Life after 36
There’s a magnificent Turkish poet, Cahit Sitki Taranci, who said that 35 is “halfway through the road.” The poem that laments the loss of youth and recognizes the creeping existential dread that one feels as the concept of their mortality becomes increasingly real. Taranci’s verses address the physical changes in the mirror, the loss of feeling, the constant worry and day-to-day struggle, and the hard truths that one discovers as one ages. My favorite verse, and one I agree with: “I discover...
LA or New York?
A question that stuck with me for days after the two times I’ve visited LA: should I move here? While I was in LA, I experienced this question as a certainty. I belonged in LA. Everything about it fundamentally nourished me: from the sun to the coffeeshops where no one was in a rush, where people called each other by their name and healthy options were the default rather than something you had to seek out. Plus, there was Abbot Kinney Boulevard and Erewhon’s breakfast burritos and the palm-li...
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant: Is it better to forget?
The most recent book I finished is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, in which an elderly Briton couple leave their village to visit a son who they have not seen in years. This is a perilous journey in post-Roman Britain, where distances are yet unconquered by advanced transportation, and where people are frail. Still, the story hints that the couple is strong for their age yet, and devoted to each other. There is one quirk: the couple is missing their memories, owing to a dragon’s spell cast...
Discovering, remembering, and clarifying my thoughts through writing. Writing to find joy.
Life after 36
There’s a magnificent Turkish poet, Cahit Sitki Taranci, who said that 35 is “halfway through the road.” The poem that laments the loss of youth and recognizes the creeping existential dread that one feels as the concept of their mortality becomes increasingly real. Taranci’s verses address the physical changes in the mirror, the loss of feeling, the constant worry and day-to-day struggle, and the hard truths that one discovers as one ages. My favorite verse, and one I agree with: “I discover...
LA or New York?
A question that stuck with me for days after the two times I’ve visited LA: should I move here? While I was in LA, I experienced this question as a certainty. I belonged in LA. Everything about it fundamentally nourished me: from the sun to the coffeeshops where no one was in a rush, where people called each other by their name and healthy options were the default rather than something you had to seek out. Plus, there was Abbot Kinney Boulevard and Erewhon’s breakfast burritos and the palm-li...
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant: Is it better to forget?
The most recent book I finished is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, in which an elderly Briton couple leave their village to visit a son who they have not seen in years. This is a perilous journey in post-Roman Britain, where distances are yet unconquered by advanced transportation, and where people are frail. Still, the story hints that the couple is strong for their age yet, and devoted to each other. There is one quirk: the couple is missing their memories, owing to a dragon’s spell cast...
Discovering, remembering, and clarifying my thoughts through writing. Writing to find joy.
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After my mother’s aneurysm, it seems as if I have become more sensitive to the pieces of my life that weren’t quite right.
It was puzzling to me, for example, that I could stay calm when my mother’s surgeon told my brother and I that we could lose my mother’s life because of a serious complication, and disintegrate so utterly at the thought of being a weak, ineffectual, scared person at work who couldn’t drive anything or influence anyone.
I probed deeper into that thought. A colleague once told me that you are the same person at work that you are in life. This would mean that I am, in life, someone who considers myself weak, ineffectual, scared.
That is correct.
The most defining feelings of my life are a sense of inferiority, of not belonging, of not being capable.
My mother’s illness, stripping away the pacifying effect of routine, made me realize the full force of those feelings and how they dominate my life every day. Not just at work, but in life.
They have been so palpable throughout my childhood that I can remember them viscerally. I remember walking into the first day of elementary school scared with the thought of not being able to find the answers that would be requested by our teacher, of failing exams, and the teacher being mad at me.
I remember the shame when I couldn’t properly take a pass or miss balls aimed at me in gym class. I remember the feeling of wanting to hide when I couldn’t pull my weight in a game of tug of war.
I remember the same insecurity in my mother, and the same lack of forgiveness toward herself. How she would go walking every morning, come home and weigh herself, tell me the results. How she got happy if the number was below a threshold.
How she constantly thought she was overweight, even when she was slim and gorgeous.
She stayed trapped in a bad marriage for years because she thought she couldn’t make it on her own.
How she constantly put herself down.
Even today, the pieces of her mind puzzle still somewhat scattered after her four brain surgeries, she answers my video calls with the same instinct.
“How ugly I look,” she says, touching the tufts of baby hair on her forehead that have started to grow after the surgery.
Her obsession with beauty and maintaining order on the surface prevented her from diving into her true insecurities and unhappiness.
That’s not to say she didn’t feel the deeper issues. I’m sure she did. I’m sure the anger and heartbreak she revealed to me over her disintegrating marriage, the anxiety over her barely-together finances, were only the surface of what she felt.
And yet. Her response was to maintain the status quo. Work harder. Bury herself into her routine. Bury herself into her work. Forget, ignore and get by, instead of conflict.
I used to be angry at her for being scared to walk away from her marriage, with two children. I realize how unfair that feeling is when I feel ill-equipped to drive work projects without asking for input from others.
My response to my insecurities is the same. Gloss over the root cause. Work harder. Depend on other people for fear of making a mistake. Be a scared perfectionist. Do what others think I should be doing. Depend on others even more, as the decisions get tougher and projects more complicated.
Ultimately, my mother’s heartbreak, resentments, anger, and exhaustion played a part in landing her in the hospital. And however unpleasant, turning the same reflection on myself has been a similar wake-up call.
I don’t have all the answers. But I have clarity into what I really need to work on.
After my mother’s aneurysm, it seems as if I have become more sensitive to the pieces of my life that weren’t quite right.
It was puzzling to me, for example, that I could stay calm when my mother’s surgeon told my brother and I that we could lose my mother’s life because of a serious complication, and disintegrate so utterly at the thought of being a weak, ineffectual, scared person at work who couldn’t drive anything or influence anyone.
I probed deeper into that thought. A colleague once told me that you are the same person at work that you are in life. This would mean that I am, in life, someone who considers myself weak, ineffectual, scared.
That is correct.
The most defining feelings of my life are a sense of inferiority, of not belonging, of not being capable.
My mother’s illness, stripping away the pacifying effect of routine, made me realize the full force of those feelings and how they dominate my life every day. Not just at work, but in life.
They have been so palpable throughout my childhood that I can remember them viscerally. I remember walking into the first day of elementary school scared with the thought of not being able to find the answers that would be requested by our teacher, of failing exams, and the teacher being mad at me.
I remember the shame when I couldn’t properly take a pass or miss balls aimed at me in gym class. I remember the feeling of wanting to hide when I couldn’t pull my weight in a game of tug of war.
I remember the same insecurity in my mother, and the same lack of forgiveness toward herself. How she would go walking every morning, come home and weigh herself, tell me the results. How she got happy if the number was below a threshold.
How she constantly thought she was overweight, even when she was slim and gorgeous.
She stayed trapped in a bad marriage for years because she thought she couldn’t make it on her own.
How she constantly put herself down.
Even today, the pieces of her mind puzzle still somewhat scattered after her four brain surgeries, she answers my video calls with the same instinct.
“How ugly I look,” she says, touching the tufts of baby hair on her forehead that have started to grow after the surgery.
Her obsession with beauty and maintaining order on the surface prevented her from diving into her true insecurities and unhappiness.
That’s not to say she didn’t feel the deeper issues. I’m sure she did. I’m sure the anger and heartbreak she revealed to me over her disintegrating marriage, the anxiety over her barely-together finances, were only the surface of what she felt.
And yet. Her response was to maintain the status quo. Work harder. Bury herself into her routine. Bury herself into her work. Forget, ignore and get by, instead of conflict.
I used to be angry at her for being scared to walk away from her marriage, with two children. I realize how unfair that feeling is when I feel ill-equipped to drive work projects without asking for input from others.
My response to my insecurities is the same. Gloss over the root cause. Work harder. Depend on other people for fear of making a mistake. Be a scared perfectionist. Do what others think I should be doing. Depend on others even more, as the decisions get tougher and projects more complicated.
Ultimately, my mother’s heartbreak, resentments, anger, and exhaustion played a part in landing her in the hospital. And however unpleasant, turning the same reflection on myself has been a similar wake-up call.
I don’t have all the answers. But I have clarity into what I really need to work on.
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