Over the past few months, I’ve been journaling more frequently than usual, and yesterday’s group discussion with Sasha Sagan in Cambridge, MA inspired me to share some of my recent thoughts (and less-personal dilemmas) with all of you below. As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed. Enjoy!

One of On Humanity’s aims is to magnify the roots of our discontents — our, both as individuals and as constituent members of society — earnestly and with care. It is to find our calling and strive to be authentic in who we really are as humans. It is to discover how we show up in various facets of our lives, including navigating our interpersonal connections and fulfilling our long-term goals.

We all come from unique seeds in a garden of assorted plants wild and domestic, some flourishing in the sun and some in the shade. We all host variously-sized worms, delightfully munching through our green (or yellow/orange/red) leaves and stems. Some of these worms stay on regardless of circumstances; others are ephemeral. (As long as we retain at least one leaf on each of our branches, there is no need for panic! I am only half-joking.) And just like plants, we all need water for our physical survival.

What is water in the garden of our intellectual desires and needs?

Before we tackle this question, let us turn to rituals and meaning.

Meaning-Making

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a small-group, in-person salon, The Magic of the Everyday, hosted at MIT’s Media Lab1, for a conversation with Sasha Sagan, author of the book For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World and host of the Strange Customs podcast. Her work focuses on the search for meaning in and sustaining communal and personal bonds through rituals, particularly as viewed through a secular lens.

The conversation, as it often does in Interintellect salons, spanned the scope of entire conceptual categories. Facilitated by Thomas Arnold, it flowed through themes like marking the passage of time in different cultures, cherishing the significance of a journey, and the sacredness of home2.

Our pre-attendance homework was to think of and share a personal ritual we partake in. Mine was the ubiquitous Eastern European “sitting in silence before leaving” tradition, a custom every member of my extended family practices — no exception! — prior to any journey or an irregular trip, regardless of who at your residence is departing. (It serves as a moment to reflect on the road ahead and silently wish the departing party — or yourself! — a safe arrival at the destination.) Surprisingly, two participants were familiar with it, through cross-cultural ties.

Others shared common quirks like the universal knocking-on-wood; the one-fact about-yourself at group introductions; donations to organizations on life milestone occasions like birth, weddings, and death; the Western expectation of handwritten thank-you cards for guests at large celebrations; waiting a set time period for a celebration of life after one passes away; the transformation of Halloween into a “global masquerade party” and a chance for social norms to be broken within the law; not filling your own glass of wine at the table in some cultures; a Japanese practice of ‘work dinners’ (or enkai) reinvented on Zoom during the pandemic; and an old Japan-specific tradition of tearing down and rebuilding the Ise Grand Shrine every 20 years.

Comment break: what rituals do you tend to engage in?

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Giving and Receiving

One theme brought up in the midst of the lively discussion and only briefly explored was one I wrestle with profoundly on a regular basis: the intricate balance between giving and receiving. While there was no time to share my experience with this issue at yesterday’s salon due to its complexity, I will attempt to touch on it in this post.

In life, we often take for granted our current state of affairs.

It is arguably not a stretch to say that at any given random moment, unless we are a philosopher by occupation or are otherwise preoccupied with existential questions more than 50% of our daylight hours, we are more likely to focus on reaching one of our goals than on pondering our past journey and visualizing in our imagination the people who contributed, perhaps even subconsciously, to our present level of being.

In other words, we take our past for granted more so than our future. We are willing to fight for our future, but we seldom truly stop to recognize the contributions of everyone who altered our past, especially if it was a change of perspective or a shift in our mindsets. However small these changes may have seemed at the time, without them, our present — especially the hidden iceberg that is the human mind — could be radically different, i.e. the butterfly effect. And due to this gap of perception between the past and the future, we often have trouble either receiving gratitude from others (for our past actions that we feel do not warrant it) or giving sufficient weight to others’ actions for their effect on us, actions that may not have been directed at us but still ultimately had a profound impact on our lives.

Here comes one of my relevant dilemmas, to be expounded below:

How do we properly value the totality of others’ contributions on us and our contributions on others, in practice? How do we practice gratitude mindfully yet exhaustively, while not exhausting the other party/parties with the discomfort they might feel in receiving such gratitude (whatever form it takes)?

Leave a comment

Let me provide context for two kinds of cases I wrestle with in terms of this dilemma: elders and peers.

Case A: Elders

Though I hold a physics, not a psychology degree, this substack-writing journey was in part inspired by my longstanding interest in human behavior. I’ve long been fascinated by the intricacies of human nature and the mechanisms by which people make decisions, even the smallest and, on the surface, inconsequential ones. As someone who grew up relatively introverted, it was in my character — through adolescence, at least — to observe an interaction between others from the sidelines at length, before taking part or joining it at all.

At an early age, sitting at a dinner table, I loved listening to my grandparents discuss subjects of cosmic importance, especially when initiated by my paternal grandmother, a lifelong, voracious reader and book lover, whose open-mindedness and a keen sense of people’s foibles stems from her thirty-five years of work as a high school teacher, before retiring. She has spent the next twenty-plus years as our family’s matriarch (at least informally so), and her life advice is invaluable. (I just had a Skype call with her shortly before writing this post.) Her early influence undoubtedly sparked my tendency to adopt a “bird’s-eye view” approach in any social setting, fostering deep curiosity about natural phenomena.

Many of you might relate to this case, where your role, years ago, had been that of a recipient of knowledge and experience from the elders, leading to this sub-dilemma:

How does one “value” such a foundation? How does one properly give back? What has your experience been like? And whereby your former teachers — not necessarily in the academic sense — are no longer alive, what do you do?

Case B: Peers

There are people in everyone’s lives who act like magnets for one’s intellectual curiosity. Sometimes, these people leave a deep mark on one’s life in ways they (those who left a mark) may not even be aware of. (In fact, it’s more likely than not that in each case of this type that I have in mind — there are at least several — they are unaware of the entire scope their non-directed actions have had on my life.)

At the same time, as one’s peers (give or take), they would undoubtedly feel uncomfortable receiving even a fraction of the level of gratitude they deserve. Meanwhile, one may feel a level of guilt for not extending enough of this gratitude in the forms that one is able to, and more crucially, not knowing how to do so without disturbing their inner peace or, worse, emotionally overwhelming them.

A common substitute for giving back intangibles inevitably relies on materialism, perpetuating our consumer-oriented lifestyle, whilst the goal is to thank someone for their immaterial good and influence and give back on an equivalent level, with dignity.

This leads us to a sub-dilemma for case B:

How do you navigate between material and immaterial types of giving and receiving? What has your experience been like, on either end?

I recall reading a few months ago this essay (by Isabel of the substack) on this exact subject. The entire write-up is very much worth reading, esp. for those of us uneasy with the notion of receiving, myself included. Without spoiling the bulk of her message, here is part of Isabel’s conclusion:

“When we allow ourselves to receive gracefully, we feel more compelled to share. When are fully present and enjoy the acknowledgement of a gift, it fuels us with joy, positivity, enthusiasm, and confidence. The point of the gift is not the exchange itself but the feelings it offers. When we view receiving as an attack on our ego and a threat to our identity and independence, we lose the benefits of the gift. Opening ourselves up to receiving invites in the incredible emotions that come with gifts and wipes away the distracting, egoic feelings that keep us from accepting them.

The path to abundance is paved with receiving gracefully. When we learn to accept love from both ourselves and others, we accelerate our journey to becoming ourselves and sharing our gifts with the world.”

I couldn’t agree more. It is, then, a matter of turning theory into practice. If you would like to ask for help — either for yourself or for someone you know — or offer to help a reader of this substack, submit the mutual support form (in use since last year), and the Giving posts will be shared in the Substack Notes section on demand from now on.

On Purpose

Not knowing how to express gratitude properly, in practice, is only half the trouble. The other side of the coin is purpose.

At the beginning of this essay, I asked,

“What is water in the garden of our intellectual desires and needs?”

Let me try to answer it in the most straightforward way I can here.

To me, water, in the realm of our mind-gardens, is the care we express and the time we spend and the efforts we exert either to resolve an issue bothering our minds, to contribute to a cause agitating our souls, or to give back to our sources of inspiration. Ideally, water flows toward our purpose, where water is the means and purpose is the end. Crucially, water is independent of the end it serves.

In the realm of our life-gardens, we might encounter everyone ranging from the very hydrophilic tomato plants to the very water-resistant cacti. Some of us tend to be drawn to the latter yet have an abundant water supply we wish to give. This poses another quandary:

When we wish to give back to our sources of inspiration, what do we do with our supply of water if we aren’t sure they would welcome our purpose (or our vision of the world, of idealism, of humanity) in the first place?

If we continue to water plants visibly resistant to receiving it, we inadvertently begin interfering with their autonomy, paradoxically serving a purpose more aligned with our personal ego.3 Realigning our purpose, then, to a collective, shared purpose — and watering the soil further away — would indirectly empower the rebel plants and allow all the other seeds to sprout and bloom.

(Calling a plant a rebel somehow compels me to share a link to this English version collab performance of the famous Italian resistance song here, one of my favorites!)

Conclusion

That is the framework I’ll leave here, as a starting point, but you, dear reader, are encouraged to take it further, debate it, or, perhaps, resume building — and sprinkling water on — the elaborate garden of your life.

What is your life purpose? What kind of plant do you embody?

All the above dilemmas are now listed as separate questions in the comments.

Leave a comment

Update: just three days after writing the above essay, I happened to be strolling around Padova, Italy, where I serendipitously came across street musicians playing Bella Ciao:

If you need the help of others or know someone who does, please use the mutual support form as usual, or reach out directly. Please consider sharing with your friends, family, or neighbors!

If you’d like to feature your own work or thought process in this publication via a future Creative Humans email-interview, or you know someone who may, please reach out.

In addition, anyone is welcome to serve as a guest or as a host for the Anyhumans podcast. You may interview a friend or sign up yourself using Calendly for a convenient time. Be bold!

Over the past 14 days two unrelated Substack authors unexpectedly gave personal shout-outs to this publication in their posts (here and here). I’m grateful for their kind words about our correspondence, and I’d like to draw your attention to each of them: (by ) and (by ). Both of them recently wrote about certain universal, deeply personal human traits in their lives, and you are encouraged to explore their substacks.

Thank you to all those of you who have engaged with my last post, Friends as family. Since then, the past several weeks were a busy alternation of work and coordinating events.

Last weekend I had the chance to spend two days at a retreat in New Hampshire, a now-annual XC-skiing trip I co-organized, this time, for a group of 10 friends, where we also had a wonderful music “jam session” evening, with several piano, flute, and guitar players sharing their talents with the rest of the group. It was a memorable, eventful trip.

On our way back, I shared with two close friends a deck of cards purchased a few months ago, called Meeting Friends:

Together, we read and discussed some cards, musing on how uncomfortable it might feel to suddenly have some of these questions sprung on even our close friends without much of a notice.

This leads me to open a thread for all my readers to discuss any of these points:

• Have you ever played a similar card game, and what was your experience like?

• What kinds of question(s) would you most like to ask someone you think you know well but are unsure about how to approach?

• How would you play this card game with your friend circle? What rules would you set?

This thread is fully yours to post in: take it away!

P.S. The first full Anyhumans podcast episode will be released in the coming months: be on the lookout! In the meantime, please reply directly to this email if you’d like to be a future guest or host (or editor!). Anyone can be a host if interested in these topics and themes. Feel free to also reply if you wish to be email-interviewed for future Creative Humans or with anything else on your mind.

* * *

This morning I participated in a wonderful poem-sharing salon, co-hosted by and Tanya R. — the first of a three-part Poetic Explorations monthly mini-series — this one on the theme of Hope.

At the tail end of the discussion we all took 10 minutes to write our own poems. While it was a new experience for me, the welcoming atmosphere lent itself to everyone just doing it, even those who are “poetry noobs” (as humbly called himself). I wish I could share with you some other participants’ motivating poems, but for privacy reasons will contain myself to only my own “poem” in the footnote; sharp criticism is highly appreciated.2

* * *

Thank you to the so many of you for sharing your sentence-long answers to this prompt in the past 3 months:

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned this year?

Everyone’s reflections were inspiring, and throughout the year they will be shared in this space one-by-one with my commentary, in no particular order. I’ve also opened up substack chat, a relatively new feature, for anyone to chime in and discuss these.

Lesson #1: Friends can be chosen family

This one is easy for me to comment on. My biological family happens to be scattered across the globe, separated from each other by thousands of miles. And when they do come together at certain points, there is at times no end to disagreements on trivial matters, a feature perhaps intrinsic to families where distance exacerbates unrealistic expectations and creates unhealthy power dynamics.

While everyone remains civil, it is easy to tell when the vibe is off. The issue is likely also a symptom of insecure attachment styles among certain family members, leading to an intermittent breakdown in healthy boundaries. For as long as I can remember, my role has often tended to be that of a mediator in some of intra-family quarrels, sometimes by choice and sometimes out of necessity.

To fill the gap in sufficient familial presence, since 2015 I have tried my best to intentionally create recurring opportunities for my friends — old and new — to gather on different occasions and under varying circumstances, connecting those who do not know each other, and recreating conditions that might in some cases be more common to experience only within families. My sincere hope is that the time and effort expended into planning such events has been worth it for the participants!

I am immensely grateful to those friends with whom I’ve had the opportunity to bond with over global travels and other common interests since graduating from college back in the day, and to grow together ever since. These kinds of ties last a lifetime, and these friends will forever be my chosen family.

* * *

Do you relate to any of the above in your own life? How do you create a sense of family with friends? Chat and comments are for you to discuss.3

Please look out for “Lesson #2” with a similar open discussion space next time.

Exciting community updates are (still) forthcoming: getting closer! In the meantime, please do reply if you’d like to be an Anyhumans podcast guest or host, if you wish to be email-interviewed for a Creative Humans feature, or to share your response to this:

What are you yearning for in 2023, in any context pertinent to you?

Leave a comment, use the mutual support form to respond, or reply directly.

Parting with yesterday’s evening view from my porch steps:

Looking forward to hearing from you, and until next time!

1

J&N were fabulous hosts and prepared over 200 delicious dumplings for their friends and family last Saturday. They allowed me to post our joint photo here:

2

My “poem” was inspired by a collection of owls sitting on top of my bookcase; after staring at them for a minute, I came up with these eight lines. Please be hawkish in pouncing me; how would you alter this skeleton so that it feels more like a good poem to you?

Owls,

   on the shelf

Gazing keenly,

   like hawks

Piercing

   your soul

Kissed gently

   by sunlight

 

Share On Humanity

Editorial note: all names are abbreviated to first initial for compactness and privacy (you know who you are), all routine family matters and work-related business are omitted to preserve confidentiality. This therefore accounts for only ~ a quarter of my daylight hours in 2022, but that quarter is a core part of what gave life its meaning.

If you don’t know me personally, please feel free to introduce yourself by replying or leaving a comment: it’d be nice to establish deeper connection with more of my readers. Or, drop me a line to update me on what you are up to: always glad to hear from people I know.

P.S. Before embarking on my post below: grateful to have met or corresponded online last year with authors of these substacks (Anna G., Rika G., Nita J., Irene K., Robert U., Elaine W., Jeffrey Y., Valerie Z.) Please follow their amazing writing:
Looking forward to engaging more with all of their — and your — journeys in 2023!

* * *

2022 was a year that tested many of our emotional capacities for empathy, resilience, and patience. It began like any other one, though with increased vigilance over the rising first wave of omicron variant infections globally. 12 months ago, many believed that this would represent the year’s gravest threat to societal (human) wellbeing.

1.

My motivation level last January to create and to take action outside of familiar daily routines was exceedingly high, as I volunteered to help out with multiple new initiatives, the most memorable of which was the , a community I love. Grateful to its team (A., K., T., etc.) for bringing me aboard for the time span I could contribute wholeheartedly: it felt boundless that month.

There were exciting plans for projects I had waiting in the wings: personal hobbies, new directions for Physics Unlimited, and starting up abundance.dev aggressively.

2.

In early February, a very refreshing cross-country skiing trip with friends in NH (thanks to J. for driving all to/from my “layover” place and others back to NYC, during a snowfall!) seemed to lay a foundation for a solid, fun, tightly-packed year ahead.

Instead, everything changed two weeks later.

Near-simultaneously, two calamities transpired, both hitting home. The health of my maternal grandfather — with whom I had Skyped nearly every weekend for years — began to suddenly and rapidly decline. That very same week, an event that will henceforth be infamously known as “February 24th” struck, out of left field for many, waking up the rest from relative dormancy in the context of just how far unchecked bias (and a scarcity mindset!) can take decision-making bodies.

Bodies. Theory turned into action. Battleground maps turned into red stains on pristine, snow-covered ground. Real, human blood. Action led to reaction, and countless tragic losses ensued.1

As someone who had traveled by train across eastern and southern Ukraine multiple times in childhood with family to relatives in Crimea, stopping in cities that were now constantly in news headlines, I could not assume the role of an uninvolved bystander.

3.

The situation on both fronts continued deteriorating through March, as was my mental and physical capacity to take on new projects or proceed with the overly ambitious goals I had set. The most memorable thing I started in March was this very substack, drafting an antiwar post with recollection of a decades-old episode from life.

Hosting an Area contest for regional Toastmasters clubs served as a much-needed respite from stress in those days.

Nightmares and shock were slowly replaced by a grim acceptance of reality. I could do nothing to alter the course of events, and my grandfather, who could no longer speak discernibly, was now out of reach, with direct flights canceled due to sanctions.

One silver lining of that dark month and next was a Design Your Life book club co-facilitated by two fellow university alumni (J., L.) and I, scheduled before the war. We had a lot of productive Zoom discussions, reflecting on the present and envisioning the future in guided small-group sessions. Thank you to all who participated over those 8 weeks, esp. N. and B.!

4.

In early April, I lost my maternal grandfather.

To say that I felt guilt for not having tried to do more than what seemed to suffice based on lengthy conversations with family, despite weeks of anguish and uncertainty, would be an understatement.

I’m truly grateful to my good friends, J&N, from whose NYC apartment at 4:30 am, before dawn, I was able to act as “host” of the funeral’s Zoom livestream for other family abroad.2

Grateful to all friends who sent messages of support, including K. (thank you for the microgreens!), A., Z., B. (so thankful for your warm card!), M. (likewise!), and others.

Grief was interrupted by another bright spot: coordinating the annual Explorer event for Physics Unlimited, in which teams of high school students from many countries worked on creative, open-ended solutions to a month-long challenge. Grateful to B. for writing up this year’s assignment and to all contributing volunteers!

A drive to Princeton for a weekend lunch with K&E and J&N was soul-healing.

5.

May was even better, marked by acceptance of inevitable human mortality and diluted by many solo walks out in nature and first time in a movie theater since the pandemic.

My old (college freshman) roommate, A., debuted as a main character in Hamlet at the Met Opera: it was fantastic to watch. (Please reach out if you’d like to connect with him or see any of his other numerous performances worldwide.)

In mid-May I joined EK&JK for a splendid day trip to Mystic Aquarium in CT, a chance to see myriad types of fish, turtles, penguins, and other wonders of the sea.

I reconnected with dozens of old university classmates and friends during and after annual Reunions, where it was a pleasure to organize a full-house meal at our former food co-op for its current and past members; thank you to all who joined and helped out. Grateful for catching up with you (too many to list!).

Finally, E.’s picnic the following weekend was a joy to attend, as always.

6.

June brought the first multi-day comfort of the challenging year, post-February, as I discovered and experienced a weekend camp-style atmosphere at the ethnic Eastern European music and song festival in upstate NY, meeting talented, like-minded creatives, guitarists, and songwriters who reminisced about adolescence by campfires post-midnight, singing and reciting poems about peace, love, and hope.

I then drove to help video-record a wonderful piano recital by one of my forenamed friends (J.) in NYC. Bach, Chopin, and Prokofiev pieces were played masterly!

I was surprised to be selected to co-lead, as a VP, my regional (Princeton) alumni association of New England over the next two years. Grateful to R., S., the late B., G., and other board members for nominating me. I promised to do my best.

7.

In early July I publicly announced the overarching goals for the abundance mindset community initiative and set a quantitative goal for the anyhumans podcast.

It was a true delight to attend an Interintellect dinner in Boston and finally meet its founder, A., in-person, after our many interactions online-only, and better get to know several others, inc. T., W., A., M. Thankful for the conversations.

Driving south and visiting a medieval alchemy library exhibit the following weekend at Princeton on invitation by friends K. and A. was enlightening!

I started Middlemarch, the saga I had long-wanted to dive into (thank you to E. for recommending!), taking until November. I also read Red Crosses that month, a timely work of historical fiction, recommended on the radio by Liya Akhedzhakova (see my very short review on Goodreads: let’s connect if you use that platform).

The penultimate Sunday of July set a temperature record in Massachusetts (99°F) and a connections near-record for self: I spent that afternoon in the company of new acquaintances in Cambridge, with rather deep conversations on the human condition and intentionality (grateful to have met A., S., M., E., etc.), and dinner at J&J’s house in Somerville, discussing doing good better with many newcomers from across the U.S.

8.

August was the “travel month” I engineered for myself with less than a few weeks’ notice. Because I cannot fly East, I will fly West, I thought. And so I resolved.

A tightly-packed trip to California, carved from 10 days of my vacation time, entailed:

• volunteering at the inaugural Future Forum in the Bay area for the weekend, an exhilarating adventure in a picturesque setting (grateful to have met and conversed with so many ambitious young minds, inc. a fortuitous, unplanned encounter with T. in-person after only knowing each other online, and forging new acquaintances J., S., K., M., N., and so many more),

• listening to one of my best friends’ (Z.) choir performance (“Music for the Troubled Times”) in Stanford that same weekend,

• hosting an Interintellect IRL salon in S.F. with a view on Golden Gate Bridge (thank you to Z. for driving me around and joining!),

• a 10-hour Coast Starlight scenic train ride to L.A., where my old friend B. was gracious to drive me places and hike together to a nearly-hidden waterfall up a mountain in a national park,

• solo-touring The Getty museum for two hours (enough for only 1.5 buildings),

• being invited by a Physics Unlimited team member, S., to visit her Caltech lab,

• after another 2-hour solo train ride south, strolling amidst cacti in San Diego.

August was also the month I first tested positive for COVID since the start of the pandemic, after all my travels, despite wearing a KN95 in all public indoor spaces. It was an interesting symptomatic progression, and I am very grateful for its mild course.

9.

September brought another joyous reunion with five old friends on Labor Day in NJ.

Trips to several farms in CT and their fresh produce were nourishing in all senses. A “workers’ party” in western CT, helping clean out a huge barn in preparation for a celebration of my friends K&M, ushered in sweet nostalgia for similar childhood memories doing this at my grandparents’ place.

September also brought order and consistency to this substack through autumn, with alternating Creative Fridays text interviews and small-g Giving Tuesdays submissions. (Please check them out, if you have not, for inspiration or for support. These sections will resume soon, alongside a long-awaited new episode release cadence. Schedule a time here if you’d like to be featured on anyhumans, at any degree of privacy.)

10.

October was the month I had to turn the page on my twenties and officially enter the fourth decade of life: the dinosaur decade. I celebrated by hosting events in two cities: Friday night group dinner in Boston and a Sunday picnic in NYC with many friends.3 On a weekend coinciding with our university’s birthday, singing its old anthem together, accompanied by one of my friends’ (J. again) adept sight-reading on my battery-powered piano keyboard in Central Park, was an unforgettable highlight. Grateful to everyone who showed up, despite the rain, and helped assemble the tent!

Earlier that same month, K&M were married on a farm in CT, and all events leading up to it were a joy to partake in, as was their magical big day itself.

Thanks to Q. for connecting me with F., with whom I discussed prospective STEM outreach collaborations in Japan. I look forward to what’s next.

11.

In November, my main “extracurricular” was coordinating Physics Unlimited’s Premier competition, in which 350 students from 20 countries (online and at four international partner sites) submitted work and whose scores were recently released.

I realized that age is no longer just a number, and that maybe hosting a two-hour Zoom session for Europe- and Asia-based students at 3 am in my time zone, followed by another one for North America at noon, is not the most conducive action to take for one’s sleep cycle and overall health. (This made me empathize even more with some medical student friends and their overnight shifts.)

Grateful to all volunteer problem writers (A.,H.,J.,Y.), proctors (B.,K.,L.,M.,M.,S.,S.,S.), and graders who cooperated on short notice and made this multi-dimensional undertaking over a two-month period, with so many moving parts, a success.

My traditional solo viewing of a Boston Philharmonic early season concert, a Dvořák cello concerto this time, was animating and therapeutic. I wish more people joined its livestreams even when they can’t go in-person: the streaming quality is superb.

Late November and early December were accentuated by two remarkable, fun potluck dinners, one in NYC (hosted by E.) and one in CT (hosted by K&M) on back-to-back weekends, both with inspiring conversations and delightful food. Thank you, hosts!4

12.

Grateful to my cherry red tomato plant for hanging on through frost and not dying!

In early December I had the opportunity to pitch the abundance mindset community on a local radio station, WCRN. You are welcome to listen to or read my 5-minute segment or excerpts here. It was a special moment to be a guest inside a real radio station studio for the first time: grateful for the invitation and the host, C.

An annual roast (of me this time, as its immediate past president) at my local Toastmasters club was one of the most laugh-inducing evenings of the month. Grateful to L., P., C., and M. for the thoughtful roasts I enjoyed “rebutting” and K. for the GE role. On that note, I must add that this club has added incalculable value to my growth as not just a better communicator, but also as a more open-minded human being. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a friendly, supportive community.

The long “Christmas weekend” was a time for another round of reconnections with old friends. A dumpling-making party with Z&M in south Jersey, organizing a virtual Zoom holiday reconnect with friends spread across North and South America (thanks to all for joining), and a solo-drive to a “home concert” by the famous bard, Alexander Gorodnitskiy, now 89 and “not feeling old at all” (in his own words), with an unambiguously humanist stance and impeccable sense of humor, marked the concluding full weekend of the quintessentially Tiger-tough 2022.

* * *

Some failures (what not to say!): my comfort with vulnerability is still nowhere near where it should ideally be; I read too few books from my list since last January; my podcast creation rate is still in the abyss; I started learning Mandarin much later than initially planned; my guitar and piano plans are lagging terribly; I am too risk-averse; etc., etc. [This is, of course, scarcity mindset speaking.]

Let me reformulate (to practice what I preach): in 2022 I increased my comfort with vulnerability through multiple amazing communities, as well as via personal outreach; I did read very good books as time allowed; I started taking one-on-one Mandarin lessons through italki, which I absolutely love; I rekindled with a guitar during my summer travels after a 12-year hiatus and vow to continue my adventures with music; my risk tolerance has increased measurably.

* * *

How this year will turn out is anyone’s guess. I have my own resolutions, though am keeping them undisclosed for obvious reasons. I hope 2023 will bring peace, health, and abundance to everyone reading this. Deeply grateful to all of you.

Happy New Year! С Новым Годом! 新年快乐!

How was your year? What are you yearning for next?

There will be exciting new items to share with you early next year, in terms of growing and engaging with the abundance mindset community. In the meantime, in the spirit of the holidays, one new question for you, the reader:

Leave a comment, use the same form to respond, or simply reply to this email directly. Feel free to be as brief or as detailed as you wish. In January your responses will be (anonymously, if requested) shared with the other readers.

* * *

Over the past month I collected several dozen responses to:

Two weeks from now everyone’s answers to this question will be shared here: they are quite different and inspiring, yet with recurring themes. You are very welcome to contribute yours if you have not done so.

Leaving you with a peaceful photo of this very intelligent cat, Agatha, thinking about her goals for next year while resting comfortably on Christmas Eve yesterday:

Looking forward to all your responses, and until 2023!

“Gerald is in intensive care,” she said to my disbelief.

She added that his son will be coming later in the day, so I don’t have to shovel the snow and he will take care of it.

As if snow is even on the radar of my worries, I thought to myself, still digesting the news.

“His lungs,” Claire said, tears filling her eyes.

“We almost lost him, you know, he’s 87.”

I expressed fervent hope that he would feel better soon, and she exclaimed, passionately, that yes, he is in our county’s best hospital, and that the drugs they administer are “very powerful” — so she, too, hopes he will make it.

It was a relief to hear her encouraging prognosis, and I gave her the well-wishes I could muster at that moment.

Moments later, reflecting on what Claire told me, while shoveling snow, I was overcome with guilt. Last week I had heard Gerald’s extensive coughing reaching my apartment (the floor is not fully sound-proof), sometimes during the night. Because it did get progressively louder, I was concerned at the time that he might have COVID.

But what was there in my power to do? He and his wife lived together, and their relatives occasionally visited. I couldn’t have simply texted him, “I’m concerned about your coughing. Would you like me to take you to Urgent Care?”

Well, I could have, but knowing Gerald’s fierce independence — last year, at 86, he single-handedly carried to the second floor and replaced my apartment’s leaking toilet (yes, the entire unit, while I was at work); he has never relied on anyone to fix appliances or to help with household tasks — I tried convincing myself, while driving to work, that he would have absolutely declined my offer to help, as he has in the past.

The guilt of not trying, though, remained.

Today, as I returned home, Claire again came out of the first floor apartment and told me, “Gerald is having an open-heart surgery soon, today.”

I offered to drive her to the hospital, though she declined, saying she didn’t know how long it will take and they’ve already postponed it twice.

She didn’t want to hold me up.

“I will make it there, don’t worry,” Claire added assertively.

Reflection

I do not know how the surgery went yet, or if it was postponed again, but it is clear that when two people live together and depend on one another at an older age, the prospect of potentially losing your partner must be terrifying. Yet, even when they need support from others, so many choose not to seek it, fearing they are a burden.

It is impossible not to think about my own paternal grandparents, who depend on each other and live mostly in social isolation from others in their city apartment, currently dealing with their own health issues and intermittent hospital stays, thousands of miles away from either of their descendants…

* * *

What I do know is that, as of today, I already failed twice this year at trusting my intuition enough to proactively do something about it, or at least try to. The first failure will be a subject of another post. This one, however, compels me to type out the following action items for all of us, including you, dear reader. I spontaneously created this list just now, and any improvements from you are more than welcome.

Action Items

A. Individual

1. Physical needs

   1. Identify an elderly person whom you care about, and consider if they need anything but might be hesitant about asking you (or those in their orbit), for fear of placing an undue burden on others’ shoulders.

   2. Contact them. Just do it.

   3. Express a desire to fill what you believe their need entails, and do not back off if they decline out of politeness. Be assertive.

2. Psychological needs

   1. Think about the socially isolated elderly in your network.

   2. Place yourself in their shoes, and let your imagination do the work to really feel their inner world. Take as much time as necessary for this feeling to permeate as many of your senses as possible.

   3. Send them a warm card or letter, expressing your well-wishes deeply and genuinely. You may spark a new level of connection to cherish for life.

   4. Would you like them to receive cards or well-wishes from strangers, too? Then fill out the mutual support exchange form right now!

B. Collective

(reposting the following from two weeks ago; little did I know how relevant this would be, and how directly this would hit home, literally)

Curing social isolation: send a card to the elderly by Friday, 12/16

There has been substantial research on the subject of social isolation among older adults and its detrimental effects on their psychological and physical health. This CDC publication offers striking findings (on correlation with premature death, dementia, depression, etc.) and explores the issue as a matter of public health.

To brighten up the spirits of concrete people of age in a homeless shelter, every year this holiday season my alumni association (PANE) offers an opportunity for you to send them holiday cards through a nonprofit it partners with (Hearth Inc) in greater Boston. The annual initiative is spearheaded by one of our active alumni who prefers to remain anonymous here. This is what they wrote:

“Seeking volunteers for the Holiday Cards for Seniors - New Year's Edition campaign running through Dec. 16, 2022 - thank you if you can help out!” “Really grateful to anyone who can send some cards - a few or several! Each one we send will brighten someone's winter season.”

The page notes, “Hearth currently has 230 units of housing – let’s make sure everyone gets at least one card.  Since 2020, we’ve sent over 350 cards to isolated seniors – let’s keep the momentum going! Our hope is that volunteers can send two to three cards but more are encouraged!  The cards aren’t to a specific recipient, so we hope each resident receives at least one.  Store-bought & homemade cards are welcomed.  And please take photos to share with us!”

Each of our lives is finite. Grateful to all of you who’ll consider either of the above actions. Which one will you take?

As outlined here, every other week your requests or offers from this mutual support exchange form will be posted to the Giving Tuesdays section of this publication. Submit one anytime! Please consider inviting a friend or more to this publication or to the anyhumans podcast as a guest or as a host.

This substack gained a number of new subscribers over the past month, whom I wish to warmly welcome. The goal for this brief post is to share a mechanism for the practical implementation of mutual support in this early phase of the abundance mindset community’s growth and propose an efficient cadence for future posts.

The end goal for this community, ultimately, is to improve more lives relative to the counterfactual, i.e. relative to a future where this community would not exist. You may recall that the preferred structure begins with a discovery phase, as introduced in this post, yet a part of our task is to support one another’s lives on an ongoing basis, and there is no better way for this blog to achieve this than to act as an intermediary.

Introducing… Giving Tuesdays and Creative Fridays. Here is how they will work:

Giving Tuesdays: Starting this month, every other Tuesday a post will consist entirely of your submissions to this new form. All fields are optional and include the following:

• What would you like another reader (or readers) of the On Humanity substack to support you with in the next month? E.g., offering advice, acting as a sounding board, proofreading a text, coaching, etc.

• Is there anything you are able to potentially offer to readers of the On Humanity substack who fill out the above field?

• What need, if any, exists within your social network or local community that you might like to share with readers of this substack?

Please go ahead and fill out either field(s) at your convenience: you may resubmit the form as many times as you wish. Please consider filling it out right now: don’t be shy!

Another form of giving is the sharing of new content, including creative content. Inspiration from a poem, a novel, a painting, a song, or any other work of art may bring about the drive necessary to leave lasting positive impact on others in the pursuit of a humanist-oriented world.

Creative Fridays: On alternate weeks to Giving Tuesdays, a Friday post will spotlight a creator among you or those in your networks, with a series of questions about their respective sources of inspiration, the planning process, the role of feedback, and how the pandemic has altered their workflows. If you know someone who produces or has in the past produced creative content and might wish to be interviewed via email for this series of posts, featuring their thoughts and any links to their content, you may place us in touch by replying to this email or sending one to info@abundance.dev.

Rest assured that if you do not wish to read anything related to the mutual support exchange or to be inspired by others’ works of art, you will have the option to opt out of either or both sets of posts, independently of your subscription to this (monthly, at present) newsletter. A simple way to do so will be shared in the next post.

Warm regards, and until next time!

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• Share one or more guiding principle you uphold in life, pertaining to either: autonomy, family, community, society, education, work, or leisure

• Share a time you found joy

• Share a time in the past month you felt like you did good for someone

When you’re done, send in the audio to info@abundance.dev and indicate in your email if you would like it to be shared with other readers of this substack in a future post, within Discord only (please ask for an invite!), or on any other social media in the future; and if you’d like to be named or anonymous.

To illustrate how easy it is to send in a voice note with such content, I’ve asked two people for their brief answers to the first question last week, and they agreed to share their raw, unedited brief audios with the community:

1. Jennifer Chew, product marketer at Aircall and former college classmate:

2. Ti Guo, data scientist at IBM and founder of OpenPrinciples.org:

Looking forward to hearing from you!

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Please send this post to a colleague, friend, or family member who you think might be glad to share their answer too:

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Given the scope of the challenge described below, it would be appreciated if you share this with a friend, colleague, or family member!

Greetings, everyone. A fraction of you received this in your inbox on a federal holiday, and what do you typically do on a holiday? Perhaps you ask hard questions, such as:

• How do you create true meaning in life? 

• What is your raison d'être? 

• Whom would you surround yourself with in pursuit of your most sacred goals? 

• When and how do you empower those who need empowerment the most? 

(If, by any chance, you were not asking these questions today, now is the perfect time to do so; it is never too late!)

This year’s Fourth of July is the 246th after the Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Continental Congress in 1776. While we all assess this day differently, and each of our outlooks on the future of this country primarily comes from our respective information diets and personal biases, a constant trend in recent decades — particularly years — is the growing divergence in the perceptions of what is good vs. bad, or, much more commonly, who does good vs. who does bad.1 

In my view, a major cause of such divergence is the transcending mindset of scarcity and fear that someone could make matters worse — someone unlike us along the characteristics we identify with our ingroup. This fear is easily exploited by certain kinds of public figures and entities, as alluded to in my last post. So what can we do?

Some of you remember that just before the pandemic began in 2020, I collected dozens of submissions from humans across multiple diverse communities and networks who shared causes they are most passionate to contribute to. Many of us in the ensuing unprecedented months — and now years — tried supporting “our” causes through the means we were each capable of. Certainly, the vast majority of such efforts represented drops in the bucket or needles in the haystack, depending on your favorite metaphor.2 Hence, a different approach is warranted, focused on attaining the opposite of zero-sum fear of scarcity: a mindset of abundance.

Therefore, a meta goal for the challenge I see before us all is to increase the marginal utility of our individual actions collectively through a three-pronged continuous loop: 

1. discovering each other’s visions and values concerning the notion of “good” by humans from all walks of life, with openness and empathy at the core;

2. building a set of shared resources, optionally, through mindful investing; 

3. deploying these resources, skills, and talents toward achieving the visions discovered in step 1 and empowering others.

It is exciting to finally have the opportunity to share the website abundance.dev with you officially. At present, it outlines the above steps in slightly more detail and contains a two-minute introductory video illustrating a pressing societal problem.3

A target goal for the discovery phase I am setting today is to record — by the 250th anniversary of Independence Day on July 4, 2026 — at least 250 interviews for the collective library of values from across broad swaths of society and all ten of the most common U.S.-based ideological worldviews (as defined recently by Clearer Thinking).

My hypothesis is that freeing ourselves of personal bias against some of the worldviews we may perceive negatively — by defaulting into a state of forgiveness — is an essential element for the collaborative exercise of doing good together to have a chance at transforming one’s attitude toward their outgroup. Repeating this process over and over across different pods would enable the possibility of many (perhaps not changed but..) refreshed minds. These questions are a blueprint for each conversation.

For such an initially ambitious goal to succeed, it is my pleasure (and a necessity!) to invite and strongly encourage you (yes, you!) to consider participating either as a podcast guest — if you have personal insights to share on any of the questions and would like to spread the word about a cause or project you are passionate about — or as a host, where you would interview a friend, colleague, or family member. The first episode with a friend has already been recorded and will be released soon. Please comment below if you are up for either task (do not worry: each process will be guided from start to finish).

The existing content will be continuously uploaded to the website as the community grows organically. Growth will be more dynamic the more of your own connections you share this initiative with. You are likewise welcome to contribute your definition of “mindset of abundance” directly through the homepage to add to this growing list.

Finally, I’d like to thank the many individuals who have offered advice, suggestions, and feedback (in our Zoom meetings, in person, and in written form) over the past two years, as this project was being brainstormed and masterminded. I will credit you all individually later if you would like to, but please accept this collective thank you now. 

Onward, and looking forward to hearing from you!

If this post was forwarded to you, please subscribe to receive future updates in your inbox. Given the scope of the challenge described, it would be very appreciated if you share this with a friend, colleague, or family member!

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Protesters at the March Against Fear in Paterson, NJ, on March 30, 2003.1 As is evident, the organizers’ other central demand was to “free all detainees” and ensure their civil rights.2 Photo credit: my father.3

That brisk early afternoon, my dad drove with me in his recently-purchased 1995 Ford Taurus to Paterson, NJ, arriving roughly 20 minutes prior to the scheduled protest start time, parking on a quiet side street so that we could take a walk downtown together to a small triangular-shaped park, where a rally were to precede the march. As we exited the car, in my hands I clutched a cardboard handle of the sign we worked on together the previous night: I remember debating with my dad what message it should bear – green markers, poster board, and epoxy glue my dad had brought from Home Depot spread out on the living room floor of the small apartment my parents rented at the time – but in the end one of us (perhaps it was a compromise?) chose to make the slogan as unambiguous and as universal as possible.

As we sauntered toward the anticipated protest area, and the frequency of encountered passersby began to increase, I kept firmly pressing the sign to my side, inverted, and feeling jittery. That is, until an elderly driver in a 1980’s-era sedan slowed down to a crawl, coming to a halt directly across from us near the sidewalk, and asked me to hold the sign up for him to see. I made an effort not to appear anxious, reoriented the poster right-side-up, and smiled at him. In green letters, the poster read:

To my utmost relief, he immediately gave me a thumbs-up, accompanying it with a few encouraging words, before driving on. This episode, lasting a mere 20 seconds at most, was forever seared into my memory. The driver’s reaction empowered me emotionally, and over the course of the next hour listening to speeches and mingling in a crowd mostly bound by common values of peace and humanism, though still externally tense, internally I felt at home and morally content having the space to express this unpopular stance, for at the time up to 70% of the US general public supported the invasion (see Addendum4 * 5 for context and references).

Indeed, a number of counter-protesters turned out, one holding a Free Iraq sign in the above photo, but they were civilly discouraged by attendees from interrupting the speakers too much; in those years, reasonable civility among disagreeing parties was still commonplace. Perhaps it is precisely in part due to the relative courtesy displayed by all parties at the protest that I recall the driver’s reaction to my poster much more vividly than the others’ interactions with the counter-protesters.6

Reflection

Recounting this childhood memory leads me to two realizations:

• The mobilization of people – both of the humanist and the nativist types7 – in response to events like the unfolding global conflict since this February8 naturally results in often unprecedented displays of collective action. Determining which forms of action are a net long-term boon for humanity and which come at a cost of greater suffering is a question many individuals would struggle to answer on their own. A community of fellowship in search of truth, free from personal bias, is key to the emergence of solutions that are reasonable, implementable, and effective in the quest toward a humane world.

• Because world history repeats itself in Hegelian natural cycles (for simplicity, let me call them hills), my earnest wish, as I’m sure yours is as well, is for the human civilization to progress9 rather than regress at the onset of the next hill. For this to happen, it is imperative that each of us, as equally important constituents of humankind, take care to draw correct lessons from history and psychology by means of primary sources and the scientific method.

Why the latter? It may sound overly abstract and unnecessarily stale (doesn’t it?), but failing to properly vet our sources of truth defining our (often starkly different) perceptions of reality, as has been evidenced with so many preventable tragedies over the course of the pandemic, we the people will be unable to climb over the next hill.

Humanity’s experience of the last two years has shown how prone we are to being influenced by significant disinformation and to a nearly irrevocable segmentation into disparate echo chambers. This division alone, feeding our confirmation biases, aligns with and reinforces – like iron filings in a magnetic field, to use an example from physics – other artificially-created “red lines” between “us” and “them” to cause an ever-increasing risk of violent conflicts.

To lower the degree of potential confrontation – and therefore the probability of total annihilation as an existential risk within our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our future descendants – we ought to support each other in a crucial undertaking: vanquishing zero-sum thinking and the scarcity mindset. These will be discussed thoroughly in a future post, but where and how – you might ask – do we begin?

Plan

I feel compelled to build up this substack by not merely sharing my own half-baked analyses and prescriptions for an ideal life (imagine that!), but largely by:

• interviewing ordinary people in any occupation (yes, you, the reader!)

• popularizing the ideas of certain contemporary scholars and academics

to accurately relate the consequences of transformative current and historic events to fundamental elements of psychodynamics, particularly human behavior and the motivations central to our lives as sentient and interconnected beings.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

“forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.”

To live up to this principle, we must break with the attitudes that impede us from empathizing with others in reaching our goals. If we find ourselves aghast at the horrible practice of retaliation and exerting force to achieve one’s ends, it’s necessary to pinpoint the root causes of any violent behavior at a micro-level, before it manifests on a much larger and less manageable scale, and to prevent or minimize others’ suffering by nurturing humans’ innate goodness through concrete actions.

To further these aims, in parallel to upkeeping this substack, I will be launching a “collective conscience” project, constituting an association of local networks to mutually support each other’s endeavors and the causes or individuals we (may neglect or be unable to) help on our own, while remaining steadfast in upholding compassion, grace, and forgiveness as the core guiding principles. Such community is what would allow us to collectively climb the hills to ensure our future.

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Please let me know if you’d welcome an opportunity to share your own views, either on ideas presented in this post or as the project’s future participant.

More to come soon. In the meantime, be well!