Week 2 of Fractal Tech's AI Accelerator & Engineering Bootcamp
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and neither does managing your own mind. It took me a long time to realize that the problems we encounter as humans are not often "one-and-done"s. That's why whenever I get to the other side of a struggle, I feel like I've finally cracked the code, like I found the manual to my mind. Last week, I talked about what it meant to truly confront myself and work through some difficult emotions, which eventually left me feeling pretty triumphant. Alas, I am here again to report that working through these feelings was not a "one-and-done" and that learning to live gracefully with myself is an ongoing project.
Discerning
The ecstasy of revelation can feel wonderful, but it can also be blinding - e.g. me thinking all of my problems have been spontaneously solved. This blindness typically ends with some kind of great "disillusioning", where you are forced to confront the reality of the situation, often painfully.
On the other hand, learning new things about yourself and the world really is like cracking the code of life, and it's often in these moments of lucidity that I gain the power of discernment, of seeing the future, of suddenly knowing whether the path I'm on is the right path for me. Despite the risk of blindness and disillusionment, there's a lot of power to be had there. I believe some of the most important decisions are made on gut feelings, on intuition, on relying on our discernment of whether our actions and environment align with the highest possible versions of ourselves.
More pragmatically, discernment is good for making plans for the future. If I know deep down that I'm in the wrong place, then I should consider quitting (e.g. leaving the bootcamp) - on the other hand, if I know in my soul that I am exactly where I need to be, I can use that to make plans for finding new drives or capitalizing on my determination to find success.
Destiny
I've never been a major proponent of destiny, or at least the canonical interpretation, but I do believe that too often ignoring these intuitions, these times of discernment, these voices from the deepest parts of our being, will eventually and inevitably lead to that part of ourselves getting drowned out. When we can no longer hear or heed the voice of our soul, we close off the path of manifesting our true selves.
One of my favorite books is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (credit to Parth for showing me originally). It's my most-highlighted book by far, sometimes with entire pages covered in yellow, pink, and blue highlighter, and I discover new meaning each time I read it. To drive home the idea of "ignoring your inner voice", here is a paraphrased excerpt about the protagonist facing a choice between a) continuing to pursue his treasure or b) giving up his dreams to stay with the woman that he has fallen in love with:
"You want to give up the treasure that you set out to find? Okay. Let me tell you what will happen. You will let go of the treasure and marry her. The first year will be amazing: you will be the councillor and everyone will respect you; your partner will be happy; you will get better at understanding omens and learn to love the desert. Sometime during the second year, you’ll remember about the treasure that awaits you; the omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you'll try to ignore them. You will use your knowledge for the welfare of the community, the chieftains will appreciate what you do, and wealth and power will come to you. During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure. You’ll walk around night after night, and your partner will be unhappy because she’ll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. Many times you will walk the sands of the desert, thinking that maybe you could have left...that you could have trusted more in your love, that what kept you from going was your own fear of never coming back. Sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you've stopped listening to them. You'll be dismissed from your position - but by then, you'll be a rich merchant, and you'll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn't pursue your treasure and that now it's too late."
I could easily write a novel's-worth on aligning with your true self, destiny, etc., but that's obviously not the part that I struggle with or I wouldn't be writing this post. The part I struggle with, and the part that is not inherently present in the fleeting ecstasy of revelation, is the carrying out of any plan resulting from this discernment. In other words, making plans is easy - living them out day after day is hard, especially when life drags you down and you lose sight of that original inspiration. [This meme](screw the plan) perfectly describes how my brain responds to these moments.
Run to the Roar
One of the themes of the bootcamp so far has been that "every moment of frustration is a learning opportunity". And it truly is a skill to distinguish between your emotions from reality. I might feel that something is impossible, but more often than not this a misalignment of my expectations and reality, coupled with a fatigued emotional state, than it is a correct interpretation of reality.
Often it is simply ignorance. And while it does take mental effort and some degree of emotional skills to correctly interpret this ignorance, the whole problem does become a whole lot simpler when "impossiblity" turns into "gap in current knowledge". And not just simpler - if it's emotional reactions we're talking about, our problems also become a lot less scary.
I'm reminded of a book called "Run to the Roar" about the 12-year, 252-match winning streak of the Trinity men's squash team. The phrase "run to the roar" originally comes from the animal kingdom, where prey is inclined to run away from the sound of a predator's roar, inadvertently leading them into a trap. Here is a very short article on how lions actually trap their prey by anticipating that their prey will run from a ferocious-sounding roar. From this article:
“You must run towards the roar,” my friend told me. You must do the opposite of what seems normal and confront what provokes fear. Face the situation and fight for survival. Running away can make things worse. Choose to respond over react. Choose to constructively confront over avoid. Choose to be a fighter over being a victim.
Darkness
All of that is very inspiring, but what are we to do when we can't seem to choose to feel any other way than we do right in the moment, when the darkness is all-consuming? Whenever I feel this way - during this week, for example - what usually leads to any level of resolution is being brutally honest with myself. And when I say that, I mean as brutal as the most brutally dark thoughts in the darkest parts of your mind brutal.
"Confronting your dark side" is an extremely common theme in movies, games books, you name it: from Star Wars to Celeste to A Court of Silver Flames (ACOTAR series) to Jordan Peterson: "The light you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of darkness you are willing to confront forthrightly."
For me, that meant questioning why I was here in the first place.
Truly, why did I come here? How did I end up here, in this staircase in Brooklyn, at this moment in time, nearing a breaking point - why am i HERE? Is it because I want to be a software engineer? Because I love coding and building cool things? Because I want to become a competent engineer? Sure, those things might be true, but they're not actually why I am here. Why AM I here?
Only then do the real reasons start pouring through: I came here because I wanted to believe I could do something difficult. I came here to find myself, to find some kind of inherent self-worth. I came here because I hated my old job and couldn't just sit around doing nothing with my life. I came here because everyone needs to make money somehow and this is what I've somehow convinced myself I could be good at. Maybe I'm here on an impulse decision based on a recommendation from a friend.
Letting these "dark" thoughts flow through you will probably feel like beating yourself down until there's nothing left (see ego death), but you might also start to notice that, once the fog lifts, you can start to discern deeper truths. Sure, everyone needs to make a living somehow, but building cool things makes me feel alive, and it allows me to make an impact and provide value to people in a direct way. Maybe I am just here to discover a deeper sense of self - what would be so wrong about that? There is no "pre-defined" outcome of a program like this.
All of this is to say: I know I'm in the right place, I am not quitting from the bootcamp, and I am doubling down on my commitment and determination. This discernment didn't come easy, and having it now doesn't mean everything will be sunshine and daisies moving forward, or that I'll never doubt myself again. All it means is that the fog has cleared enough for me to at least see the path, and it is up to me to continue to choose to follow it.