Reflections while away
After spending the last two weeks off to be with family in Taiwan, here are some meaningful observations during that time in no particular order:
Gratitude — the ability to travel to Taiwan, to be with family — to have this time together while in reasonably good health — is a privilege not to be taken for granted.
Be offline unapologetically — I received several messages during the two weeks. For the most part, I didn’t respond. At first I felt guilty and drafted several messages with “apologies for the delayed response”. I backspaced all of it and do not regret it. We do not need to be connected all the time.
Removing powerful distractions is like waking from a bad dream — after catching myself neurotically cycling through Instagram, LinkedIn, and Slack during a taxi ride, I installed an app on my phone that blocks them. Merely setting an intention to not use them wasn’t enough, I needed to fully block access. By analogy, I often think of a mouse in a maze and how the only way to guarantee they go a certain path is to block of all alternative paths. You have to make the goal inevitable. After blocking these distractions, I spent significantly more time facing the world rather than looking down. At first this was uncomfortable because change is uncomfortable. By the end of the trip I thought, “Wow, what a better way to live.”
Remember there’s a world beyond the world you’re used to — The world I’m most familiar with is Arizona, the desert, my job, my desk, my local gym, the English language, and the people who live close to me. Trading my usual desertscape for Taipei’s tropical cityscape and all the other differences it entails served as a vivid reminder that there is a whole world beyond the world I’m used to in every sense you can imagine. And within this reminder, a visceral sense that anything is possible in the future if we are sufficiently focused and determined in our efforts.
Life is shorter than you think — at the end of the trip, my brother reflected on the fact that we are approaching the age that our parents were when they first brought us to Taiwan. It feels like a generational shift of sorts. Assuming we manage to visit Taiwan every 2–3 years, we might expect to see our aunts and uncles there about 10 more times. They will be in a reasonably good health for perhaps a fraction of those 10. We get so little time together.
Maximize what you like and minimize what you dislike, iterate weekly — Less related to the trip itself, but something that did emerge during my downtime: we can’t completely avoid doing things we dislike, but we can minimize them. It’s useful to audit each week and call out what parts of it you enjoyed and disliked the most. Having this awareness is step 1, step 2 is figuring out how to design your life to nurture what gives you energy and gradually weed out what doesn’t.
Movement is a great vehicle for thinking. Most of these thoughts emerged while walking.
To close, I’ll reemphasize my 4th point: I hope you’ll remember that there is a world beyond the world yo u’re used to.
If you’ve ever felt stuck, this is worth taking to heart.