Self-improvement: Communication Between Levels

Take a look at the following drawing depicting people walk around on different platforms of various heights. If you understand this diagram, you understand what I'm referring to here by people are on different levels of understanding of this world. A person on a certain level can always engage with those on his or her equal or lower level. For a person on a lower level to engage someone on a higher level, either someone on the higher level must jump down to the lower level or the person on the lower level must wisen up enough to permanently upgrade him or herself to the higher level.

Several examples may suffice to illustrate my point. Consider why a child is bored by "adult talk". Oftentimes, it's not that the child doesn't understand what the adults are talking about but rather that the child doesn't see its importance. I remember that when I was a kid I quickly zoned out whenever a grown-up conversation started between my parents on things such as buying school supplies, cleaning up the home, what clothes I need, etc. I mostly care about when I get to visit a good friend of mine, what books and games I can buy next, and if there's anything interesting to watch on TV. You can see how narrow and limited a typical child's perspective is.

Another example is when wise men of the world had to explain "how to live life" concepts to the average man. They almost never say whatever concept directly; instead, they depend on allegorical stories and parables to reach out to a wider audience. Clearly, most people aren't capable of understanding profound truths unless it's dumbed down to practicalities that they can understand.

The lesson here is that whenever you're communicating with someone, make sure that you can be on the same level as him or her. Note that it's much easier to go down than up, e.g. it's much easier for an adult to understand child talk than a child to understand what adults are talking about. So what does this mean? Three things:

1. Surround yourself with people that's on the same level as you if you wish to communicate easily.

2. Study and interact with those on higher levels than you to learn and "level up" eventually.

3. Interact with those on lower levels than you to bring their awareness to what's missing. This may not always work but at least it's worth some of your time. An enlightened individual should not hesitate to give understanding to the ignorant. The question is only how much time you have for such an unequivalent exchange.

Literature: Retribution of Tears

Her violet eyes streamed with tears as she stood on the edge of a seawall holding the broken shards of a crystal ball. In the next second, everything will change. She imagined herself plunging into the dark turquoise waves below her, forever erasing all traces of the broken shards of her and her memories. Yet, even in this last moments of her life she couldn't help but cry out for someone to save her.

A memory flashed by of her unforgivable action a minute ago. The shards held in her hands piercing into her flesh were literally the remnants of her former lover. At this very spot a moment ago, she had accused him of betraying their trust. He had given her a look of derision tinged with fear and laughed and said that she deserved it for first betraying him. He went on, heedless of the pain which his words like tiny barbs dug into her heart. He had thought she was the type of girl that he liked, one who will relish having a man around to protect her from this dreadful world where cute girls often fall into the laps of perverted devious men.

Instead, after she revealed herself to him, he had found himself to be utterly redundant. She was more capable of taking care of herself than he was. He had slowly started to draw away. But that wasn't the last straw. That was a week ago when he saw that she had the power to transform people into perfect replicas of glass when people saw her cry. That was when he knew that he had to get away to wake himself up from this unexplainable insanity. So it was just good fortune that he met someone that day who happened to be someone actually normal and wasn't able to take care of herself, so of course what happened just happened.

She had tried to hold it in then but couldn't. She had cried with open eyes and watched helplessly as her retribution of tears twisted his body into glass. The wind blew then and this form had toppled over shattering against the wall below. The only remnants were his eyes that flew like tiny pearls from his head to land miraculously in her open hands at that very moment.

A proper end for her has always been on her mind and she was always ready to execute her demise. She took out a mirror and gazed at her reflection held within, the last visages in her vision herself at her worst. There was barely a moment of regret before she toppled over, the second glass statue to fall into the waves that day.

Literature: Flight of the Dandelion

 
This is an allegory of the battle between the immortal dream and the temporal world. Every dream has an associated cost. Saints hardly ever marry; to reach aspirations, they have to sacrifice worldly concerns like individual love for a greater love. For better or worse, I'm no saint but being an idealistic dreamer at times, I'm hoping to capture some of their spirit in this simple story:

My scholar's robes swished back and forth across the stone floor giving off a silent display of impatience mirroring my mood. The pendulum chime at the corner of the workshop showed that there's still ten minutes to the hour but that seemed like an eternity to me.

Today was to be the start of a glorious period of my life; it is also the end of a long painstaking period of my life. In the season of life, I will have passed into the glorious state of summer where the blue sky and white clouds will give me boundless freedom. This is not allegorical for today I will have finished the Dandelion.

Five years of ingenuity and hard work and we have finally done it. Our shared dream of flight will finally take flight, if you'll excuse the pun, once the last component arrives and the ornithopter completed.

DONG! DONG! The ding-dong of the pendulum was punctuated by the opening of the door. In came the most intelligent if not also most beautiful lady in the known world. Her blue and purple robes gave an air of impatience as she approached.

Ciela reached into her robe and held out a sparkling gem. It shone with an unnatural brilliance that even the glass mirror in the sunlit room failed to match. I realized that I knew what it was and exclaimed, "A soul catcher!"

"Indeed," Ciela corrected. "With a worthy soul soon-to-be in place I can finally fly."

"Don't you mean we?" I laughed and said. "No need to be egoistical at this stage."

"There was no mistake," Ciela said with eerie calm as she slowly approached me.

When I saw the knife it was already too late. There was a silent slash and then I saw my reflection in the mirror falling. That was me with my throat cut, my mind thought with alarming disbelief. I struggled to ask why but what actually came out was a bubble of blood and spit.

"I have always loved flight more than I loved you," Ciela replied guessing my inquiry. "And you are a worthy soul for this dream to bear fruit for out of all in the kingdom, I have seen that only the soul of you or I are fit to power this flight."

I tried to say that I would never do the same to her but once again nothing came out. She guessed my thoughts and continued, "If you say you'll never do the same to me, that's only because you're foolish enough to willingly throw away an immortal dream for temporal love. Know that whatever love I felt for you never for a fraction of a second could compare with the love I felt for what's up there."

My life was slipping away and there was nothing I could do. My last thought which never found voice was "I love you and always will". She must have sensed that for when she turned away there was a hint of sadness and the trace of a tear.

Self-improvement: Combine Scattered Thoughts (结合分散的思维)

对我来说，写作就象某些酒鬼的喝酒的滋味。他们不喝酒会感到好压抑，类似如我不写我会感到很不妥。只有把我的心思写出去才可以心里放松些，知道虽然大部分可能不是聪慧过人的思想，可最起码这道思维不会因为没写下来传达给别人而睡了一觉就永远消失了。我平时写的是用英语不过我发现写中文是更有挑战性，并且我也不知不觉地克服了我之前的障碍，那就是担心人家看不起我。就用中文语言的列子吧，我之前老是觉得我就是因为说的不行，至少得写出些像样的著作来弥补，可以翻词典什么的来拉近这个距离。其实我发觉这么做使我十分讨厌用中文来表达自己，你想想每隔几句我得翻一下词典（或Google）确认一下那一段是不是都正确是十分劳累并且不最有效的方法。

我想到这次去罗马尼亚的经验，虽然在那边只待了一周多，我却学到了些不少单词跟当地历史和文化。这就是因为我没不敢问人家怎么讲这个那个，就是因为公开自己的无知才会有所长进。通过这次旅行我深刻地意识到能互相吸收人生经验和知识是十分有意义的，也许就是因为我跟对方有大量区别才会有大量收获。我这个人的习惯就是随时带着笔跟个本子，这样随时从周围观察或跟人家交流学到的都可以保证不会忘掉，唯一的不好就是当我同时也戴着单反相机时有几次有人会以为我是记者。可我现在想也未必是件坏事，下次要是这样的我可以假扮为记者的位置。其实记者是挺有自由的，像这次旅行待在我旅馆楼下的就是德国的一个记者，他是很有理由跟开会场合的科技人物提问（不过可惜的就是他并没这么做，恐怕他还不敢显示自己的无知）。

跟他聊了之后，我发现自己很想追要他的生活方式，去世界各个地方采取信息写文章。其实我是经常睡眠醒后就会有个想脱离一切的愿望，把一切扔下拿起旅行包就走。究竟去哪我也不是百分之百清楚，不过不用说肯定比留在此地的感觉好！可惜那只是一瞬间，白日梦做完了就得想到今天的某某任务。我从罗马尼亚回来的那一天就做了几个旅行的白日梦，是想脱离当场的责任。这就是我个人所常见的矛盾，一个人要是完全自由那同时很可能一事无成，可要是完全专注责任那同时就对这世界的好奇跟灵感（这可是比生命有价值的东西……）。我想做的给我目前非得做的有时一致可也经常分裂。

想结合这些是需要三项策划。首先对我必须做的但没什么兴趣的行动我得尽量在新环境完成，记得有几次开车去陌生德州小镇的咖啡店或公园做事使我的心情很快地好转。第二就是每周我得有个小项目能完成，即使是大项目不过能把它切成小项目来完能给我动力。第三就是跟人家分享我的想法，我几年前才体会到我其实是外向的，外向的人精力一般来自跟人家的社交。

我想这几项策划不仅对我一个人有帮助，因为我发现像所有的人，我周围熟悉的人一般跟我的世界观点有些类似，也许这也可以用在你的生活上。不妨你试试看一看有什么收获？

Self-improvement: Justifications on Mental State

They say people are good at justifying their actions, whether good or bad. I suppose that's true since I'm doing that now for why I slept 12 hours earlier without eating anything. No, it's not jet lag since I could have woken up 6 hours ago.

Brief disclaimer: To be noted is that justifying actions often makes more sense to the justifier than other people. For me, it was apparent enough that to give in to temporary madness is to have greater focus later.

I have noticed my hunger for creating knowledge and doing projects is directly linked with my physical hunger for food. However, just physical deprivation isn't enough. There is also often the important condition of no outside distractions. This is especially true for activities that I deem boring but necessary to do.

This other condition is universally applicable but hard to apply during daytime since inevitably I do not want to be cooped up inside when the sun's still shining. If I look at today, my thoughts earlier were as such: If I wake up now, I will most likely go to a coffee shop where I'll proceed to work and eat some food. Then a few hours later, I'll socialize, come home, and sleep.

This doesn't sound like a bad arrangement but I knew that I needed more time than a few hours. When I get home I indubiably will not do more work since I'll already be satiated for the day.

This can be resolved by preparing a mental state where I can do more work. This is analogous to the phenomenon of supersaturation where under certain circumstances a solution can contain more dissolved material than under normal circumstances.

Here, analogously I can do more work if I put myself in a state of greater pressure by depriving myself of food and outside distractions which is much more likely at night when everyone else is sleeping.

What I've been wondering for some time now is whether there's some healthier alternatives to reaching this supersaturated state. Self-deprivation of food is not a sustainable process in the long run and not interacting with others at certain times may not only be considered selfish and unreliable but also miss important opportunities.

Literature: Red Light

Don't ever let people decide how you should travel in this road of life. Wrote this poem as a simple message of that:

Red light of the sun

Fading into the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

I breathe in sorrow

The slave of your world

Every little action

Only falls onto me

To follow your words

Is to just wait there

At the crossroads of life

Stopping at your red light

But do you know?

On this journey

Only change can happen

When I change myself

Red light of the sun

Giving away to the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

Breathe of peace

The ruler of my world

Courage of conviction

In everything I do

So I say I believe in you

Do you believe in me?