libertarian
      •  Leftists
        • Let’s just say that there is a big difference between leftists from red states, mainly from the south and from Appalachia, and the leftists from places like NYC, Boston, LA, and San Francisco, and online leftists
      •  Fascists
        • I met a full on Nazi once. I don’t know too many fascists but I do know people who have questionable views that connect to fascist talking points.
      • People who are all over the place due to war trauma
      • People who have survived a genocide, refugees, people who have been influenced by Hindu nationalism, Islamofascism, have a heavy negative bias towards a group like Jewish people or Pakistanis due to the war trauma that they or their family experienced.