Growing up, timeout was a punishment.
I was an unruly kid, and when I was bad, my mom would throw me in the xiao hei wu, a little dark room connected to the scary scary attic.
Kind of weird that I now find this a good use of a Wednesday night.
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I initially planned to sit in the corner and meditate on xu, the emptiness ready to receive all things, but that didn’t work out. My neck contorts under the weight of my enormous brain when upright, so I decided to lay in bed instead, staring at a plain white ceiling reminiscent of boiled chicken breast.
The room was completely silent, save for the occasional hum of the AC. I had essentially kneecapped all sources of sensory stimulation.
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At first, I fixated on the corner, which had the illusion of protruding out when looked at from the right angle.
Then I tried to figure out why the ceiling appeared to be different shades of white. Well, as it turns out, my eyes are so small that my eyelashes cover a sizable chunk of my peripheral vision. Fuck.
An eternity later, I finally reached complete zen. . . and fell asleep. Fuck x2.
…
Here’s where I’ll talk a bit about dreams.
Dreams seem to temper conscious emotions. I usually dream of utopian bliss when depressed and wake up sweating and screaming when I’m quite happy. I then begin to question if I really was happy/sad the night before.
Dreams are temperature-dependent. When I was having persistent nightmares, Google told me to turn down the thermostat. This significantly reduced the number of dream deaths per night.
Dreams may be hereditary. I often have very vivid dreams during my ~12-minute F-train naps. Google tells me most people take 60-90 minutes to enter REM sleep, but my dad and grandpa are also nap dreamers. The 11 friends I’ve asked are not.
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I’ve always had very vivid dreams.
I once lived as an Irish-Catholic man for forty-odd years. I’ll never forget the day I lost everything:
I was sitting in the dining room. The white dolly tablecloth complemented our classic colonial furniture. A semi-circle of tall rectangular windows behind me showed off the backyard. I was very proud of our home.
My wife’s hand was already in mine when I told my two daughters to stop fooling around and sit down. I noted the warmth of her hand as I closed my eyes and began to say Grace.
When I opened them I was in bed. I opened my mouth to cry out but caught my breath. I distinctly remember the confusion I felt looking down at two skinny yellow arms. It took me a long time to reconcile myself with my new reality as a young Chinese boy.
Zhuangzi has the famous story of the butterfly dream: the master takes a nap where he flew around happily as a butterfly. He wakes up unsure if he was then a man dreaming of a butterfly, or he is now a butterfly dreaming of a man.
I thought this parable was complete bullshit until I paid off a mortgage a year before I woke up.
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One lady I told was convinced it was a past life.
She told me to look into Carl Jung. I probably won’t, but she has inspired me to start writing them down. Even if “it was revealed to me in a dream” no longer pulls its weight in court, there is something there.
For example, I always found it difficult to know if I loved someone. “Love at first sight” might exist in the movies, but it’s never crawled out of the screen and into my life. Still, there must be some adequate litmus test for love.
[Enter dreams]
If you consume me enough, why should my love be limited to the waking hours? Why shouldn’t I love you as a butterfly too?
Dreams are far from foolproof, but they’re a good gut check, like flipping a coin and noting which side you’re rooting for in the split second before it lands. That’s another one of my favorites.
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Back to the bed.
Having taken one 12-minute nap already, I wondered if there was a way to enter the imaginative space of sleep without crossing its event horizon. I had entered this state in many a math class, darting in and out of consciousness.
But I failed. I remember some fragments: a cedar yoga room. A town house with a lots of mirrors. A deep sense of longing. The smell of damp leaves.
I kept laying in bed, looking at my white ceiling. I checked my watch and it read 10:37 PM—less than an hour before I planned to stop and go to sleep. I checked my phone and realized I sent something I really shouldn’t have.
I blinked, fell asleep, and woke up to a snarky reply and an even dumber message I don’t remember sending. I’m quite stressed out at this point. I woke up again and it was 8:32 PM. My phone wasn’t even in the same room.
Not sure what Jung would say about that one.
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My inception dream led to a wu moment about cringe.
I cringe a lot. My first reaction used to be cursing, which is exacerbated by a tendency to zone out mid-conversation. A friend will be chatting about the weather and my brain will start playing a “Top 10 Worst Moments Compilation” and I’ll tell my friend go fuck your mother in Chinese. Not a good look.
A thought: liberated ones separate emotions from events and things. Cringe is an emotional reaction to a negative event. If I am liberated, my subconscious should also be air-gapped from the external world—I should never cringe.
I’ll be using this litmus test moving forward.
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My second wu moment was about small talk.
When I meet someone, I want to talk about the juicy bits. I want to see the gleam in their eye as they ramble on about something they love.
What do you geek out on? What draws you to it?
Who are you? Why do you stand for what you do?
What is your ideal state? What is the ideal state for humanity?
Unfortunately, you can’t just jump into these. You have to start off with small talk, the straight-laced cousin of foreplay.
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In a romantic context, this is the “talking stage.”
AKA the Slough of Despond. If pilgrims were bachelors and the Celestial City was a happily-ever-after, I might prefer the fire and brimstone of Destruction:
My favorite color is green. I don’t have any siblings. Yes, this restaurant is lovely.
. . . I can’t do this anymore
Let’s just bare our souls! If we work, move in. If we don’t, move on.
I still haven’t figured this out yet.
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In a social or professional context, small talk looks something like this:
Hey Peter, how are the kids?
Oh Mike, Anna is at tennis right now and Henry is . . . How have you been?
Oh same old same old, we’ll have to grab a whiskey sometime . . .
I really hated these conversations. “Fake it til you make it” was tiring and made me dread meeting people. My subsequent overcorrection to being a professional misanthrope only made things worse. Here’s my old logic:
I really enjoy discussing moss, physics, urban planning, etc.
I would benefit from knowing certain things (e.g. business information) and introductions to certain people (e.g. Mr. Bigwig)
I don’t know anything about this stranger (by definition)
This stranger could discuss a cool topic or valuable information (by 3)
This stranger may not be willing or able to do so (by 3)
∴ Motivate yourself to trudge through small talk (using 4) or tell yourself it’s fine to go home (using 5)
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Looking back, I think my distaste for small talk stems from a desire for the ends rather than an aversion for the means. Setting a conversation “goal” is like imagining a better meal tomorrow while eating a good one today—the desire for a positive experience creates a negative one:
Remove motive: having a little direction is fine, but too much qiu cheng, works against you. Fuck “networking.”
Remove goals: you don’t know what you are interested in. Let the conversation evolve naturally and maybe something that sounds lame (e.g. squash) turns out to a great deal of fun (it is).
Remove labels: remain in a state of pure experience. Get rid of (4) and (5).
Anna’s tennis lessons may not be as interesting as space travel, but who’s to say it’s boring? Why can’t I have a genuine interest in others?
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Really Wisp? Be yourself? All that build-up to tell me just to be myself?
I know this is “no-fucking-shit” type advice. Misanthrope me asked a lot of top salespeople and leaders, “what’s your secret?” and they all gave me the same shitty reply. The truth is, there is no secret sauce.
Charisma is not a single skill but the result of many, many overlapping characteristics. A key part of this is authenticity, like Zhuangzi’s one-footed convict. No one can teach you charisma, or anything else for that matter. You have to find your own path.
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I stopped making small talk because “I had to.” Doing so only changed no impression to a bad impression.
Instead, I talked to people because I wanted to. I stopped suppressing thoughts and started blurting them out:
Guy with cool hat? “Cool hat man!”
Lady with nice scarf? “I love your scarf! The colors are so nice!”
Long line? “Wow this is taking forever, are you waiting on the salmon too?”
It’s really that simple. Over time, someone with a cool hat or a penchant for salmon will become a very valued friend. Something will click for you and you’ll intuitively understand that cool people can be met in bland circumstances.
You’ll start chatting with strangers in the Frozen Foods section. If it works, you have a new friend. And if it doesn’t, you spent an extra five minutes in Aisle 17. So what?
Lets fix this:
This stranger
might beis really cool.∴ Let’s chat.
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My third wu moment was to reach out to someone.
But that’ll be a story for another time . . .
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