On Eliminating Our Blind Spots

"The point is to try to eliminate your blind spots — the things that keep us from grasping the bigger picture. And look, even though I grew up in this neighbourhood — in this incredible, multicultural neighbourhood that was a little rough at that time — I find myself here before you as an American, white, male movie star. I don’t have a clue where my blind spots begin and end. But looking at the world as it is, and engaging with it, is the first step toward finding our blind spots. And that’s when we can really start to understand ourselves better ... and begin to solve some problems." - Matt Damon, MIT Commencement Speech 2016

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with my parents trying to understand how we grew up, our experience and ideas around us have shaped who we have become as adults. Even within the same family, I realised how differently my mother and I grew up as a young child and teenager.

I hardly had any clue about a life my mother had, as much as my mother could only have little idea about experience I've gone through as a girl from Monywa, Colorado to New York and then back in Myanmar.

My mother is a very strong woman, my role model, who always guides us with her great values. She grew up in a poor family, and as a second eldest of 9 siblings, she grew up babysitting all her younger siblings, and helping my grandmother in all household chores. She eventually had to drop out of school at 9th grade as all the family responsibilities and also financial situation did not afford her to continue school. 

I grew up in a lower middle-class household - my father was a junior civil servant when I was a kid. Both my brother and I went to a primary school in a poor neighbourhood of Monywa, a town in the middle of Myanmar. We had daily allowance of 1 or 2 kyats in primary school and only got to eat shrimps once a year. When I started dreaming back in high school about studying abroad, my friends thought I was out of my mind to dare to think of something "impossible". My father was also strongly against the idea because a young girl was supposed to be under his protection, and he also thought it was insane to forgo the medical school and try something completely uncertain -- winning a full scholarship from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the U.S. Anyway, to make the long story short, against all odds, I made it all the way!

Studying in Colorado for 4 years, and living in New York for a few years, I'd become complacent. I had no clue where my blind spots begin and end. I thought I had a pretty good idea about life and the world. Eventually, I had to painfully embrace the fact that I had no clue about who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. So, taking all the possible risks, I moved back to my home country nearly 3 years ago. In the beginning, I was in a series of shocks - I was in pain to know how clueless and ignorant I was for all those years. 

Through my own pain, I had a little bit of idea about how painful it must be to be rid of opportunities and resources to better yourself and improve your life chances, to feel uncertain and hopeless about tomorrow, and to be victimised for just being poor. I had a lot of questions about "what ifs" - what if I grew up in a poorer household, what if my parents made wrong choices about their life, what if I did not even have enough resources to try to get into a liberal arts college in the U.S. 

Since I moved back 3 years ago, I've been in this constant process of rocking the boat, both inward and outward, through reading, traveling, meditating, listening to others and watching documentaries. I've been trying to shake up all my beliefs and everything I held dear to my heart and mind. I've kept trying to understand alternative points of view and information even if those are so against my own beliefs. I've learnt to approach anything with healthy skepticism. 

Even then, I know that I'm still far from getting closer to the truth because I still have my fair share of blind spots -- biases, prejudices and intellectual limitations. In the process, I'm also aware that I'm subject to arrogance and complacency every now and then. 

Eliminating our blind spots, in the process of actively searching and learning, is a life-long endeavour. I hope I never stop learning and actively engaging myself with life and the world before me.

When You Believe in Choice

Labastide-Esparbairenque, France

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. "—David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

I love Wachowski brothers' movies—Matrix triology,V for Vendentta and Cloud Atlas. Their movies' recurring themes are a hero journey, and how the hero makes choices along that journey—usually the hero starts out with being completely ignorant and unaware of the world around or rather confused, at some point, he or she wakes up, becomes aware and starts fighting for things like justice, freedom and overall ignorance.

I see life as a long journey—maybe it is not as fascinating as in Wachowski's movies. Each and every choice we make, small and big, leads us to a new path. First and foremost, choosing which direction we want to go in this journey is very important.

Looking back seeing choices and decisions I had made, I see that sometimes I made choices, without thinking much, either out of social pressure or trying to meet existing social standards but there were also times when I made deliberate choices based on certain beliefs or strong desire to achieve something. Either deliberate or automatic, these choices have become the paths that form where I am heading in this journey.

I have made a fair share of mistakes and unwise choices in my life, either out of sheer ignorance or emotional turbulence. There are also times when I make good and wise choices based on clarity on possible consequences and understanding the depth of my own pain and problems or just out of compassion or kindness for myself or another being.

About three years ago, I was completely lost and going through an existential crisis. My therapist and counselor, who helped me through it, was my brother. He was very compassionate, and emotionally available enough to give me guidance and helped me understand my struggle and myself. I am forever grateful to him for that.

When I expressed him how thankful I was, he said "No, I did not help you. You helped yourself. I've become the person I am today because of your guidance and help when I was young and ignorant."

I did not even think that I had helped him. It was just out of "love and kindness" that I gave him certain guidance in the past. Consequently, I am benefitting from it, but then he could have chosen to ignore and not help me.

Recently, I've been struggling or I've been confused about certain things and my recent choices. I've been feeling that life is just meaningless and it is pointless to do anything meaningful. Whenever I get online and read news, I feel hopeless because I am constantly being fed up with the news how corporations are destroying quality of human lives, wrecking the environment, governments facilitating all these corporations to rob us (and hiding their money offshore), media brainwashing us to hate certain groups of people or blaming their selected situations.

Just to clear my contaminated mind and to have a break from the civilisation, I'd made a choice to go on a retreat— Writers and Artists Retreat in Southern France. I told them that I am not a writer, I just wanted to read, think deeply and just simply retreat.

Being surrounded by this beautiful nature, not contaminated by the civilisation outside, and good hearts and kindness of the writers in the retreat, I am feeling hopeful and having faith in humanity once again. I did not fully understand why I chose to come here but I realized now that this is exactly what I needed — to feel hopeful again.

Believing in choice, instead of fate, is not easy. It is difficult and it often feels like a burden because we are responsible for our choices. Our choices shape who we are, which direction we are going in this life journey and how we impact those around us and the world.

I may not be able to make wise choices every time.  But, I will always try to choose love, hope, truth, courage and justice. And again and again.

What It Means to Really Love Someone

"Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as your are...Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavour...Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self."  - Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts.

When I was only in pre-school, during a scene in a movie in which a boy and a girl were showing some romantic gestures, I commented by saying, "Oh they got together!" My mom was quite upset that how little person like me could know such things.

So that shows that it is in our human nature to be quite aware of romantic connection and love since very early in life. But, as I grew older, I learned that I did not know anything about love at all. All I know about love is quite shaped by our society and popular culture.

Whether you are man or woman, old or young, whichever society you grew up, or what religion you belong to, you, as a human being, want to love and be loved. It is a basic human need. But, what does it really mean to really love someone?  I'm going to share what I thought of love over the course of my live in different phases - from teenage to my adulthood now.

Love is a beautiful fairytale.

This is quite plain and simple. As a young girl in late teens, I thought love starts out with a boy and a girl liking each other so much, then falling in love and then getting married and living happily ever after.

Love is dealing with an annoying human being.

I really enjoyed all the fun part of beginning of any courting. It is quite fun to be pursued and chased by someone. But then, there came to a point, all my fairytale romantic fantasies shattered as harsh realities hit. I was still quite young, early to mid twenties, and packed with insecurities myself. I fell in love with fantasies and an idea of a perfect boyfriend. But I lacked the maturity and understanding of what it means to be really close to someone in his all imperfections after the honeymoon phase. It was all about endless fights and verbal abuses in every way. After three years, I decided to end it. For those three years, I really thought love sucked and it was just quite annoying. One thing I learned from it was that I want to be treated with respect and kindness. It is a basic need and anyone who is not that, I would not even bother to talk to.

Love is a goal to accomplish with certain expected results.

I dated someone right after my three-year relationship. That did not last long but it was quite fun experience - I got to enjoy the fun honeymoon phase of courting.  We did not really have a kind of connection that could hold us together past the honeymoon phase.

I stayed single for a couple of years. Partly because New York City is such a great place to be single. You meet new people all the time.You flirt here and there, and then move on and look for what is the next best thing. Then eventually through all those socialising and friends' parties, I met someone really amazing. It was all fun and exciting as it is always with beginning of any relationship.  I felt really connected with him - we made each other laugh all the time. I started learning that no one is perfect - I accepted that even that amazing human being I fell in love would not be perfect.

However, over the course of the relationship, I started to focus more on signs and indicators of loving affections from him than really enjoying each and every moment with him. What he does or does not do became more of a big deal than our time spent together and learning about each other. I was really focused on the results than the process of deeply connecting with him. As he was a really great man and things had gone well, I wanted it to be in a "successful" relationship, that would fulfil, again, all my romantic fantasies. ( But I never thought of marrying him or anyone in my life for that matter.)  It was obviously no longer fun anymore. I am sure that he went through a series of doubts and I was even more insecure. Eventually, it led to a breakup.

Love is pain so I must avoid it.

I was in a tremendous amount of pain. At the same time, I made a very big decision - a decision to move back to my home country. Well, I did not move back because of my heartbreak. But I did think that big change like that somehow would help me mend my heart. It took me a very long time - more than a year to recover from it. While mending my heart, I found a job that I'm more and more falling in love with day by day. I've been focusing on learning about myself and on my professional development. For a long time, I felt that love is a pain so I must avoid it at all costs and I emotionally shut myself down.

Love is a courage to face the fear of rejection.

After I recovered from that painful heartbreak, I was thinking that "Maybe I don't "need" someone to love or be loved. Maybe I have been socially conditioned to think that I need love to justify my worthiness as a human being." In many ways, I am a very self-sufficient person and professionally very capable, or at least I want to think so. So why would I bother to take all the pain and emotional inconvenience of being with someone? Then I realised that I was lying to myself. It is quite comforting to reject something before it rejects you because being truly known makes you vulnerable and potentially be rejected.

So I realised that I was just being a coward - I did not want to take the risk of being rejected because it is really terrifying. I then learned that love is a courage to face that fear of rejection by being truly known and letting yourself be vulnerable.

Real sustainable love is a process and a choice...

After giving a lot of thoughts and feelings to understand what people in loving sustainable relationships go through and analysing my own experience with relationships, I am slowly learning that it is quite easy to fall in love with a fantasy. We all love the "idea" of falling in love with someone and fantasise about all the excitements and happy moments.  We are often more obsessed with the end results than enjoying the moment and bothering to get to know someone.

I think that the real sustainable lasting love is a process - a process of understanding someone, with all the kindness, generosity and bottomless empathy, or at least an attempt to understand someone, and at the same time, surrendering your pride and exposing yourself to be known. And during the process, you make a choice to be in that process again and again, regardless of fear and doubt that the other person might not choose you.