I think jeju has become one of my favourite places to visit. I thought I’ll share some of my favourite memories and things:
friendly forest trails
So the story goes: we tried to do a “beginner-friendly” hike at Khao Yai National Park – we barely lasted fifteen minutes before my partner grew uncomfortable with some sensations on her legs. Turns out she was getting bitten by leeches…she wore pants and shoes and the leeches still managed to get up to her calf. We ran out of the trail and acknowledged that we are just not hikers.
Until jeju, I guess. They have a few of these forests with boardwalks. Some parts of these are even wheelchair friendly. We do have boardwalks in Singapore but the ones in jeju lasted the entire trail.
olle trails
The olle trails are my favourite thing in jeju. They circle the entire island. I just love seeing them and their hikers so much. The story of how they began is even more amazing. A journalist hiked the road to santiago, and felt like her hometown should have a trail as well. It is incredible this amazing well-run trail network was founded by a citizen, and she is a woman.
oreums
Oreums are found everywhere in jeju. They are less easy to hike, but still doable. Some parts can be really steep, and I felt like I almost had to crawl on all fours. There are many amazing views to be had along the way, and on top.
tangerine trees
Tangerine trees, tangerines, and tangerine-themed souvenirs/food are everywhere in jeju. We saw countless farms while driving, and stayed in an airbnb surrounded by tangerine trees.
persimmon trees
Persimmon trees are rarer, but when I see them it is like living in storybook.
green tea fields
It was a must to visit Osulloc tea museum as a matcha latte fan, but I would honestly say: go for the views, not the matcha latte. However Innisfree next door is worth visiting for affordable skincare and I really enjoyed a ham sandwich with peanut cream.
coffee with a sea view
There are plenty of cafes around jeju that has a pretty seaview. Many were gimmicky, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. It still feels incredible to be sipping warm coffee right at the beach.
ridiculously large cafes
My camera doesn’t have a wide enough angle to capture how large are these cafes, or maybe I am just a bad photographer. Most of them are just there for instagram photos, but we had a great meal at one.
ridiculously cheap seafood
I love abalones, and they are very expensive in Singapore. In jeju however, I had abalone pasta like any common dish, and these five grilled abalones cost less then S$30. In Singapore we get them mostly canned, so it was such a treat to have them fresh.
mackerel sashimi
Apparently it is not easy to eat mackerel sashimi because it is prone to spoilage, and jeju is one of the few places to eat it. I am not a fish person but I have been curious about korean sashimi for a very long time. Surprisingly this wasn’t fishy. I would love to try more korean sashimi if I have the chance.
amazing bagels
I never thought I would eat a bagel in jeju and proclaim to my partner: “best bagel in the world!”. Maybe it is just my personal taste. These bagels are baked in a pizza oven, and they are so soft and chewy.
haenyeo
I am a long-time admirer of haenyeos. It was a surprise to spot one in the wild, though it made me sad to witness an elderly woman dive around for seafood. It isn’t common for haenyeos to dive alone due to the potential danger, so I don’t really know what was going on. She did seem to be communicating to someone on land.
I am not sure if I’ve covered them all – I did this in a rush because it is sunday (my writing day) and I was out the entire day today. However I think sometimes it is just better to do rushed things than to lose momentum. Feelings are still fresh because I have just left jeju, so I wanted to share them as soon as possible without dragging it out.
[tw: suicide] Saw from an acquaintance’s feed that the author Baek Se-hee had passed away at the age of 35. The cause of death was not published, but considering her history and that she’s korean (due to copycats the korean media doesn’t mention the word) – the internet public made their own consensus.
The first moment I came across her book “I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki”, I knew I had to read it. I remember thinking to myself: how can such a book title exist (as a society we are usually too hesitant to publish such a string of words), and how can it feel so resonant? I too, want to die but I still want to love my partner, see the world and eat a ton of good food. Maybe it is a good(?) thing I still have some hedonistic desires, and that I am still capable of love. It is an extremely dissonant state, to still want to do a ton of things and yet perpetually feel that desire to cease. I often feel like a hypocrite, but I am beginning to accept that I contain multiple selves.
I thought it was a poignant that I was in korea when this happened. Somehow: being surrounded by the culture and the land of tteokbokki. I have been feeling very disturbed after knowing the news. I tend to be disturbed whenever this happens, because of how close it hits. One of us, one of us.
I cannot help but wish she could have hung on a little more. 35 is an age when we begin to psychologically mature. There are a lot of things that can feel unbearable in our 30s but may become insignificant when we enter our 40s and beyond. Yet I too get upset when people tell me to hang on. I’ve done so much hanging on that sometimes just the thought of hanging on for another second feels completely exhausting. It is easy to tell someone to hang on when we are simply not that person. We do not inhabit their brains and bodies and do not know how much they are actually suffering. I can try to articulate my feelings as much as I can in words, but it is essentially a very lonely journey. Even as a chronically depressed and suicidal person, I cannot pretend to understand someone else’s journey and suffering.
What I can write and say for myself is: this is a condition that has no end. Just when I think I am getting better I spiral into a different, deeper hole. The only way to survive this is to completely and truly accept that I have to co-exist with this pain and sadness. But the thought of having to endure this for the rest of my lifetime is so oppressive. I cannot detach from my brain even for a single second. It feels claustrophobic.
I wouldn’t lie or pretend. One of the reasons why I spend so much time travelling as much as I can possibly do so, is so that I can escape my mind. Even just for a few moments. I get mesmerised by new experiences. I am granted relief just for a bit. But that bit makes all the difference. But just because I am able to seek such relief doesn’t mean that other people can too. Maybe for some people there is just no escape.
I often think that without my partner I may not be here today. It makes a significant difference to have just one person who tries to understand. At least she understands enough to tell me she would never want to inhabit my brain. But I must acknowledge meeting love is a rare thing in this world. For others it can be difficult to endure this lonely existentially painful journey.
These few days I had found myself wondering hypothetically: what if I was born in a tribe in a remote place where everybody was sullen? Would I still feel depressed? How much of this existential pain is caused by feeling alone, odd and helpless – that everyone else seems to be coping and thriving, except you?
I wonder if it would feel easier to exist if this is something that can be openly shared and discussed without fear of negative repercussions and judgement. Is there a world where a painful existence can be worth enduring for? How can we make it less existentially lonely? Was there anything that could have been done to lessen Baek Se-hee’s pain?
What pushed her to the brink? After all she wrote two books about her decade-long journey in therapy. But maybe this is the thing. We tend to believe there must be a trigger. Yet perhaps the accumulative exhaustion of having to endure this is enough of a reason. I wish there can be ways that we can take mental breaks from our selves (I guess in some places some chemicals may help). I myself often joke with my partner that I wish I can shut myself down for a couple of days. Sometimes what I want is not a complete end but just a respite. People get sent to dark places when they cannot even get a single second of respite.
I think as a society we are sorely lacking in giving people the psychological support they need. We cannot even express these thoughts without being judged. Therapy is expensive, and it is challenging to actually find a good compatible therapist. There is no infrastructure to deal with people’s psychological issues. We have to stop labelling people with psychological health issues as weak, and see psychological health as essential as physical health.
We are really not there yet, as a species. I am not sure if we would ever be, looking at the state of the world today. But perhaps at the very least, what we can do individually is to acknowledge our own struggles with our psychological health, so we can learn to acknowledge others’ too.
I’ve written before that I tend to be an over-optimiser: I think a lot of it is due to existential anxiety – that the time is running out hence I should fully maximise whatever opportunities I have in the present. Travelling particularly triggers this desire for optimisation. The effort taken to fly over to a new location is tedious these days because we take quite a number of covid precautions, the time is limited in that place, who knows if we’ll be able to visit it again considering mortality and impermanence (my favourite two words these days) – so I want to do whatever I can to maximise the things I want to do while travelling.
Unfortunately even for travelling the outcome is the same. Trying to optimise too much will lead to a sub-optimal experience. I do know it intellectually but I cannot help myself.
Jeju has been one of our bucket list items for a long while. We are korean tv fans, so we want to visit a place where it has been so heavily featured in their media culture. We chose to come at the beginning of october because it is supposed to be perfect weather.
Sadly due to climate change it is now middle october and 28 degrees celsius. 28 degrees celsius in singapore is actually cool weather, but over here it is searing hot. The weather app says it is 6 degrees above the average daily high. I have learnt from this experience that in future I should check the trends for the specific past few years instead of the past decade or so.
I realised for me travelling is really a continuous test for equanimity. I can try to make the perfect plan in my head, but reality tends to have other plans for me. I could get very frustrated, or just focus on experiencing the present. I should meet a place where it is, instead of wondering why is it not adhering to some fantasy in my head.
Thankfully jeju is a place that makes it easy to be present. I saw a tangerine tree for the first time in my life, and it was such a wonderful experience.
I remember being so amazed seeing a giant turtle in hawaii once, and a friend who lives there was amazed that I was so amazed, because to him he sees them all the time. But we hardly have turtles or fruit trees in singapore, so in some ways we are lucky because we experience wonderment a lot when we travel. There are so many things the locals take for granted which we would go gaga over. I guess we take many things in singapore for granted too, but I would like to believe that seeing a tangerine tree evokes some primordial profound feelings versus experiencing the clean and efficient state of singapore.
Apart from the searing hot weather we also accidentally stumbled upon Chuseok season in jeju. It was not only chuseok, there were public holidays before and after, so for roughly 10ish days jeju was swarming with people. Again I tried to look at it from a different perspective: that being able to witness what chuseok is like in jeju is also an experience in itself.
Still we were able to find pockets of moments and trails where there was virtually nobody around. In fact I was glad to see another human appear in the horizon because I tend to ironically feel claustrophobic when I cannot spot anyone else.
Once in a while I am able to position my camera fast but not fast enough to capture something like this:
Again we don’t really spot large birds in singapore or at least it is not easy to spot one in our very urban environment so I was awed. I am glad that despite my chronic existential depression I can still experience some awe.
Despite the weather we were still able to do some hikes that were relatively sheltered. Hiking in singapore is almost always a hot and humid experience. But with forest shade coupled with 25 degree celsius weather made the hike feel rather cool. People were wearing long sleeves, pants and sweaters. I guess jeju takes the concept of forest bathing quite seriously, because there were loungers peppered everywhere for people to soak in the atmosphere:
We were forced to purchase socks to complement our teva sandals because apparently there are snakes??
We see a ton of people hiking in this hot weather nonetheless, some walking the long olle trails that can be 20km long. It is quite fascinating to bump into fellow hikers in a remote location because we are all walking the same trail. I have this huge fascination with the olle trails, but I’ll probably leave it for another post.
This wasn’t the trip that I’ve imagined, and I can still be caught occasionally lamenting to my partner how we should have arrived just a couple of weeks later. I know, I am just a chronic grouch. But it is still a deeply enriching experience, especially if I could manage to be more mindful and experience what it is really in the moment. I feel like I am on a continuous life lesson: there is just something about travelling that makes the experience more provocative, I guess we can’t help but be on auto-pilot when we are in a familiar environment.
Maybe when I can finally meet a place where it is, I can also meet myself where I am. I am still pretty far off on that journey though. I guess it is precisely that I am again lamenting that I am pretty far off from where I want to be is evidence that I am still unable to meet myself where I am. Yet I continue to walk, and it is through this willingness to move that brings me closer to knowing myself as a person.
My partner commented that I am the only one who likes to take photos where the subjects are quite zoomed out, so I thought I might as well lean into it:
I just think there is so much meaningful context surrounding the subjects. Maybe this is how I perceive life in general too, and maybe that is why my mind is always exhausted.
The past few weeks I haven’t been recovering well from my exercise. I thought it was perimenopause or something, but upon examining my journal entries I could trace it back to one bad night of sleep. Its effects cascaded into several days after, manifesting in fatigue and headache. I do think perimenopause is also affecting it.
The morning after I didn’t sleep well I still went for my scheduled 5km run. Previous experience had taught me that I would probably feel like shit after but I would possibly still recover within a day or two. But this time round I didn’t recover well. My morning hrv was low for the next few days.
I think age is catching up with me.
I lived a very unwieldy life from childhood till my 20s, which had lasting consequences even till now. So I compensated in my 30s by developing the discipline to keep habit streaks. I would feel deeply uncomfortable or disappointed in myself if I broke a streak. When I first started running I went from being totally untrained to running every single day for about 90 days. I was lucky I didn’t end up with an injury.
I tend to over-optimise my life and decisions, also an overcompensation that resulted from under-optimising my life when I was young. I try to exercise as much as I can, so that I can hit optimal fitness within the time given – at least based on theory. When travelling I’ll try to pick the most optimal stay in terms of comfort, value and location. I’ll strategise how I use my credit cards in order to maximise the miles earned.
But lately I realised hyperfocusing on optimising is ironically making me live a suboptimal life. Because I want to maximise my exercise time even on days I am not in an optimal state I end up falling ill. Or I’ll spend so much paralysing over a decision because I want to make the best decision possible that I end up wasting precious time of my life. The desire to over-optimise for certain things because of some traumatic phases in my life has caused me to become really inflexible in many ways. I have been missing the forest for the trees.
Sometimes we are just locked into a certain mode of operation because it has served us well for a time period, but we don’t realise we can stop operating that way because our life, circumstances and selves have changed.
I have to accept that I am getting older, and my body will be shifting its limits as I age. Things I could comfortably do before will become harder. Maybe I cannot aim for ultimate fitness, but I can aim for being as fit as possible for chronically ill women within my age group. Sometimes I can seem so well I forget that I am actually chronically ill. I can be pain and migraine free for long periods of time, but it is always lurking in the shadows, threatening to bubble up whenever I am not careful enough.
I used to eat really low carb to manage my migraines, but as I started to exercise more and gain more muscle I slowly started to notice that it was hampering my recovery. My body was also struggling to support an ageing reproductive system while being in ketosis.
I learnt that in health, there is no one optimal way of being. We could optimise for one part of the body and yet the same intervention is at odds with a different part of us. For example, I can optimise for cardiac health and have very low supposedly healthy fasting glucose numbers but feel like shit because my reproductive system demands more. I once read somewhere that nature and evolution just wants us to reproduce, even at the expense of our overall well-being. So my theory is that it favours a slight energy surplus so that it can support any potential pregnancy. But if we over do it and have metabolic issues we cannot be fertile either. Health interventions are almost always on a spectrum: too little is bad, too much is also bad. But people who are health conscious – myself included – can be very black and white.
How does one find the middle ground, the sweet spot? Research and scientific journals may not help either. They may be behind time, or only for a specific demographic. I have also since learnt that people can respond very differently to the same intervention because of genes. Yet medical and health advice is dispensed as though one size fits all. I do think healthcare will be increasingly customised in the future if we survive the climate and virus apocalypse. It seems to already be on the way there for some areas, like cancer treatments. Unfortunately, this is where economic privilege makes a huge difference.
Though I seem to be writing about health or practical matters in life, essentially I think it boils down to developing some from of self-knowledge and creativity flexibility. This applies to the more abstract areas of life too, like in our creative practice.
Perhaps this post is an example. Sometimes I get into a very fixed mindset that I should only focus on one topic. But so much in life overlaps and impacts one another. My consciousness is also always burdened with overlapping concerns, so why should I consciously restrict myself just because there is a mainstream belief of what is right and better? To me, life is a constant repetitive process of freeing ourselves from our inner prisons.
Some of our internal baggage is obvious and heavy, and paradoxically that makes it easier to work with. But there is some baggage that just seems innocuous so we don’t really notice them or think that they are hampering our life, yet we are slowly being injured by a thousand paper cuts. Going back to the subject of optimising – it is something that is traditionally perceived as positive, but it can become an invisible block.
I guess it is a good thing that I am even noticing this instead of being in autopilot mode. There have been recent times when I have caught myself being hyperfocused on optimising, and suddenly I become aware of it. It is still not easy to break out of old behavioural patterns though, even with increased awareness. My mind still defaults to thinking that habits and routines are preferred, even if I am actually physically suffering in trying to keep to them.
Sometimes at the age of 44 I still can’t help but feel like a baby learning how to crawl. That I am encountering something new about myself, and I have no idea how to manage or respond to it yet. There was simply no such mental flexibility when I was young, because I was so heavily conditioned by the mainstream beliefs of society. There was no sense of self to say that hey I don’t actually want to do this, let me do something else instead. One positive thing about getting old is the capacity to say no, even to our selves. That the brain becomes more open to possibilities in a different way.
When we are young, we are naive and idealistic, so we think anything is possible. As I get older, I am less prone to unrealistic thinking and hence I am definitely more close-minded in a way. However, still I have seen enough of life to know that shit can get weird sometimes, the world is more diverse that we can ever know, that things that used to sound so frightening or impossible are actually not that scary and can be possible, pursuits that were appealing are no longer so, that as we know ourselves and the world better new doors can open too. Maybe the most liberating of all is that 99% of opinions do not matter so feel free to go our own way (within legal reason).
With recent times, things have gotten even more uncertain: doctors and scientists can also be ignorant, politicians are untrustworthy, the earth seems to be on her last legs according to climate data etc. It seems pessimistic. But like the zen master likes to say, it is with uncertainty and impermanence that there can be creative possibilities. If things are certain and fixed then we will only be inclined to do things a certain way.
My ageing body too, makes everything more uncertain. If I have to see the silver lining I guess it would be that I can now finally learn to be more flexible as a person. I hate to admit this, but most of the time people simply won’t change unless push comes to shove. I guess I got shoved, and now I am forced to start a new journey.
Everyone seems to know that exercise makes us healthier but I think it is still an abstract concept to most people. It is still being associated with aesthetic value – looking lean, and there are more important things in life than to look lean. Not everybody is interested to test the limits of their body, to know where it can go. The idea of running being able to run 5km without huffing and puffing is not appealing to everyone. Maybe most of us just want to be able to walk. To complete our day’s tasks. To be present to our loved ones. Spending a few precious hours each week to improve our body seems like a vain thing to do. Developing the capacity to run seems nice to have, but frivolous.
But I’ve learnt: the point of exercise is not to “improve” the body. It essentially maintains it. When we are young everything is fine and dandy. Our body is kept in almost perfect homeostasis. The natural effects of ageing however, puts us in a chronic negative loop. The more we age the more errors start happening in our body, the less we are able to recover, and hence more of our biological resources get depleted, resulting in a chronic diminishing capacity to cope with stress and energy demands.
The right amount of exercise creates a positive feedback loop: it is stressful for the body, so the body responds by growing more mitochondria to cope with it:
Conversely, without enough stimuli, our strength and energy capacity start to shrink. Negative stress like illnesses and stressful events coupled with the effects of ageing will dwindle them down if we don’t do anything about it.
The amount of energy we can use each day is finite. If our aerobic capacity is compromised, just walking around is enough to deplete us. Imagine if we are able to run 5km and not feel tired. On the days we are not running we are barely dipping into our energy capacity.
This applies to strength as well. When we are able to lift say 20kg without breaking a sweat, this means that the daily mundane chores of carrying things around will not tire us much. Previously, even carrying 1kg on my back for 30 minutes would tire me significantly. Since lifting a significant amount of weight doesn’t feel too strenuous to me now, I can walk around with a much heavier load without feeling too depleted. There is just more capacity to work with, and it takes a lot more to reach breaking point.
Somehow we tend to associate energy as though it is part of our character, or that we can simply will energy to flow from our body. People with very little energy are perceived as lazy or weak. It is very much a physiological state, and a lot of it can be determined from birth. We can’t expect someone with very little muscle to lift 20kg of weight no matter how much will power they have. It is the same with our aerobic energy, which fuels most of what we do. If we have very little mitochondria left, we cannot make them generate more energy than they are capable of no matter how much positive thinking we can have.
People with chronic illness is stuck in that negative energy loop. Which is why traditionally the recommendation is to exercise. The process that makes more mitochondria is not the exercise itself, but recovery. But people who are chronically ill lack the ability to recover, which is precisely why they are chronically ill. The more they attempt to exercise, the more mitochondria they are damaging, the less and less capacity they will have. The body is essentially stuck in a vicious cycle when chronically ill. Till today, medical professionals don’t have a good idea on how to reverse this negative loop.
I was able to get myself out of this negative loop with the support of traditional chinese medicine (tcm), which philosophy is to get the body back to homeostasis, not just addressing the symptoms. Yet most people think tcm is hogwash.
I was someone who lived with chronic fatigue for a very long time. I lived an extremely sedentary lifestyle with an extremely bad diet in my 20s. Coupled with chronic stress I became chronically ill in my 30s. It took me almost a decade to get better. Being on the other side I am now experiencing what it is like to be fitter, to have that extra reserve capacity to deal with the energy demands of life. I was never this healthy before even when I was much younger, because I was never taught how fragile is health, and what being healthy truly means. It is not just about avoiding illnesses and pursuing longevity, but it is about being able to cope with what life throws at us. If we are always feeling tired it is difficult to handle any form of stress. And life is extremely stressful, even if one loves their job and social life there is still stress. Our body doesn’t care if we like or enjoy the stress. Stress is stress to the body, and if we don’t do anything to circumvent it we will eventually pay for it.
Stress kills mitochondria and since everything is stressful – even eating is a form of stress – we have to actively grow our mitochondria so that if our daily life and ageing kills some of them, we still have some left over. If not, the threshold to burnout is very low – a single unfortunate event can push us over the brink.
This is also why I don’t like to get sick. Illnesses are extremely stressful for the body, even mere colds.
Hypoxia, infections, inflammation, mutations – all can alter flux patterns through the Krebs cycle, with a knock-on effect that switches on or off hundreds or thousands of genes, changing the stable (epigenetic) state of cells and tissues. Tissue function eventually becomes strained, biosynthetic pathways falter, ATP synthesis declines and the delicate web of symbiosis between tissues begins to fray. And so we age. – Nick Lane, Transformer
Viruses like covid send us into a chronic negative loop. If we are unlucky we may not be able to break out of it. We can’t take for granted that the body is always able to recover. It is not just about stopping the negative symptoms, but to be able to go back to the state we were in before the illness. It is not that easy to grow mitochondria, and a single bout of illness can set us back permanently. Sometimes the negative loops are invisible, and the effects take years to manifest. People who were infected with HIV or the Epstein-barr virus didn’t suffer their consequences until many years later. Viruses are a leading cause of various cancers. But we don’t know these things.
We only know this abstract concept named, health. We don’t know what it actually takes to truly possess it, or we would cherish it way more.
This past week my partner fell sick — not covid as far as we know (we tested) but it seems like a more severe flareup of her MCAS. She hasn’t been this sick since her first MCAS flare when she had to be on a low histamine diet for almost a year.
I know it sounds dramatic, but the moment we knew she developed a fever it felt like our lives flashed before my eyes. I had no idea if this fever would end up to be innocuous or something more sinister. Co-incidentally I was also reading a blog of a former lawyer whose life suddenly changed because of dengue. Again these events made me feel very keenly how fragile our health and life can be.
The current instability of this world serves as a chronic perpetrator of anxiety for me. It is like we don’t really know if an event would be the trigger that cascades the collapse of civilisation, or is it just another terrible event among the many terrible events happening every day. I feel like we are living in the end times, but we don’t know how dragged out the end is going to be. There is a lot of uncertainty, so as usual I find solace in reading buddhist philosophy.
It is a pessimistic way of living, though I would insist that I am simply being realistic. Sometimes I too wonder if I am constrained by my own pessimistic biases of life and human nature. But the steady stream news and scientific research seems to be affirming my pessimism.
In many ways my lifelong pessimism is a gift. Since young I’ve been having the attitude that I am never going to know when life will change or end. So I have always sought to live my life to the fullest — as full as a depressed person can muster — often making what seemed like reckless decisions. But only upon hindsight these reckless decisions turned out to have brought so much to my life.
Living this way is very anxiety-inducing. I have not yet developed the equanimity to face reality head on. Maybe I make it sound like as though I have a choice. The truth is I just don’t have an alternative mode of operating. I just cannot seem to disassociate from reality like most people can. I would have been a monk if I had been born in a different era.
I am a person full of sadness but within me I am also growing a sense of fullness. I get glimpses of it once in a while. It is not constant. I feel like this sense of fullness is only possible because I have been living life on its edge, not having the passive confidence that there will always be tomorrow. Thankfully and miraculously my partner is on the same page so we both try to pursue this ephemeral sense that we are truly living.
There is only now. I find myself thinking this more and more these days. I cannot make long-term plans. Sometimes I plan for a trip merely a couple of months in advance and it makes me nervous. Will I be able to go? I don’t know who is suddenly going to get sick these days.
Sometimes I question my sanity but there is a part of me that knows. Life has proven me uncountable times that things always change. There is no sense of safety. Maybe it has to be this way, at least for me. If safety is guaranteed would I be inclined to do the things I have done?
Perhaps it is not a bad way to live like there is no tomorrow (coupled with some moderate sense of responsibility). Even if we do make it to a ripe old age, this would propel us to live mindfully and fully instead of being on autopilot. This is how we have loved each other for the past 9 years, and it is because we have loved this way, there is also that sense of fullness in our relationship.
There is a poignancy when there is no guarantee of tomorrow. It brings us closer to the moment. We both feel like we have had a good nine years together that we can be truly grateful for, so if shit was to really happen it would feel like at the very least we did experience a lot. To ask for more would make us seem greedy. This seems like a good position to have, living in a world like this. To know we’ve tried to give it our all.
I was supposed to do a dental crown after I was finally done with my root canal in may, but as usual I procrastinated plus we travelled for a bit in july so I have only managed to pull myself together this past week to search for a prosthodontist (a dentist that specialises in crowns). I could do it at a general dentist but I have some ptsd after my failed root canal.
Each time I have to search for a new dental professional it is a nightmare. In most scenarios I can simply wear my own n95 mask and somewhat ignore what the other person does because I trust the protection of the n95. One-way masking is not 100% foolproof, but beggars cannot choose in this climate. Going to a dentist is one of the highest risk settings for the covid cautious because our mouths are wide open to anything that is airborne in the room. I have been to dental appointments where one of the dental team is coughing or sniffing. Covid can also be transmitted asymptomatically (asymptomatic infections apparently can account for up to 45% of the spread). Hence I request for the dental team to mask with n95s, and that is a very difficult ask in a world that is not informed with science. Nobody believes covid is a thing, nobody seems to know it can be transmitted asymptomatically, and worst of all nobody knows how airborne transmission works.
Thanks to modern messaging I could simply text or email clinics and make my request. They could either accept or reject me and I could move on. But I was still severely stressed. I knew intellectually I was experiencing more stress than warranted. Having to explain myself over and over again to a disbelieving society exacerbates this stress.
This whole process is extremely triggering for me. I have trauma from my childhood when it comes to being disbelieved, being rejected, being ostracised, being minimised, having to over-explain, feeling small and weird. A lot of these comes with growing up neurodivergent, upon hindsight. Our society likes to penalise people for being odd, and kids suffer the brunt of it because they have not developed enough selfhood to defend themselves. “Why can’t you just be like others?”
Therefore being covid cautious is actually very triggering for me. Because it is the same traumatising feelings again: being disbelieved, being rejected, being ostracised, being minimised, having to over-explain, feeling small and weird. I believe at least 50% of my ongoing depressive feelings can be attributed to the ongoing pandemic. The feelings just keep occurring: over and over again. It doesn’t matter how much I age, how much I know I am justified. It is definitely better compared to my younger self, but still very stressful.
I think if not for my partner I would cease to exist in this world. What is the point of living in a world where I am obviously not a good fit for? Each passing day feels like misery. It is not just about my traumatic feelings, but also the lack of optimism and hope in a world that is full of denial and exclusion. Many people in this world likes to step on others to stand tall, and it continuously makes me sad.
I don’t know how I can be not depressed when the conditions are such. It would require a lot of deliberate ignorance and disassociating. Then I guess the question is: how do I make myself survive despite it all?
Thankfully I have gotten a number of positive responses from the select few clinics I messaged. There were also a couple of negative responses, but in the minority. Maybe there is some compassion in this world after all. Though part of me feels that this isn’t about compassion or accommodation, but rather science. To protect my health I have to be profiled as the hypochondriac or the sickly person even though I am probably physiologically healthier than many at this point. But I guess I still grateful to be profiled and accommodated rather than none. There are people in other countries who are getting ridiculed and gaslighted by their medical professionals, or their medical systems may not have given them a choice at all – so I will not complain.
There is so much loneliness and uncomfortable feelings that come with being covid cautious, but without my health I am nothing.
I’ve been reflecting a lot about my rejection sensitivity dysphoria, an perhaps of all my health conditions I consider this to be the most disabling for now. I can do a lot for my physical health, but there is very little to what I can do about my physiological reactions to stress and rejection. I feel like I was born with this neurological wiring. I just feel sensitive to everything. I have learnt to cope with it better as I age but it is still very exhausting. I don’t think it ever goes away – I just get better at putting layers over it. And sometimes, the layers crumble.
This world is not kind to people like me. We’re just perceived as weak. In a just world the weak gets more protection, but here we are just the butt of jokes. All my life I am simply told to just be stronger. I am the one with the character weakness and hence I must fix myself. Or else I do not deserve a place.
What is the point of this again?
I am so lucky to be with my partner, who sees my so-called weaknesses as strengths. But she can’t process my feelings for me, or prevent the pain I feel on a daily basis. Without her I don’t feel incentivised to be alive at all. I feel strangely amused when people insinuate I should earn my place – but to me it is like why?
Still I keep on going, hoping to find some insight or perhaps grow into someone else. It feels exhausting. I try to distract myself from the exhaustion. The veil doesn’t work all the time. I can only tell myself to learn to co-exist with my self, and to develop the compassion I need to endure being in this world.
Once in a while when I have no idea what to read or I want to read something different I would browse my library’s skip-the-line collection via Libby. That’s how I read “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
The book is 704 pages long so I would not attempt to summarise its complexity or analyse it. It sets out to examine the prevailing narratives we have for our own human history. Why is it so important that we examine these narratives? The stories we have about ourselves shape our culture, politics, economics, individual beliefs etc, and hence they shape our potential and our future.
The authors are not trying to prove that they are correct and the existing version is wrong. What they ask of us is that we learn more about it and question it – that human beings are diverse and hence our history contain multitudes and is complex – we cannot reduce what happened over thousands of years to one single simple narrative that applies to everybody.
For example, for the longest time we believed at some point of our history civilisations became a thing because we invented agriculture, therefore we had a ton of resources to feed people and armies – we need not be nomadic anymore to find food, so we did everything we can to hoard and grow this power, including mass violence on other human beings. Only people who belong to these civilisations are “civilised”, everyone else is “primitive”.
But anthroprology has come a long way. It is now suggesting that people we formerly thought of as “primitive” had creative, intelligent ways of life. Some of these people from indigenous societies were known to be highly intelligent:
Some Jesuits went further, remarking – not without a trace of frustration – that New World savages seemed rather cleverer overall than the people they were used to dealing with at home (e.g. ‘they nearly all show more intelligence in their business, speeches, courtesies, intercourse, tricks, and subtleties, than do the shrewdest citizens and merchants in France’)
…knew how to practice agriculture but simply chose not to:
Researchers in the 1960s were also beginning to realize that, far from agriculture being some sort of remarkable scientific advance, foragers (who after all tended to be intimately familiar with all aspects of the growing cycles of food plants) were perfectly aware of how one might go about planting and harvesting grains and vegetables. They just didn’t see any reason why they should.
What to a settler’s eye seemed savage, untouched wilderness usually turns out to be landscapes actively managed by indigenous populations for thousands of years through controlled burning, weeding, coppicing, fertilizing and pruning, terracing estuarine plots to extend the habitat of particular wild flora, building clam gardens in intertidal zones to enhance the reproduction of shellfish, creating weirs to catch salmon, bass and sturgeon, and so on. Such procedures were often labour-intensive, and regulated by indigenous laws governing who could access groves, swamps, root beds, grasslands and fishing grounds, and who was entitled to exploit what species at any given time of year. In parts of Australia, these indigenous techniques of land management were such that, according to one recent study, we should stop speaking of ‘foraging’ altogether, and refer instead to a different sort of farming.
Instead of fixed fields, they exploited alluvial soils on the margins of lakes and springs, which shifted location from year to year. Instead of hewing wood, tilling fields and carrying water, they found ways of ‘persuading’ nature to do much of this labour for them. Theirs was not a science of domination and classification, but one of bending and coaxing, nurturing and cajoling, or even tricking the forces of nature, to increase the likelihood of securing a favourable outcome. 50 Their ‘laboratory’ was the real world of plants and animals, whose innate tendencies they exploited through close observation and experimentation. This Neolithic mode of cultivation was, moreover, highly successful.
…balked at the Europeans’ constrained way of life:
Those Native Americans who had been in France, he wrote,
‘… were continually teasing us with the faults and disorders they observed in our towns, as being occasioned by money. There’s no point in trying to remonstrate with them about how useful the distinction of property is for the support of society: they make a joke of anything you say on that account. In short, they neither quarrel nor fight, nor slander one another; they scoff at arts and sciences, and laugh at the difference of ranks which is observed with us. They brand us for slaves, and call us miserable souls, whose life is not worth having, alleging that we degrade ourselves in subjecting ourselves to one man [the king] who possesses all the power, and is bound by no law but his own will.’
…practised political systems that we would not be able to imagine in modern times:
Most interestingly for our own perspective, he too stressed that the Plains Indians were conscious political actors, keenly aware of the possibilities and dangers of authoritarian power. Not only did they dismantle all means of exercising coercive authority the moment the ritual season was over, they were also careful to rotate which clan or warrior clubs got to wield it: anyone holding sovereignty one year would be subject to the authority of others in the next.
There are many more such examples that would be impossible to list. The book covers much more than correcting our collective misperception on indigenous societies. But this is not really a book review, but rather to contemplate how much we are individually and collectively influenced by what we know of reality.
Travelling changed my life dramatically. The first distinct memory was watching a bunch of kids play at a rural part of thailand. I was taught to believe that we need a lot of material things to be happy, but that moment made me realise that belief was wrong.
Later on I visited SF for the first time, which was also the first time I felt that it was possible to feel a sense of belonging, something I felt deprived of since I was cognitively conscious. In singapore (at least back then) I was always considered as the black sheep, the sore thumb sticking out. In SF it felt like the weirder you are, the more you belonged.
It didn’t matter what was the objective reality, if such a thing even exist. What matters is that some moments or insights can open our minds to a wider spectrum of possibilities. I am very much less romantic about SF now, but it was still the place that shook the foundation of my being and the world I existed in.
These experiences taught me that singapore was essentially a fish tank. If all I knew was that fish tank, then that was all I knew about reality. That means I had to live within the boundaries and social expectations of that reality. Of course it is always possible to go out of bounds, but it is really not that fun being an outcast and the subject of negative societal judgement. It is human nature to desire belonging and acceptance.
Living elsewhere made me realise I was simply trapped by my narrow perceptions of reality. I started to flourish in a very different environment than what I was born into. My previously negative qualities in singapore became what was celebrated about me. Just by being able to perceive and be perceived in new ways my reality became radically different. To open new doors we have to be capable of seeing those doors, and have the self-belief that we are capable of walking through them.
Similarly for the longest time I felt extremely pessimistic about humanity. I too, bought into the narrative of humans being “naturally” self-interested and territorial. I cannot say that I feel positive about humanity now, but I have more of a questioning spirit. Even if our future still seems doomed to me, it feels inspiring to know that we were not always like how we are now.
In developing the scientific means to know our own past, we have exposed the mythical substructure of our ‘social science’ – what once appeared unassailable axioms, the stable points around which our self-knowledge is organized, are scattering like mice. What is the purpose of all this new knowledge, if not to reshape our conceptions of who we are and what we might yet become? If not, in other words, to rediscover the meaning of our third basic freedom: the freedom to create new and different forms of social reality.
I guess the moral of the story here is to not be so fixated on what we know to be true, but rather cultivate an investigative spirit so we can keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep expanding our notions of reality. With new dimensions of reality comes new potentialities.
It would be nice if teenagers now get inspired by the book and become budding politicians who will shape our policies, but I think it is worthwhile to start at an individual level and question our limiting internal beliefs.
Before reading the book I had already known that David Graeber had passed away, due to covid (fuck covid). After reading the book I felt a profound sense of loss. They were planning to write at least 2 more books in the series. This book is not about the ultimate truth, but rather about opening up our minds, teaching us that what we believe is set in stone is not as solid as we thought. It is very much an anthropology book as much as a philosophical book. It feels buddhist, even. We could like or dislike David Graeber, agree or disagree with him – I think we need more of what he had brought to this world.
I had tried to read Debt: The First 5000 Years but couldn’t continue because it was too dense for me at that time, but this time around I am finally in the right mind to read The Dawn of Everything, so I feel encouraged to go back to it.
Once, I told my therapist that I felt existentially lonely, that I could not find people that had much in common with me. She encouraged me to participate more in online communities. Writing this I realised it is a consolation that I can find some solace from books, at the very least.
When it comes to self-care people may think about treating themselves to a day at a spa, having some quality alone time, or spending some time on hobbies, but as I grew older I realised the most important parts of self-care are tedious, boring and potentially anxiety-inducing.
For example the more I learn about health and nutrition, the more I realise the only way to eat in a truly healthful way is to cook. Cooking is the only way to control the quality and sources of the ingredients, the amount of heat and seasonings used. These days I try to avoid vegetable oil, but when we eat out everything is cooked in vegetable oil. I also try to avoid high-heat cooking, which is easier because I can choose salads or steamed foods. It is just better to cook.
But I don’t really enjoy cooking. It inevitably creates a mess and there is a cleanup process which includes the washing of dishes. Time, patience and the capacity to do ingredient prep is key to cooking good-tasting dishes. I don’t like prepping ingredients because it is boring and tedious plus I have naturally bad hand-eye coordination (due to adhd) so I have to be hypervigilant in order not to hurt myself. Storing a wide variety of ingredients stresses me out because I’ll forget and end up wasting them. Looking at a large amount of ingredients to prep is overwhelming and triggers my pathological demand avoidance.
So if I do cook, I try to keep things really simple. Which means most of the time they taste simple too, but I crave complex-tasting foods. I also want time to do other more interesting things instead of sweating buckets in the kitchen and having to clean up later. Previously when I experimented more with cooking, it was always disappointing that the time:reward ration is not favourable because I could spend hours cooking one dish and it is all eaten in 15 minutes. For some people, the hours cooking is the fun part. I end up thinking I don’t want to deal with the stress and effort of cooking, especially in singapore where eating out can be cheaper than cooking.
Yet now I am trying to cook more regularly again, despite still thinking that it makes me feel better when I eat out. I guess I have gotten to the point in my life when I realise self-care is not just doing nice things for myself, but the willingness to do things I don’t actually want to do because the outcome of doing those things is much better for me. I put myself under potential stress and discomfort not for my employer or my parents or for society, but for my self.
This applies to plenty of other potentially stressful or boring things in life that we have to do to care for our selves. I hate visiting the dentist, but I visit them regularly because I have finally learnt that my teeth is really important. I dread setting up medical appointments but I do it because the short-term avoidance of anxiety and pain is not worth the long-term potentially negative outcomes. I record every expenditure in an app even though it is tedious because I don’t want to be in a financially compromised position without knowing how it happened. I track my biometrics everyday in a spreadsheet to learn how my menstrual cycle is affecting me. I enjoy it now, but I used to really hate exercise and it took me years of trying and giving up. I try to practice drawing in order to improve my hand-eye coordination and patience.
I realised there are so many things I do in my life that I wouldn’t do if I had a choice, but age has taught me that the important things in life are not exciting, glamorous, fulfilling or joyful. It is the capacity to show up for my self in mundane, boring, painful, stressful times – on a regular basis. Things that other people were supposed to do for me when I was a child but they didn’t: now I am finally in a position to do it for myself.
The boring, tedious, stressful things that have to be done on a regular basis builds the foundation to a life that has the potential for excitement, fulfilment and joy. Because without health – physical, mental or spiritual – it is very challenging to generate the energy and situations required for those qualities.
I am only able to notice moments of fulfilment and joy in my life recently, not necessarily because my life has become better, but because I am in much better health psychologically (for now). But I couldn’t be in better psychological health if my hormones are tanked or if I am too tired to think with clarity. Life requires a form of spiritual (not religious) energy: the spirit to truly care about living. The self is the vehicle for life. Hence to truly live, the self has to be cared for. The healthy and whole self experiences life radically from a broken and tired self. It feels really weird that something so obvious has to be spelled out, but the negation and neglect of the self is all too common in our current society.
