narrative as self-construction

notes from 2024

morning pages

Since October I’ve been doing a practice called Morning Pages¹. As sun rays cast shadows on the barren trees of Brooklyn, I would walk to my favorite local cafe, get the same exact order², and scribble words in 3 pages of unfiltered thoughts. Having done them consistently for over 100 days, through travels and time zone changes, I can say with confidence they are transformative to my life.

What we write first thing in the morning is often what we think about the most. I'm surprised to report they are often recurring questions: what is my place in the universe? Am i deserving of love? What if life doesn’t turn out the way I want? For all the influxes of life, the twists and turns, the loops underneath is of the same shape - fear and anxiety, for the past that I cannot change, for the future that is yet to unfold. And yet it’s so funny that for such a familiar script, it wasn’t until I sat down every day and started poking myself, asking the same few questions, that I finally recognized that loop, once again unfolding from tilted letters neatly lined on a page.

From The science of storytelling, our brain is a prediction machine, and the primary way of processing information is through narrative. And yet, these narratives are necessarily filtered, skewed by our own experiences. This is supported by neuroscience. We knew as early as 1990s (based on Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) that our brain processes around 126 bits of information per second. But this is trivial compared to reality - which contains millions of bits any second. How we choose what information to tend to, is based on our own experience and worldview, but this in turn creates a preselective filter through which we view the shape and of the world. So if you have been bitten by a dog for instance, you are way more likely to pay attention to a dog passing by than someone who has not. And this awareness in turn shapes who we are, which leads us to reinforce the story in the first place - merry-go-round.

Writing our narrative on paper, we become in effect, both authors and editors of the arc of our own life. In doing so, we uncover the underlying narrative that we tell ourselves with all the pre-selective filters that we had picked up unconsciously.

For instance, when I first started, a large chunk of my Morning Pages ended up being about an event that had happened to me over two years ago. For a while I carried its weight with me, unknowingly. It was only when I sat down and started pouring out on papers that the story came up again. But in re-opening this story, day by day, I noticed all the details that I had left behind, and started reconfiguring the experience in a new puzzle, a new path. Diligently, the pieces fell into a new light - a way in which the pain and confusion at the time had held something for me to learn, laying there latently waiting to be uncovered. Digging through the gravels, the roots of the story slowly churn out. Then, to my surprise, one fine day my Morning Pages were lightened with a new story.³

imagining alternatives

If morning pages are for rewriting and editing my own personal narrative, reading is where I imagine new ones. Take one of my favorite books of the year - Wild Swans - which I started reading after listening to a Dwarkesh’s podcast with the author (great primer, would recommend).

The book is about the history of China - going through the period of from the last Chinese dynasty, the Civil War between Communist China & Kuomingtang, to Mao Zedong regime and the great Cultural Revolution, but through the lens of 3 women living in this period. In reading I learnt about the story of a nation, not through the dry perspectives in the eyes of historian, but through the eyes of ordinary citizens living through this period. It was in a scene of the author, only aged 11, walking through a street where people were being executed, blood everywhere, that I went, huh, what stroke of luck that made me born only 50 years after she did, and yet had all the peace and luxury that hundreds of millions of people living through this time would never dream of. How precarious is my luck, to be born right here and now. That thought stays with me to this day.

If human brains have evolved to take lessons through narrative, a good way to create a better narrative for yourself is to sample as many as you can, as widely as possible. I’ve done this by asking people about their life stories, watching movies, learning new areas⁴. But my favorite way is reading. Here is a portal device, where I can tele-transport myself hundreds and thousands of years in any direction, and sit down with someone to pry their thoughts however privately, reimagining all the shapes of the world that can be different, and all the ways it is the same underneath it all. In Anna Karenina I uncovered the moral terrain alongside a tragic downfall of a passionate, foolish yet vocally human navigating the constrained 19th Russian society, yet with many parallels to today’s. Alongside Siddhartha I sat by the river of ancient India and wandered the path, learning to untangle my own path of wandering.

But my favorite book of the year was actually a non-fiction - The nature of order by Christopher Alexander. After reading I became convinced of the essence of beauty as a concrete, distinguishable quality that connects directly to the patterns of living patterns, of the central unity and wholeness of life. It was as if through reading it I had new eyes. I now walk past the streets of Brooklyn and would marvel at old brownstones with a newfound awareness, and yet also see artworks, people, and most things in life, with a bit more depths of fields.

the relational weight of being

So after all of that writing and reading, what answers do I have? About my place in the world, about all the big important questions that plague every human being, you as much as me?

There is a memory that brought me some glimpses of the answer.

The night Trump got elected, I was sitting in despair. I was on a work retreat; my colleagues were downstairs in a hot tub to take their minds off the screen, but I was too obsessive. Alone in the dark hotel room, glued to the phone for over two hours, I would refresh the screen every few minutes, anxiously looking at a number that was swaying redder by the minute. At one point I realized - this was happening. There was no going back. Knowing the state of our climate crisis, having Harris elected was perhaps our last sliver of hope.

I twisted and turned on the bed, trying to close my eyes but my mind was racing. I couldn't sleep. Have you ever felt like sometimes all of life leads up to a moment, just to have it shatter? Perhaps that was the night for me. All that I have tried felt but a drop in a stream that was gushing, spilling over, in the direction of despair. So why try then? Why should I keep going? Why not give up?

Just then, I saw a notification on my phone. It was time for my cousin's college app. My aunt's family moved to the US a few years ago; she did not have the money to pay for college counselors, but she also had no experience navigating the US college system. I was doing weekly calls with my cousin to help him pick out schools, write college essays, fill out financial aid forms. That night, I thought of canceling the session. I just wanted to lie there and let this horrific day pass through. Why even wake up? Why try?

But something in my subconscious urged me to open my laptop. We called; i helped him with his personal statement, giving feedback on a rough draft. The hour passed by quietly.

So, why try? I'm trying for my cousin who is still in a world where where he goes for college is his biggest stressor. I'm trying for his sister who is only 13 and figuring out how to be a teenager, but would still belt Hamilton with me in the car every time I visited their family. I'm trying for all the people who have come before me, and for all the people who will come after. This trying is tiresome, full of doubt, full of sorrows, but there is a layer of meaning that makes it worthwhile.

There is one way of defining ourselves - in relation to all we have achieved: money in the bank, job titles and status, “impact on the world”. It is a very straightforward way of seeing the world, but is also fragile, lonely in its meaning. There is another way to define ourselves - who we are in relation to one another. Am i a good daughter, a good friend, a good citizen? It is this mesh of being, the weight of community, the weight of relationships, people i am indebted to, who have passed by my life with wisdom to part, it is this weight of people that makes my place in the world worth living, and it is something i keep trying to get back to again and again. More than anything, i hope i keep getting reminded of this message, that the foundation of my being is in relation with those who i would devote my life to, share laughter and joy and sorrow with, guide and be guided, change and be changed, that contrived as it is this is the meaning of it all - what i’m searching for is found not when I ask more of others to get, but when I ask more of myself to give in return.

Sequence of arcs, from Christopher Alexander’s The nature of order

1. Credit where credit is due - this is from The Artist’s Way, which was recommended to me by my friend Jade.

2. iced matcha macadamia milk, would recommend

3. A nice side benefit of Morning pages: in being curious by the ridges of my interiorities, I’m able to flip it inside out and bring this to other aspects of my life. When talking to friends and strangers, I’m often thinking to myself, ‘wow, there is an irreducible complex being in front of me here right now. How do I bring that out?” There is a fluidity of aliveness that comes when you are willing to approach everything with a bit more attention, a bit more lightness, and a bit more curiosity.

4. i highly recommend the next time you are watching a movie, reading a book, or even conversing with a friend or learning a new field, ask yourself this question: what is the fundamental narrative of this person/ character/ movement? how did they get there? in what ways is that reflective of the world, and in what way is it isn't?