Regarding the 27th year
On my birthday, I take some time to reflect on my year, to thank the people in my life (thank you all), and to highlight new goals for next year.
To say that this year has been eventful would be a monumental understatement. I will skip a description of the year’s events because these essays always tend to be too long. Below, I track my progress on my personal objectives (personal maintenance and growth) and lay out new objectives for my 28th year.
Physical Maintenance
I managed to get more sleep at reasonable hours this year. I don’t know what allowed this to happen, but it did. This improved my life exponentially.
I have started taking migraine medication. That is all.
I exercised and stretched more than I did last year. However, I did so far less frequently during the winter. During the school year, my weekly tasks increase multiply. Whenever I get overwhelmed with work, exercise is the first routine I neglect. My guess is that my tendency to feel fatigued or weak in the winter is partly due to lack of exercise. This year has seen progress, but there is still room to grow.
Psychological Maintenance
Last year, I hoped that I would bully myself less. Unfortunately, I don’t think I managed that this year.
I have a bully inside of my head. Sometimes I just let it bully me. In particular, I can’t seem to stop the bullying on days when I haven’t slept. On those days, I wake up, eat breakfast, and soon after that I notice that the bully’s voice is somehow amplified in my head. I try to take the microphone away from her but I’m too tired and she puts up a pretty good fight. She has a lot of mean things to say. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes I cry all day and I cannot stop until I fall sleep. Sometimes she will stop if I ask, but most of the time she doesn’t, and if she does, it’s not for long. She doesn’t want to stop. But I’ve also learned that if I ask her questions, sometimes she responds with unforeseen honesty.
I’ve actually gotten to know her a little bit. I think she is scared for me. She just doesn’t want me to get my hopes up. The sad thing is that if you listen to her with even a slightly critical eye, you’d see that she says a lot of the same things over and over again without much substantiation. And yet she thinks that it’s all true and that I should know about it. To be frank, I pity her immensely.
I’ve been doing what I can to reassure her that she’s wrong about the world. Thanks to getting better sleep, taking some time to myself, and hearing feedback from the kindly people in my life, I’ve gathered the world is a forgiving place. I have flaws, pardon me, many flaws, as my little bully has pointed out for me, but many times, the world forgives. Somehow, people look past my many imperfections. I’m truly indebted to-
Ah, see? I was about to continue about how I felt that people generally have been forgiving and kind to me, but I could feel the microphone slipping from my grasp and I know this means I need to snatch it back from my little bully. She tugs sometimes. I should correct myself. I shouldn’t say that the world is a forgiving place per se--this would imply that the world percieves my flaws (yes yes, my many flaws, shh my little bully) and goes out of its way to issue me a pardon. I gathered this year that this is not how it works. Many of my supposed flaws are hardly perceived by the world, and if they are, they are perceived more often as neutral properties or quirks or sometimes--to my sincere astonishment--as sweet or charming qualities. I have much to learn about the world, but it is hardly the reproving, zero-sum-game environment that my little bully seems to think. Its people are warm and gentle and generous with their smiles and laughter. This means that I need to think more critically about what my flaws are. Some of my flaws are in fact true flaws. Some of them are not, but are unconventional or are deemed by me to be unpreferable for whatever reason (which may or may not be valid). If I want to grow, I need to deliberate before judging certain qualities about myself to be flaws.
This deliberation happens (would ideally happen) when I’m not tired. I would also ideally try to remind myself when I am not tired about the warmth in the world. Whenever the little bully snatches the microphone, she talks so much, and I am easily persuaded. I try to remind myself of what is true when I’m not tired so that I can withstand her bullying when I am tired. Because it’s true. It really is. The world is warm, and I will generally be treated with kindness, and my dignity will be respected. And on top of that, I deserve basic kindness and dignity. It’s true. It really is.
Civic Participation
In fact, everyone is entitled to the kindness and sincerity that I can have. Sadly, my access to the kindness and sincerity of the world is not always extended to other people. This asymmetry is so stark that access like mine is called a privilege. Entire groups of people are oppressed in my countries because of things that are entirely out of their control: their race, ethnicity, first language, socio-economic status at birth, gender (or lack of gender) identity, sexuality (or lack of sexuality), and more.
The reason that I deserve kindness and dignity is not that I’m special. I am not special--in fact, I am ordinary by all relevant measures. There is no virtue in my mixed race, English-Japanese speaking, middle class background. My background isn’t what justifies my deserving basic kindness. I deserve this because I am a human being. The fact is that the current systems of power deprive people of the kindness and dignity they deserve and thus do violence to their humanity.
Sometimes, people in poverty deliberate whether to stop purchasing life-saving medication so they can have enough money to spend on their childrens’ food (here). Sometimes, people with severe substance use disorders hide in pain (here) for fear of being shamed or being thrown in jail. Some of them die, some, completely alone. Sometimes, people who have finally discovered and accepted identities that make them feel most like themselves are ostracized, pointed at, and jeered at. Some are disowned and lose access to food, shelter, and health insurance. Some face aggression, from snide remarks to physical violence, even murder (here). Sometimes, Black parents in the U.S. try to find the words to explain to their children that the government does not always protect them (here), that the people are protesting because a policeman--yes, the ones hired by the state--took another Black life, that there is still no justice for Breonna Taylor. It’s hardly surprising that so many people feel completely betrayed by government and its institutions, failed by schools, abandoned by the group to which which should be their home.
Some people have spent their entire lives fighting for rights. Some have died before seeing the fruits of their labor or enjoying their due liberties.
What can someone like me do about this? Previously, but more actively this year, I became committed to listening when I can to people who are in pain. This is because the people’s pain is real and it’s important. Pain of being robbed of deserved life, liberty, and dignity is real. No one deserves to feel this pain alone. People in pain deserve to be seen and to have their humanity acknowledged.
One way to do this is to read good journalism, opinion pieces, and life stories. Since becoming engrossed in my own work as I started graduate school, I found I was not reading as much about my community, countries, and world as I did before. This is because my own life changed vastly and I needed to acclimate. However, I have committed more of my time to reading about others’ lives, especially local and regional news and issues this year.
Actively learning more about the people of my community, my countries, and the world is how I learn about their everyday lives, acknowledge their humanity, and find out what I can do to help those without access to the lives they deserve. Committing more time to this has prompted me to do more to support, including giving more donations. It was also the impetus for reconsidering my role in these systems: how I may be contributing to them through the way I speak, the ways I might enable them by not speaking, the way I teach as a teacher’s assistant, the way I think about and conduct research as a research assistant. It has also prompted me to demand efforts toward systemic change of the leaders of the institutions I am a part of, to protest systemic inequity, and to use my civic responsibilities to vote for systemic change.
Personal and Professional Enjoyment
Especially after consecutive days dedicated to completing a lot of assigned work, I submit my work and lie on the floor. A slimy dread seeps into my stomach. I am free, finally free for the day, and yet… I pace around my room, glance through my phone, dust the surfaces… Maybe I should eat something? I’ve lived 28 years now in this body, and I still sometimes lose track of what makes it happy.
This year, I dedicated less of my free time to parttaking in the mindless scroll, and more time to playing the piano, writing, cooking, and learning for fun. In lieu of writing essays about each of these hobbies, I will say that engaging in these activities, honing my skills, and accumulating knowledge about them exhilerates me. There are times that I’ve been shocked to realize that I’ve been practicing the same few measures of a piece on the piano for an hour. And somehow, even after all of that deliberate practice, I feel a surge of bliss rather than internet browsing malaise.
Similarly, doing meaningful work, work that allows me to repurpose my prior knowledge for something new, to learn a useful skill, to add to my knowledge or reorganize it with novel concepts and structures, makes my eyes light up. I can feel it. I can sit for hours to tinker with it. I ponder about it when I take a break to use the bathroom. I sometimes stand up to jump around in glee while reading papers. Obviously not all of my work is like this, but some of it is, and I am trying to keep track of this so that I can return to this work when I have time.
Meaningful work/play, whether it is deliberate practice during my free time or parts of my work as a graduate student, makes me feel grounded in who I am. This year, I identified some hobbies and areas within my professional life that make me feel alive.
Objectives for the New Year
Civic Participation
Next year, I hope to find more ways for me to confront systemic prejudice and discrimination and to understand and address pain. As a graduate student on a modest stipend, I don’t have much power, but there are still things I can do to help. I will find ways to make my everyday life more efficient so that I have more time and resources to give back to the world.
Physical Maintenance
1. This year, I will continue trying to go to bed on time and prioritize sleeping enough.
2. I will also take my migraine medication when I need it.
3. I will celebrate my body by playing in it: dancing, jumping, and wiggling for laughs. I will cultivate my body’s potential by exercising and stretching its muscles in the summer, as I have been doing, but also in the winter.
Psychological Maintenance
1. This year, I will make time to acknowledge the good in the world, its people, and myself. It just does not do to try to tap into this knowledge when I am a curlicue on the floor. Resilience against the little bully’s taunting will be nurtured on the days when I feel well. I hope to make time for undistracted reflection on good a few times a week.
2. I will also continue practicing asking for help.
Personal and Professional Enjoyment
1. This year, I will continue to cultivate my hobbies: music and writing. This means sitting at the piano every day. Even five minutes a day is acceptable. This also means jotting notes and full thoughts. Improvements on my note-taking system should allow easy access to take or edit notes. If I find ideas I want to develop, I will refine the wording and style and try to publish multiple essays this year on this site.
2. I will continue to cultivate my research skills. During my first years of graduate schooling, I have become faster at reading, more proficient at verbal communication and discussion with colleagues, and more knowledgable about empirical methods. This year, I would like to become proficient at designing experiments and stimuli. In order to do so, I will pay closer attention to the method sections when I read scientific papers, particularly to stimuli development. Developing experimental stimuli for homework in my courses is another way to practice this skill in a low stakes environment.
This year, I would also like to learn to better distinguish meaningful from less meaningful research questions. I can do this by identifying which researched constructs in particular captivate me and thinking about how they could be unified. This will involve extensive reading to actually understand the existing theories about these constructs.
Finally: More music, more film, more art.
More walks. More belly laughs.
More reading about animals and plants.
More explicit adoration.
More mischief.
More bicycling.
More phone calls.
More community.
Love and peace,
Rina
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