I’ve noticed that some useful lessons learned came to me backwards, as realizations I stumbled into after doing things “wrong” for long enough. This is a loose collection of those reversals.
Usually, people tend to first have an idea, then execute born from that initial spark of clarity. But you can just as well execute on the current reality with imperfect information and let the ideas come to you while being in motion, as opposed to waiting for inspiration.
One way to understand the logic of the latter is obviously that action reveals possibilities invisible from stillness.
The non-obvious one a bit is that context creates content. You literally cannot see certain solutions until you're already inside the problem.
Arguably, there's an interesting dimension with people thinking loneliness is solved by finding the right people. You know, get out more, join communities, swipe right, whatever.
This treats loneliness as purely a lack of "other people" and assumes that you are already whole and sitting in an empty room. Sometimes, this could well be the case although reality shows that we carry the empty room inside us.
The reverse realization that took me forever to notice is loneliness can also just be a symptom of self-abandonment.
Think about it, how many times have you been surrounded by people and felt completely disconnected? That may not entirely be a people problem, could be you-with-you problem. The cure is coming back to yourself first, and then sharing that fullness with others, rather than asking them to fill a gap.
From what I've gathered and observed, I'm not too sold on the idea that we remember the past in order to preserve what happened, like some kind of biological filing system.
I think the whole chain process for memory storing and retrieval can be very deceptive.
The flip side of that too is memory is primarily oriented towards the future, all that past data being used to mine for predictive patterns.
In a way, forgetting could be the system's way of tossing out irrelevant noise, and its ruthlessly pragmatic about this, one sign of that being evolution is less about preserving accurate historical records but more so keeping you alive and functional tomorrow. Baseline survival overrides historical accuracy.
More often than not, a complex problem is the result of layered simple mistakes.
On an individual level, most messes are just accumulated yeses that should have been nos or vice versa, compounded over time.
E.g. a bloated work schedule rarely happens all at once. It happens because three years ago you said "yes" to a weekly recurring meeting that is no longer relevant. Then you added a tool to track that meeting. Then you hired an assistant to manage the tool. Now you have a complex management problem.
The fix is quite simple, either going forward with stricter boundaries or untangling the knots backwards.
This last one is quite similar to the first one. I've been exposed to varying points of the spectrum on chasing one's passion, from not knowing what your passion is to knowing what your passion is but not having the opportunity/right circumstances to chase it.
Sometimes, I just discard the whole spectrum and replace passion with purpose.
Passion is a flimsy thing compared to the latter, and there are many moments of high and lows that are arguably counterproductive to keeping steady momentum.
Anyways, one can't think their way into knowing what they want starting with introspection.
You have to touch it first, maybe half-heartedly, and see if something lights up. Do it a lot of times and eventually something will light up, almost a statistical inevitability.
Thanks for reading! Share your thoughts below on the comments.
