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one assumption that many people is that happiness (individual or group) is the goal. what if the purpose of life isn’t, and shouldn’t be happiness but to survival? after all, it’d be a dumb assumption for literally anything besides humans. maybe we’re missing the forest for the trees. is being happy and doing jackshit for humanity something to be proud of? is that how you want to go? i think it has to do a little with the fear of failure, and a little with the fear of pain.

sounding board

sometimes you have to write down memories, out of fear of forgetting them one day.

cruise was awesome!

*meeting everyone during the first night!

*going to late night eats

*chilling in an empty dining hall late at night and playing never have I ever

*listening to Mark tell us about throwing cereal out his window

*finding out J liked me and trying to kiss J in the elevator

*hanging out in the hot tub

*running around on deck in the middle of the night

*telling myself this was an experience that would turn me into a different person for college

“ didn't he also pee out his window?ohohoh and he went to a gay bar nightand an old man tried to buy him a drink “ - E

I miss childhood.

to fill in the details for later

*first club night

*trying LSD / hike, and everything else at CWRU

*Halloween 2FA + alcohol

*Martin Garrix Molly

*Pot brownie at random house party

*Locos - first night and spoken word which night?, Asian Festival, second night

*party at my place 2nd year

*Eskimo party w ?

*YAYA - belt, trash

*Chilling with N, B, R over the summer

1000 CHICKEN NUGGET NIGHT! it’s always sunny night! Night I met L, hottub night!

Cadaver

My first time seeing and touching a dead human. It is a jarring experience and I meant to write about it immediately afterwards.

It is not grotesque or gory, just jarring.

The man looks so real. Especially the detail in the face and hands. Human, almost. But he is absolutely still. Even a sleeping man breathes, exhales a little moisture, and gives off a little heat. But the room is cold, the body cold, and it certainly does not smell human. When you raise a scalpel to him, you expect him to stop you. To wake up and chide you for even daring to try.

At the same time, another part of your brain is trying to process the cadaver as an object. Laid out on the table like a tool to interact with. But it is so large! What else do people lay on a table that is over five feet long and one hundred pounds! Only machines. Yet this one is not metal, it is cold, but it is made of flesh and soft. It is definitely too big to interact with.

And lastly, after you get used to the face, to the hands, and make your first incisions, watch the formaldehyde drip out like tears from under the skin, you think of their family. That they had kids, and loved ones, and that a long long, but not so long time ago, that they were kids too. And that one I will be laying on the table, or my mom or dad, in the hands of strangers.

And this zips through your head in a second, like a reel on fastforward, and you shake it off, and get back to work.

Thank you for this gift. One day I will pass it forward.

Ligament of Treitz

After what feels like six months, but in reality 3 weeks, of medical school I finally think I have a non-zero amount of knowledge. Coming in, I was aware that I would be surrounded by extraordinarily mature, intelligent, and frankly, better people than myself. However, I didn’t know how I would act. Whether or not I would find myself giving up in the face of challenge or exhaustion. Instead, I have found role models and friends through my struggle. I am jealous of the brightest in our class, but in a inspirational and non self-loathing manner. Another interesting tick: I didn’t realize until now that I didn’t really trust other people. I was always quick to dismiss other people’s opinions and even my style of leadership was to lead, and not create. Here I can put my self and my ego aside, ask questions unabashed and be eager to learn from every single person around me without hesitation of their correctness.

And finally, for the first time, I was able to lead and teach others. A responsibility that, a year ago, would seemed laborious, and definitely not rewarding except to stroke my own ego. I am not sure if I feel guilty and indebted to all the knowledge I’ve leached from everyone or if the campus’ open-source culture has permeated me as well.

chemicals

acid is empathy for the world around, whereas molly is empathy for the people around. i wonder what taking both does, loss of self-identity?

yugioh

I remember the first deck of yugioh cards I had. Standing at the end of the checkout aisle, me and the ‘I want it’ tenet of American capitalism against my mom and my dad like some sort of deranged anti-marriage.

I took that shit home and played the fuck out of it. Not really. I’m not sure when I learned to comprehend what I was reading, but the way I played and taught my brother to play was completely wrong. Of course, I split the forty cards with my brother but kept the blue eyes white dragon for myself. What a good younger brother...growing up I leaned to win but was (and am) uncomfortable with legitimate competition. Guess I taught my brother what failure meant, and to dream big in the face of adversity. But there’s always a trade-off. I learned to play the system itself, to sit down at the right tables, while my brother can try past the point of obvious and consistent failure without anxiety.

Hopefully next year will knock me down and I’ll fight back rather than sit down. My brother will be ok, he’s smarter.

utility

If doctors heal without judgement, then the premise of the profession is that people, on average, are good.

twin-size

Three year deja vu. Still better than that one night stand, but they’re all bodies against the wall.

Loneliness is withdrawal. Not from sex, from intimacy. Let’s see how it feels in three months.

#LYLS

Alzheimer’s

My mom was right. Keep a journal, because there is going to be one day where your memories aren’t memories anymore. Thinking about just the past four years, I get a vague sense of unease at my inability to remember certain events. Don’t I want more than to remember 2013 as ‘fun’?

If medicine is my calling, then I should be comfortable with my own mortality right? And it’s heartbreaking; the intention to treat patients, to fight cancer is in no way similar to watching them melt away. David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Mr. Rogers, Riley’s sister, Mama and Papa Wu...And not just mortality, but just losing things in the past. How many nights have I already forgotten? Certainly parts of sophomore year...If scientists pour their lives into saving lives, then don’t I have a responsibility to save every drop of my own life? Save it, recycle it, relive it.

old man

goal: go to sleep before 12. get a good 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

isn't it weird that I would have been so proud to achieve the opposite just a little while ago?

utility

Good men are prostitutes?

fireworks

A reminder that we do not have to be eternal to be moving. In the grand scheme of things, isn't life equitably evanescent?

pasttime

Greed is wanting a life you can no longer have. Is it greedy to dream, er no, to think about piano? It's 4:30am, pick one: Anki citric acid cycle flash cards open in one tab and Spotify streaming Joe Hisaishi in another beckoning you to stop everything, drop everything; the university piano is a brisk walk away.

I finally understand the allure of Miyazaki films... their youth and modulated nostalgia resonates so well with the human desire to find life in a world we resigned to perceiving as inert. He finds that jewel we didn't notice slip away in the jolting transition from child to adult and seamless passage of time..and offers it momentarily back to you.

It's laughably black and white. The pursuit of happiness is dependent on the individual achievement of a beautiful Iife. Yet the masochist and academic in me secretly cheers on the martyr. I am not the first nor the last to be resigned to finding meaning in a greater good... but am losing faith in the second as the brightest people I am honored to call friends fall away from their dreams, resigned to live not a mediocre life, but still some substandard variant of their initial vision. We feel wasteful when our the breakdown of our days can be accurately portrayed with a Buzzfeed pie chart but equally dissatisfied without a proper culmination and conclusion to our time here. WarGames got it wrong: play the fuck out of life. It is so goddamned short. Sleep less, work more, and play a little piano.

could

a miserable word.

rain

There is a power (a giddy perverse kind of power) in being able to forwardly embracing what others shy away from, whether it's studies, lifting, or some fucking rain. Walk against cars roaring by towards a singular destination, tearing up evanescent tails of mist, consuming hunched errand-runners...isn't there a beauty to knowing what they perceive as a paranoid injustice is our opportunity to become alive?

I used to hate rain, I mean fuck who doesn't? It makes sense I guess. There's nothing I could say to convince my self that I would ever enjoy loitering at a bus stop praying for the school bus to come. It's easy to love rain when we're staring out from the dry side of a window. "some people feel the rain, others just get wet". Ironically, I adored the idea but after playing under Wednesday's storm, I get it.

The comfort of enjoying what others choose not to...that's power.

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