Power Tangles with Fate

How I feel in the seconds depends on my base state. Have I slept? Moved? Eaten well?

How I feel in the minutes depends on my focus. Are my precious minutes aimed at a higher purpose? Or are they sliding away, lost forever to the dopaminergic drip of death?

How I feel in the hours depends on my routine. Does my life's rhythm lead to time well spent? Do my actions reflect clear conviction? Or a sludgy, lethargic apathy?

How I feel in the days depends on my environment. Is my life's current flowing downstream, toward my higher purpose? Or does progress feel like a choppy swim upstream?

How I feel in the weeks depends on my vocation. Does my work require me to dig within and harness my gifts? Or do my twisted insides cry out that I was made for more than this?

How I feel in the months depends on my vision. Do my 10-year dreams make me shiver with awe? When’s the last time I even pictured my 10-year future self?

How I feel in the years depends on my choices. Each Christmas, I notice how much I've changed. Thousands of choices turned past-me into now-me. Staring in the mirror, I ask: Does now-me praise past-me like a saint, or curse him as a sinner?

How I'll feel over decades depends on my character. Did I have the steel courage to carve my own unique life path? Or did I half-heartedly swing the flimsy plastic as I obediently conformed?

How I feel across my life depends on fate. The ultimate outcome will always be exactly as it was meant to be.

Yes. In the end, it’s all fate. 

But may I never forget this fact: As long as my heart still beats, I have power: the power to envision, to change, to strive. 

And power tangles with fate.

Hollow Shells of Black-and-White

Originally published on January 20th, 2025

I love black-and-white photos. Smiling faces, teeming with life, bursting with enthusiasm, all……now dead. No matter their peaks and plummets through life, each person is permanently gone. Consciousness doused, forever. I can’t help but stare, and ask the answerless questions:

Did you live well? Long, full years with swashbuckling chapters? Or a string of dull, empty days?

But this morning, I had a realization. History is a shell. Those black-and-white photos? Hollow. Shells can be beautiful. Picture a Christmas egg ornament – drained with a pinprick, intricate patterns painted on with care. Beautiful and –– empty. A dazzling shell, no yolk. Yolk is potential. Think of an egg yolk: a yellowy swirl that could one day grow legs and walk planet earth wherever its poultry heart pleases. Just add time.

Back to the photos: the moments themselves weren't empty. They dripped with potential, no limits. Each person had the power to tangle with fate every second of their lives. Did they realize the power coursing through their black-and-white bodies? We can't know. But as the camera shutter went *click*, each was pure potential. No limits.

Years have passed, death’s pinprick came for all, and now here I am, staring at this intricate black-and-white pattern. But I must remember, it’s only a shell. The yolk of potential has drained away, passed from them to me. Do I know my power? Will I use this power to tangle with fate? Will I fill my seconds in ways that honors this gift?

Flow. Aliveness. Resonance. Attunement. May I fill my years with these. And two centuries from now, when someone wonders if I lived well, a resounding shout will cry out from iPhone camera eyes:

YES! YES! YES!

Washington DC: Center of the World

Originally published on January 19th, 2025

I spent my childhood in Washington DC. Sometimes I didn’t like it. People say no one is “actually” from DC. It’s a “transient area” with people flowing in and out with each new administration. People say the city doesn’t have its own culture. The rest of the country rags on politicians and bureaucrats who suck up taxpayer dollars like leeches. Books decry that “eight of the ten wealthiest zip codes are in the DC suburbs” due to out-of-control government spending. That’s where I’m from. That’s my hometown, McLean Virginia, in the crosshairs of those comments.

But sometimes, growing up, a different feeling would hit me. I remember one Fourth of July in particular. The golden sun setting over the US Capitol. Tens of thousands of people surrounded this classical building, gathering to celebrate our nation. In that moment, the weightiness of history hit me – as if I were in the center of Rome at its peak, or Athens in the 3rd century BC. The center of the world – maybe not forever, but certainly for now. The grandeur of this oft-decried city.

I felt that feeling one time in 7th grade, when my buddy and I were going to see Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift, and his dad snuck out of the house without telling the secret service and drove us to the theater (his dad was the Attorney General of the United States). Or when my other buddy’s Dad got us a tour of Bush’s Oval Office (White House General Counsel), or the Floor of the Senate when Hillary was speaking (Junior Senator from New Hampshire). Or when, in first period 8th grade English, everyone was patting my friend on the back with sympathy because his dad was on the front page of the Washington Post with multiple federal indictments for a major political scandal (not gonna say who that was. His sentence was eventually commuted by Bush).

And I feel it today. And this weekend. When the eyes of the world are upon us, us Washingtonians, once more, and we usher in a new era of government in the United States. And maybe it’ll go tremendously well, a SpaceX moment for our federal institutions. And maybe it will fail spectacularly. No one knows. But for today, and for tomorrow, my hometown is the center of the world. The air drips with history. These images will be remembered for hundreds of years, maybe more. This weekend, I’m proud to be from Washington.

(And the Redskins are in the NFC Championship for the first time in my life. That helps too.)

On Speaking Chinese

Originally published November 8th, 2024

Speaking Chinese brings me unexpressable joy. Nearly every weekday since March I’ve spent 6-7 hours per day speaking Chinese. It puts me in a pure Flow state. Every day I feel my ability increasing. Right now I’m 5.5 hours into today’s 7 hours just brimming with energy. There’s no better feeling in the world for me than speaking this language hour after hour, getting better and better, loving it for its own sake. I have found an activity that perfectly fits my truest self. I feel lucky to have found this and I hope everyone finds the same.

Nostalgia

Originally published on September 1st, 2024

Nostalgia – a nine-letter mystery. What comes to mind? The stinging sensation of loving a memory that’s forever gone – sweet like honey, til you slice your tongue on its hidden razor blade?

As a kid I wrote a piano song. I named it “Nostalgia”. Ever since those brooding notes (F♯, G♯, A♯, x3), nostalgia has unearthed deep feelings in me. Certain phrases launch a Dresden of emotions just above my rib cage. Shanghai 2013. San Mateo 2015. Santa Monica summers. God!

Nostalgia is bittersweetness toward the past. You plunge deep into your memories and tumble around. When you resurface from this mysterious pool, you feel ambivalent. Maybe vaguely sad. That was my definition til yesterday. Yesterday, I heard a new definition:

“Nostalgia is an attempt to freeze the moment.” It’s not just about the past. It can also be felt in real-time.

It happened recently. There we are, sitting beneath strings of incandescent lights. New friends from faraway countries, hours into a life-giving conversation. In this moment, I sense immense meaning dripping from each second, the depth of this night, cup filled up. I’m glad. But as we talk, part of me is meta-aware. Watching myself. And as I watch, I realize that this night – sweet as it is – shall pass.

And I want to reject this fate. To revolt against time. I want to stand up from the table and go track down Life’s Great Scroll Bar. And, upon finding it, I would reach my arm out toward the Pause button, and proceed to pound it with closed fist, over and over and over again, until…it…clicks. Time’s relentless melt – miraculously, mercifully…….stopped.

Then I would sigh with relief, wipe the sweat from my brow, and return to the table. And on and on we would talk, deep into the night, underneath the orange glow. We would revel in this temporal oasis as long as our beating hearts pleased.

Time, frozen. All honey, no steel. In our most precious moments, we’d all do the same, if we could.

But, we can’t. So we make music.

Zig When They Zag

Originally on published September 1st, 2024

There's something so enticing about "The Big Short." A few humble people find a glaring secret at the heart of the global economy. Against all odds, in the face of doubt and ridicule, they hold firm to their beliefs. In the end, they are vindicated as prescient geniuses who lucidly saw the world as it was, trusted their gut, and stood by their truth. Where else can this lesson be applied? When you step back and view the world, what do you see? Any glaring secrets? Something you believe most people are wildly wrong about? If you were to notice such a pattern, how would you respond? Would your first impulse be to look left and right, to seek affirmation from others? Or would you trust your instinct, and live your life accordingly? Would you risk ridicule and rejection to follow truth as you see it? Would you maintain direct contact with reality, *your* reality, or would you limply cave to the sensible, the normal, the respectable?

I'll leave you with the words of Emily Dickinson, who I've come to believe was the most beautiful woman to ever live:

Much Madness is divinest Sense
To a discerning Eye
Much Sense - the starkest Madness
’Tis the Majority

In this, as all, prevail
Assent - and you are sane
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain

Rothko Orange

Originally published August 3rd, 2024

The Mysterious. The Strange. The Blank.

The ineffable IT at the center of all.

All art gestures toward it. Great Art comes close.

Life is crust; Mystery, the magma core. Immense, irreducible fount, felt within, without end.

At best, we glance its orange-hot glow. One true glimpse – and you’ll never unsee. You know if you’ve known.

So, three questions:
- Have you seen IT?
- What does it look like, to you?
- What are you doing about it?

Fight the Good Fight!

Originally published July 23rd, 2024

Humans like NORMAL. Homeostasis feels good. And for good reason. From our cells to societies, stability helps us keep living. But what if you want to live maximally? What if you want to unleash your kaleidoscopic potential?

If you feel this calling, homeostasis is your sworn enemy. He wears many cloaks: Warm early-morning comfort. A sudden burst of permission to skip a habit, “but just for today” (sure.) A pesky thought, a twinge of doubt, a flood of that “Why am I doing this again?” feeling upon waking up early.

A constant pull down, down, back toward normal. Back where it’s safe and comfortable and there’s nacho cheese dip in the fridge, and wouldn’t that crunch nicely with some hint-of-lime chips.

Our homeostatic Enemy is not vanquished easily – he’s wired into our very biology. A peacetime mindset will not win you victory. So buck up, and prepare to fight.

Rise each morning and seek rupture – actions that smash your coddled comfort. Choices that shred your weak-minded self like pectorals on set four of a bench press. Yes, it will hurt. You’re supposed to feel pain. Discomfort is your compass pointing North toward your radiant future. So take actions that rupture. And rewire your mind. Seek out startling new ideas that smack you like a trumpet’s blast. Your books should leave your ears ringing for days.

The best books are events in my life – earthquakes that shattered my former, fossilized self and left me transformed. And you must never surrender. When doubts creep in, attack even harder:

- Attack the lure of a phone with ruthless daily habit

- Attack the Internet’s indifference with bids of trust to be known

-Attack “Yeah that makes sense” with the most explosively beautiful prose ever written by man

Fight your own biology (a radical act). Rage, rage against the comfort of your sheets. Do not slide softly into homeostasis.

My Top Four

Originally published on July 21st, 2024

Sports commentators are obsessed with rankings. Best pocket passers. Best rookie debuts. AP Top 25. So I’ve decided to compile my own rankings….here’s my official Mount Rushmore of favorite writers.

#4: Fernando Pessoa

Average, average, average!

No one was more average than Fernando Pessoa. He was an accountant in Lisbon in the 1920s. People saw him as plain, boring, normal. If only they knew…After he died, his sister was cleaning his apartment and discovered a dusty old trunk. Within lay a galaxy of words – thousands of scraps of ideas (from dozens of pseudonyms) that shimmered with the stuff of Creation. None better than The Book of Disquiet, a kaleidoscopic distillation of subtle truths unlike anything I’ve read or ever will read in my life.

#3: Emily Dickinson

She was born in a yellow house in Massachusetts. She lived inside it for 56 years, then she died.

Within those brick-lined walls, with the high roof and green shutters, Emily Dickinson discovered infinity. This humble woman, unknown in her time, clawed open a hole in reality. Still today, she white-knuckles the fabric and begs us, Look, Look!! Look what I’ve found! But we’re busy; Season 25 of The Voice is on! But maybe, when it’s done, a lucky few will peek the magma within. The glow will leave them transformed.

#2: Rainer Maria Rilke

Once, I fled a flurry of emails to live in a Wyoming cabin for ten days. My first read was Rilke’s Letters To a Young Poet. That enchanted afternoon, four years ago, earns him the #2 spot on my list. Solitude. Mystery. Childhood. Full-blooded Immensity. His rank was maybe slipping, so I revisited it Sunday. Upon re-reading, Rainer has no need to worry.

Best works: Letters to a Young Poet, Duino Elegies

#1: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson will make you quit TED Talks forever.

My TED-loving 21-year-old self was stupefied by the force of Self-Reliance. “I never knew words could be this powerful,” I scribbled in the margins.18 minute self-help speeches felt like toddlers reciting Mother Goose rhymes in comparison. I’ve plunged its depths dozens of times, always resurfacing with some dazzling gem. Enough of these stones might repave your life path. It did for me.

Best essays: Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, The American Scholar, The Poet, Experience, Circles

The Power Within You

Originally published June 5th, 2024

Trust yourself.

The power in you is new in Nature. Only you know your own limits and capabilities.

As Emerson tells us: Insist on yourself; never imitate."

Each person has access to an endless source within that no one else can contact directly. Therefore anyone else's opinion of you is always impoverished. No one knows your capabilities except for you. Proper alignment + free time + creative courage will be your heat, oxygen and fuel to power your uncommon fire within.

Courage is key.

Listen again to Emerson and tell me you don't feel the creative courage swell within!

"You is the phenomenon perfect.

What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobbler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's desk.

Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs.

Build, therefore, your own world.”

I've spent thousands of hours building my world. A world in which 1) I speak Chinese, and 2) I'm experienced and connected in the world of online courses and communities. At this intersection I am building a Virtual Silk Road connecting millions of Chinese Internet users with the Cambrian explosion of online communities on the western Internet.

I'm thrilled about this project because it is uniquely mine. No one else is attempting a podcast in 100% Mandarin Chinese as a foreigner. Mine will be the first one to exist in the world. And no else one is a Community Hub platform linking Eastern and Western Internet users with shared interests.

If I don't build this, it will not be built. It's intoxicating to work on a project that's the culmination of 10+ years of hard work, that sits at my unique intersection of talents, experiences, and abilities, and will have a meaningful impact on the world.

Emerson has challenged me for over a decade with quotes like the ones above and below. What will you do with your infinite gift? What will you create? My Virtual Silk Road project is my clear-eyes, full-heart answer. What's yours?

Speak Magic Words

Originally published June 4th, 2024

“You speak magic words.” Woah.

Jordan Peterson to comedian Andrew Schulz. Schulz is visibly moved. An unforgettable clip.

Peterson explains: each time Schulz climbs on stage, he’s using a tool available to eight billion humans: his voice. Nothing more. But by nature or nurture, he’s able to wield this mundane tool in miraculous ways. By stringing up the right order of words, layered with timing and tone, Schulz moves people to their depths. Roaring laughter. Tears of joy.

It’s not just comedians. It’s all of us.

- An impassioned riff that wins over your one-day future wife? Magic words.

- Your incessant repetition of a newfound identity shift? Magic words.

- The just-right responses that lead to a life-changing Fellowship? Magic words.

The power of language is gob-smackingly underrated. By default we believe language is descriptive — words describe the world. No! That’s Cathy-Newman-level wrong. Ready for some more magic words?

Language is not descriptive.

It’s Generative.

The words we speak — self-talk, morning journal, lunchtime chats, casual texts — unfurl our future. Each sentence a spell, unassuming incantations lobbed into the white-hot infinite of possible future, sent to retrieve the exact reality you declare.

Every sentence matters. Every. Single. One.

Jung says The world will ask you what you are, and if you do not know the world will tell you. Speak magic words! Tell the world who you are, over and over and over again. “I, [NAME] am ______________.” Why? “Because I said so!”

Heller says Be careful of how you see the world; it is that way. Speak magic words! Wrangle your ideal world into existence with the staggering power of your vocal cords.

Vonnegut says We are what we pretend to be. So we must be careful what we pretend to be. Speak magic words! Let your language reflect your best-case aspirational self. It’ll be real soon enough.

As Christ himself taught us, we are bold to say: “I am, I am, I AM!”

May we all speak magic words.

Where's Your Focus?

Originally published June 4th, 2024

__________________

“Your life is the sum of what you focus on.”

Those simple words gripped me when I read them a few summers ago. They have yet to let go. Whenever I read them, my heart stirs and my mind floods: Time is a precious gift! Eliminate the irrelevant, elevate the grand! On my best days, my daily actions match my peak-state thoughts.

But it’s hard. Life pounds us with distraction. You know the ones – both mass media and social. Advertisements. Breaking news. Rivers of glut that endlessly bruise our eyes and ears. This noisy deluge yanks our attention away from ourselves, out toward others. Look at her, what about him, eat this, wear this, watch that, did you hear about THIS?

I call it the Outward Tug.

We’re immersed in the Outward Tug. Modern life blitzes us with other people, other events, other gadgets, other stories, other shocking news you absolutely must know this very moment, right now, look! Out, out, look out, away from yourself.

The Outward Tug beats our inner eye blind – that subtle side of ourselves that notices our own thoughts, our own perceptions, our own connections, desires, friendships, hopes, disappointments, excitements, thrills, musings, curiosities, oddities, hilarities, amazements, joys. The messy miracle in your skull holds billions of neurons firing trillions of times per second. The creative potential hiding in you (yes, you) and every person alive today dazzles the mind, like seven billion beams of kaleidoscopic colors. And on we scroll.

Fight the Outward Tug by making an Inward Turn. And quotes. Quotes help too.

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y.

This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking! That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral…You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

―Terence McKenna

Finding Your Thing

Originally published June 3rd, 2024

How many people have found Their Thing?

It’s tragically rare. An uncommon treasure. Rare even today, with our speed-of-light pockets, when so many have shallow worst-cases and infinite ceilings if they could just align outer + inner and find THE THING they’re meant to do.

And imagine how vanishingly few found it back then? Imagine seeking Your Thing as a potato scraps immigrant in Boston in 1913, or the ninth child of sooty charcoal burners, south England 1827, or as a Dutch plowman in 1535, or (God forbid) a sore-ankled slave in Gaul or Peru or the Hittite Empire in 1100 BC.

That could have happened to any of us. But since you’re reading this, it didn’t. Which means we all have better odds to find our Thing than the billions of billions who came before. And I don’t claim it’s easy because it’s not. And still most people today might never find that thing (and there is way more to life than finding your thing, caveat caveat caveat caveat). But I resolutely believe that if one day you notice an ineffable swirl of excitement in your chest that spreads to your limbs, and you feel it every time you do a certain thing, to the point that each cell in your body bursts with utter aliveness as you do that thing, and you feel foolish trying to explain it to others because you’ll sound like someone acquaintances describe as “Yeah…a little much”, then you must must MUST follow that thing, and change your life circumstances and future plans as much as you’re able (caveat caveat) in order to chase that thing with every ounce your earthly body can muster.

And then, as you chase, live as if all your ancestors are living through you. Because if you’ve truly found your thing, they will be.

How I Learned Chinese in California

Originally published on June 2, 2024

For 10 years I didn’t set foot in China.

I learned fluent Chinese in Santa Monica, California. Here’s how (and how you can, too):

1) 1:1 Online Classes. Indispensable. 623 hours with dozens of teachers worldwide. No textbooks, no structure. Pure conversation on my favorite topics. Handwritten notes + review after.

2) Listening Practice. 1,000+ hours of listening practice since 2020. Mostly podcasts plus some YouTube. Must be a topic I actually care about. Full-speed native speakers only. Language learning podcasts feel infantilizing.

3) Parroting. Listening on steroids. As you listen, you simultaneously say each word you hear out loud (whether or not you know the meaning). Trains your muscle memory to sound more native. One hour/day for 250 straight days in 2022.

4) Daily Videos. 527 days publishing a 20-30 min video and counting. A spiel on topics I find interesting using new vocab. Plus hundreds more short videos (2-5 min) before that. Helps with tones and retaining new words from class + listening.

That’s it. No apps. No flashcards. No textbooks. Crucially, I don’t believe this is the best way to learn a language. It’s the best way for me.

You might read this and think “Why subject yourself to such rigid discipline? What are you trying to prove?” Maybe it sounds like a waste of time. Maybe it sounds like torture.

It’s not for me.

Learning Chinese fits perfectly with my inner grooves. It’s an intravenous drip of Flow one bluetooth connection away. The thousands of hours mentioned above felt like constant unfurling joy (with a few exceptions). It’s simply what I’m meant to do.

As I once wrote: “Learning Chinese is an infinite game that gets better and better, forever.”

Surviving the Dip

My Chinese learning habit booms and crashes like the stock market.

The Dot-Com bubble. The Great Recession. The Turbulent 2020.

Today it hit me – the same thing happens with my Chinese. I’ve given eight sweet years of my life to this language, but my passion doesn’t stay consistent. Sometimes it’s a raging inner fire. Sometimes it cools to a flicker.

Take this year. This summer I was absolutely on one with Chinese. Check out how many hours of listening practice I did during this two week stretch in August:

My motivation had never been higher. I also did dozens of hours of 1:1 lessons (sometimes more than 10 in one week), published a daily 20 minute video on YouTube, and recorded podcast episodes. Despite all the past dips I’d been through, I knew this time would be different.

Then came September – the Write of Passage launch began, and my listening practice started to waver. By October 1st, it had screeched to a halt. This time wasn’t different – life got it the way, and my Chinese learning bottomed out.

Or did it?

See, in past dips that’s exactly what happened. Who could forget –

- The Crash of 2015 – senior year spring. Chinese bumped for Keystone Light
- The Great Recession of ‘17 – Weekly tutoring hours plummet to zero
- The Panic of ‘21 – A four-month halt following an explosive 2020

In past cycles, my Chinese learning would roar to life, then screech to a halt. The highs were filled with rapturous excitement, but in the lows, my learning crashed to zero.

During my August high I was certain things had changed. This is it! I’ve broken through, up and to the right forever! And then, cue the crash.

But this time actually was different.

Yes, my daily listening got replaced by Write of Passage live session prep. Sure, I haven’t recorded a podcast in a couple of months. But because I’ve been doing daily videos since last December, my new floor was “only” publishing a 20 minute daily vocab review. That’s way better than zero!

Look how consistent I’ve been in my “dip” month of October:

If that’s what a “down month” looks like, I’m doing okay. I know my next all-time-high will roar like never before.

Don’t fear slow progress, fear no progress. Keeping a baseline will help you survive the dip.

The Terrible Line

Each day it marches on. 

Women named Evelyn or men named Dale (but it’s typically the Evelyns) are the final holdouts. But biology has its limits. Somewhere just shy of six score years, the limit gets hit and the line takes over (there was one soul who pushed beyond this limit. Literally one. Congrats to the French). 

On The Line presses. Relentless and real. Go back and watch the old YouTube footage and you’ll see those it has passed. New York City, 1911. A classic clip, the first “glimpse of the past”-style vid I ever discovered. I’d have to Google it to be sure — there might be a few final stragglers. But New York City 1911 sits right on the edge of the line. 

Imagine dropping back into those old 8mm frames. Walking the streets of Manhattan, three years before the Archduke died. Men in striped suits. Women in their final decade of frilly hats taller than a toddler and dresses made of Robert’s Rules of Order.  

“Hello ma’am! Good day sir! Have you heard of The Line? The Terrible Line?” 

Quizzical looks. 

“The Line? You know The Line? That Terrible Line that each day marches on?”

Furtive glances as the crowd scurries on. No one knows it. 

“Good people of 1911, don’t you know The Line?! The Line lies scrapes forward, about 110 years hence. This Line marks the moment when everyone alive today is GONE!”

The scurrying stops. People listening. 

“It’s coming for all of you! Every heart beating around the globe will succumb to The Line. All the whirring organs, all the rich fractal thoughts of every man woman and child will cease. Life runs out, entropy wins, and the ground takes all. I come from two-thousand and twenty three. It just so happens that my time is your Line. The last living souls of 1911 are expiring as we speak! Don’t you see? This great, terrible Line is coming for ALL of you. This bulldozer of death does not miss.” 

Silence. Sadness. 

“Yes, yes, this Terrible Line of Certain Death for everyone you know and love, from friends to your kids to even that newborn down the street, early in the next century will be — what? What do you want?”

A young man steps forward with something to say.

"Ya say The Line's 'rotten', huh? But ya got it all twisted! The Line ain't for any of us fellas. It's just fer you! Knowin' that all this livin' will end one day — that thought, it gives a fire to today, see? This “Rotten Line” might be on its way, but not today, pal! Today, we got our hearts pumpin' and life buzzin' through us. The Line? It just means we ain't around forever. But ain't it the short-lived things that are the sweetest? Your folks in two thousand twenty-three, they got their own Line, just as real as ours. Don't go sheddin' tears over it."

The crowd cheers. The clouds of fear are gone. On they walk beneath their newfound sun. And I depart 1911, back to 2023, where my own Glorious Line waits for me. 

Why I Love Learning Chinese 

It slows down time. People love to say that the years fly by as you get older. But every hour I spend on Chinese feels slow and methodical. When I spend time on Chinese I’m squeezing every drop of life out of these hours, all pointed at a shared purpose. It’s the exact antithesis of mindless scrolling on Twitter.

It lets me use my time for me. Every hour I spend on Twitter or YouTube gives most of the “juice” of that hour away to someone else. Studying Chinese allows me to keep my juice for me.

It makes me feel gratitude. Every hour I spend on Chinese makes me thankful for my past self already spending time on Chinese. I started at zero. Yes it’s hard work to listen to native speakers at full-speed for an hour. But I’ve already come so far. I’m thankful for that.

It feels good to do something over and over. Just stacking up consecutive days listening feels good. Looking at my record of days feels good. It’s living proof I can put my mind toward a goal and do it.

Because I’m already this far, and I can. Very few people have the chance to learn Chinese fluently. I happen to have already spent ~8 years on this crazy pursuit. Just because this grand accomplishment is accessible to me is reason enough to go do it. I’ll be so proud. 

No one else gets to tell me what to do or how to do it. I am the world-class expert on learning Chinese on the Internet. Every day Twitter floods my brain with thousands of “experts” telling me how to live, what to think or what to do. I’m sick of it! I don’t care what you think about your life, or AI, or investing or whatever else. I’m sick of hearing advice from others. In my daily listening habit, I get to be the expert.

It feels good to aim at something. My goal is so simple: I want to speak fluent Chinese. I’m not trying to facilitate my effectiveness of high-leverage growth opportunities using cutting-edge…..blah blah blah. No! I want to speak fluent Chinese. That is all! The clarity of my aim is refreshing. It’s freeing. Having such a pure aim is life-giving.

It’s relaxing. The hour I just spent listening to Chinese was one of the happiest hours of my year. It was a comfortable flow-state bliss for 60 uninterrupted minutes. I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to do. It’s so simple. It’s relaxing and it makes me happy to practice Chinese. 

It’s mine. My ability to speak Chinese is my gift to myself. No one told me to do this. No one showed me how to do this. No one did it for me. It’s mine, all mine. No one can pay to have what I’ve earned through hard work. It’s rare, precious and valuable.

I get to be autonomous. I don’t have to rely on anyone else’s permission or advice. I’m learning Chinese on my own terms, my own way. I’m carving my own path.

I get to chase excellence. Who doesn’t want to be exceptional at something Truly world-class? I know I do. And at 30 years old I’m already on the brink of exactly that. I, Will Mannon, speak fluent Chinese. I, Will Mannon, am going to be exceptional. I’ll be so good they can’t ignore me. Step by step. Brick by brick. Hour by hour. Ferociously. You are your choices. I choose to speak fluent Chinese. 

So There I Beam My Beam

Your attention is a laser of life-force. 

A beam of hot energy you direct each day. 

Deploying this beam shapes your world. 

Do you even notice your precious beam of life? Where does it shine? Do you aim it carefully or thoughtlessly toss it about?

Recently I’ve realized my beam’s great power. Now I beam carefully. I beam as if ten thousand future Wills watch my beam’s every move. (They do.)

Hearing Peter Diamandis gush about Longevity fills me with hope. 

So there I beam my beam. 

Undisturbed hours with those I love slows time. 

So there I beam my beam. 

Work gives me abundant purpose. 

So there I beam my beam. 

Speaking Chinese brings me blissful joy. 

So there I beam my beam. 

Your beam is worth more than Japan’s GDP. The world knows this. It grabs and grabs at bits of your beam each minute of the year. 

But this fact the world hates: that YOUR beam is YOURS! For that forever degrades the grab. 

Beam wisely.

The Agency of Inputs

We all have radical agency over our inputs. 

It sounds mundane. “Your inputs matter.” Yeah no kidding. Familiarity keeps us blind.

Your inputs become your subjective world. Your life is what you focus on. Things that don’t reach your brain effectively don’t exist, at least for you.

But we mostly miss these choices. To get better, we think big: I’ll spend 30 minutes journaling each morning. Read smarter books. Expand my mind with a summer trip to Singapore. Do those things. But look past explicit moves. Scan your day carefully. Start seeing the river of inputs in which you bathe your mind. How many attentional choices do you make each day? 

Thousands! 

Environment and habits are the substance of focus. Inspect your invisible rituals: how you wake up, your pre-work practice (or lack thereof), your weekly grocery routine, subconscious swipes, the clips you watch, the songs or words that fill your ears at the gym. All inputs! 

The cleanliness of your home. Who you text after work. Your stack of Chrome tabs. The shirt you wear on a Tuesday. The weather outside your window. The city you choose to call home. Each an input - a subtle signal to self about who you are and where you’re headed. 

Life is a stream of inputs. Knowingly or not, you choose the ones that reach your brain and create your world.  To notice your inputs is to obtain agency, to reclaim your life from subconscious motion and habitual drift. And once you can see the thousands of inputs streaming by each day, what to do? 

Choose better ones.

You become your inputs. What are you becoming?