Life
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Letter no. 46
Dear reader from the future, Writing this as a 30-year-old (oh how I really like being 30), I realized how stubborn and even prideful I was in my 20s. I thought that ideals were enough to change the part of my world, graduating from one reality (academe) to another (workplace). I was too hot to… Read more
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Resisting the urge to respond immediately
What I learned to part ways with after seeking and engaging in creative activities is the idea that “messaging somebody entitles us to receive immediate response” because we are no longer high schoolers messaging one another, tethered to our phones all day long. I have trained myself for years (since I got ahold of a… Read more
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Living in a self-focused culture
Mainstream media would keep telling you about putting yourself first above all else which often leads to thinking only about immediate gratification within one’s lifetime without thinking about the next generation. This unsettling reality of short-termism got me thinking about how this generation has become lovers of self, which resonates with: For people will be… Read more
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Milestones we now find difficult to achieve (unless you are the elite)
I find it hard to imagine how my parents, at 30, bought their land, built their house, and created a home with their children. This erosion of life’s fundamental milestones charts the same course as our broader societal fractures. While the elite class grows wealthier and more disconnected, entire generations find themselves unable to achieve… Read more
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Late-night musings #25
When I was planting seeds, I never really considered how much time it would take for the seeds to grow. I was just hopeful that they will. While some promised immediate returns, others could lay silently under the earth for years and decades even when you keep watering them. I kept watering the ones that… Read more
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The state of mental ease
Ease is defined as “freedom from worries or problems.” And doesn’t that sound good? Who always wants to worry and think about problems, right? But ease is also defined as “the absence of effort,” which doesn’t sound so good at all unless all you want is to just get by in life—here today and gone… Read more
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Self-centeredness and short-term thinking
Our confrontation with mortality—or more often, our avoidance of it—shapes our relationship with time itself. When we refuse to acknowledge our finite nature, we construct an artificially narrow temporal horizon that barely extends beyond our existence. This temporal myopia manifests first as self-centeredness, as I’ve observed in my perception of time. Who has the time… Read more
jessa 