2021 Learnings

To echo the words of Mahatma Gandhi, life has become for me a series of experiments with truth. 2021 offered up many learnings (aptly, 21 glib and trite ones).

I was initially loath to share these, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without ordinary people throughout history sharing their thoughts and ideas in a public forum.

1. Courage comes before confidence. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith before you feel ready to do so, as the confidence required to make that particular decision can usually only be derived post-hoc.
2. The beauty of people is nestled in their imperfections and flaws. It’s better to embrace your weirdness, quirks and oddities as it creates more diversity of personalities. Conformity might be useful as an evolutionary defence mechanism (blend in) but doesn’t lead to individual flourishing in modern times.
3. Loneliness isn’t necessarily an absence of company, but a feeling of being misunderstood, under-appreciated, or simply out of place. Time alone can be pure freedom, yet we all crave union.
4. The physical world is objective. Our perception of the world is subjective. The intersection of these two is more malleable than most assume it to be.
5. A problem shared is a problem halved. Articulating your thoughts to someone else helps make sense of things. Journaling (with an pen and paper) also helps. Everyone is dealing with their own issues and wounds, regardless of class or privilege.
6. Everyone experiences imposter syndrome in one form or another.
7. Learning a language to speak it rather than to sit an exam is very enjoyable. It also humanises local people.
8. Curiosity is an antidote to despair or lack of motivation. The world is a fascinating place. People are too. Ask questions as ends in themselves.
9. Travelling provides you with a new lens through which to see the world, occupying the beginner’s mind again.
10. We are conditioned everyday by our environment. Comparison is an innate human disposition but one that leads to self-loathing. You can’t be a failure in a game where you set the terms and define your own success.
11. Covid insight, in the words of Confucius: “a healthy person wants a thousand things, a sick person wants one”.
12. I have never been this excited about what the next decade promises from a technological standpoint. Individual sovereignty, decentralisation, privacy, self-regulated autonomy will replace centralised institutions exploiting arbitrary power for the benefit of a narrow and elite group of interests. The possibilities for egalitarian wealth creation and human empowerment are endless.
13. We regret more the things we didn’t do or say than the things we did or said. In this context, omission is more painful than commission.
14. The people we attract are a reflection of ourselves. You can be rational and still believe and leverage hippy concepts like energy, vibrations and wavelengths. It’s called physics. An adjacent point to this is that, in the words of Carl Jung, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
15. Self-esteem tip: take screenshots or write down all the nice messages you receive about yourself from others. Return to this repository in times of self-doubt.
16. Many people are climbing up the wrong hill, but succumb to the sunk cost fallacy. It’s better to continually iterate and experiment in finding the right hill than to get to the top of the wrong hill.
17. If perfection is the goal, happiness cannot be achieved.
18. A competitive spirit is a double edged sword. The need to be the best in every domain isn’t healthy, let alone possible. Setting the terms of where and how you want to compete and knowing when to walk away leads to internal peace.
19. If you simply eat enough, you can ride your bike indefinitely. Also, pro cyclists are a sound bunch and I (somehow) can ride with them on occasion.
20. I have no idea what I must have done in a past life to deserve the good fortune, endless luck and awesome people that come my way in this incarnation. Gives me all sorts of feels.
21. We’re all going to die. I find this fact to be very liberating. Death gives life meaning. Take a chance, voice your truth, make on-the-fly reckless decisions all in the name of romance.