The Live Dream

Just ended a paper with these words:

As researchers continue to test and work their way to greater understanding of AGI and self-programming, hopefully they can successfully alter their own neural network to collaborate in ways that bring together these disparate approaches and create something new.

Feels so good to be back.

Quietness 
by Rumi 
Translated by Coleman Barks

Inside this new love, die. 
Your way begins on the other side. 
Become the sky. 
Take an axe to the prison wall. 
Escape. 
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. 
Do it now. 
You’re covered with thick clouds. 
Slide out the side. Die, 
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign 
that you’ve died. 
Your old life was a frantic running 
from silence.

The speechless full moon 
comes out now.

(Source: sinc.sunysb.edu)

I have lived my life with the philosophy of “Never Give Up.” It was a useful motto for a very long time. When challenges are so great and situations so perilous that to give up would mean defeat, the only solution is to never ever give in, never give up.

But recently, since my life is now normal for the most part, I’ve been questioning whether “never giving up” is necessarily the best solution for everyday life. 

Are there times when one must give in? When it’s the only solution?

For example, let’s say you fall in love and the feelings don’t seem to be returned. Is never giving up that they will love you back a healthy way to live? You want them to love you, you feel like you need them to love you, if you don’t give up it can consume you. Love is such a powerful force it is almost impossible to control. The pursuit of controlling it can, sometimes literally, destroy someone. How much better for the individual in this case to instead surrender to their feelings? Love the love you feel, respect your emotions, but no fighting. No control. Love takes you away and you go where it flows, but you stay safe and whole. 

Not giving up has its place, but it’s not always the solution. If your house falls down, perhaps you don’t give up finding a new place to live, but hopefully you surrendered to the wind and went somewhere safe beforehand.

Blessed/cursed with a vivid and compelling imagination I can often create a perfect outcome for a situation or project in my mind. I struggled with homework problems and artistic projects as I expected each step to mimic the perfect outcomes I expected of myself. I might complete what I was working on, but I would beat myself up if it wasn’t as great as I believed it should be. Eventually that would wear me down, wear me out.

Because the world I live in has different limits than the realm of my thoughts, it has taken me two decades to realize that I must let go in order to move forward, with anything. 

I study Buddhism, and have often thought that the “let go” advice of that thinking system was unappealing in English. Some Buddhist teachings say that the way to the greater reality that connects us all (God) is to “detach”, “let go”, “lose one’s self” — none of this sounds great. It sounds a lot like defeat, failure and something like loss in my language. 

But surrender is different. Surrender is release. Surrender is acceptance. Surrender can be beautiful, whole and right. Surrender means embracing what is, and loving without control, without expectation. Surrender is taking the cup of life and drinking from it.

Sometimes, surrender can save you.

Living to 100 and Beyond — read this.

The Wall Street Journal article above discusses the real possibility, assuming society can hold it together, of lifespans of 150-1000 years for people living today. I have found friends and family usually respond negatively to such optimism, as if they have convinced themselves that 100 years of life is all that they could possibly wish for… life is so hard, they say.

“Life is such a bore.”

I would argue that this perspective of life and death is rooted in our culture and societal norms. Death is probably much more boring.

What if it were normal to have 10 or 20 marriages? 

What if you knew your children might become the first settlers of new worlds?

What if you could have 4 or 5 meaningful careers? Care to spend 10 years as an artist? No problem.

20 as an AI researcher? Why not.

Change your name, change your looks, change your passion. You’ve got the time.

That thrills me. Especially as someone breaking the norms a bit right now. Turning her life all the way around after an age where I would have expected to be settled going in one direction. As I’ve aged, I’ve often had the thought that if I’d only had the wisdom of these years, in the past, I could have used my time better — I could have made better choices. But maybe I have that time… right now.

Cheers to your health!

100% on my first assignment! 

Is this a dull thing to post about? Am I really proud that I got 100% on an easy intro assignment? I shouldn’t be — not really. I suppose I am not.

I’m not trying to be negative, but I think this time around I’m going to hold myself to a higher standard.

This blog won’t just be about assignments and grades (You’ll get to hear all about my Vector Calculus class too! I’m sure you are excited ;), but I’ve got to start somewhere.

I look at this phase as something like the primordial pool that I hope life evolves out of. I’m hoping this raw material is the catalyst that jumps my brain back into an excited state (mixed metaphors? Not really, but in this case that’s worse.)

I will also post a picture today just to mix it up.

Cheers for now.

Today, I turned in my first Java assignment ten years after my last computer science course. 

public class MyFirstApp {

etc.

This is humbling because here I am, ten years of distraction later, still typing ‘Hello World!’ This is not to say I haven’t been busy. I have a Masters in a subject I’m not interested in, for example.

That’s really what this blog is about. After walking so far on a path in an unfulfilling (unactualizing?) direction — what does it take to walk all the way back down that mountain and up another one?