Newborn Wisdom

I’ve found new wisdom from my newborn. When you have a baby you’re provided all this general advice. Some actual guidelines from our healthcare provider:

• In the first 24 hours, your baby will be sleepy

• After the first day, your new baby will need to eat at least 8 to 12 times a day

• It’s normal for babies to feed several times closer together, or “cluster feed”

• Expect to change about 7 to 10 diapers a day

• Crying is your baby’s way of talking to you

• Baby will be noisy with grunts, sneezes, and hiccups, they are learning & developing their digestion

• Touch is their primary communication language, the first way they learn about their environment and themselves, so do skin to skin as much as possible

Learning all this as a first-time parent, something struck me. There is no accounting for race, ethnicity, culture or gender. None of those characteristics affect baby behavior or guidelines for their care. Babies are babies.

In a way, this reinforces we are more similar than different. We all begin from the same starting place. We grow and change and blossom into distinct individuals, but we all start the same. Individual babies may have specific behaviors and preferences, but holistically, they all eat, sleep and poop. They prove we are, in fact, all equal. We’re all human.

In a world focused on differences, it helps to remember we all entered this world alike. Our sameness precedes our distinctions. Babies, show us the way.

World Culture and Family

On the surface, Chinese culture appears as different as can be from American culture. When I moved to China in 2012, I had no idea what to expect. I anticipated some faceless collective, almost like a hive mind between all Chinese citizens, because of all the ‘collectivist culture’ insistence from my Sociology studies. How wrong I was.

I happened to look back at some photos from my time there the other day. It was easy to slip into reminiscence of my old life, now more than 10 years ago. How I lived in the city center’s hutongs, without a toilet or microwave. How I commuted via the Beijing subway, often with my longboard. How I lived young and free, sometimes staying up all night, walking back home in the early hours of dawn, when the locals were getting up and starting their days.

Looking down on Hong Kong from the highest bar in the world on Christmas Day, 2019

Dawn was always my favorite time of day in Beijing, because the city was quiet, and you sensed the history of civilization in the crisp morning air. Before the all the megacity sound erupted midmorning and you were lost in Beijing busyness. In that still dawn, it was possible to feel connected to thousands of years of culture.

Instead of faceless, collectivist communism, I learned that Chinese culture strongly values family. Everyone leaves Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to return home during Chinese New Year and all the other important festivals like Tomb-Sweeping, Dragon Boat, and Mid-Autumn (my favorite) festival. Gathering with family and feasting are important pastimes. For much of its history, China was a poor, agrarian economy. Farmers now flock to the aforementioned Tier 1 cities for more opportunities and a better life, and the prospect and accumulation of wealth is challenging the country's traditional values. At least, that collision was occurring 10 years ago, when I lived there. I fell in love with the beautiful parts of Chinese culture, namely the significance of family.

How different is that from small-town America's values of faith and family?

Table Mountain from my office in downtown Cape Town, January 2012

South Africa would appear to be as different as can be from the Far East of China. Yet many South Africans primarily identify with their tribes over less significant affiliations like region or country. Cape Town is the most grimy cosmopolitan city I've ever visited, where you hear all sorts of languages while walking down the somewhat rundown roads. Tribes share a language, a culture, a history and genealogy, and that takes precedence in the modern world's politics. In a way, it is the same valuation of family and community that one experiences in China. I did experience it in both places, and am a better person for it.

In fact I am better for visiting all the places I've been to around the world, because they've shown me the diversity of cultures across the globe, and yet reinforced the uniformity. We may live differently, but we share the same desire: peace and prosperity for our families, however we structure them. Cultural diversity is beautiful and fascinating. So is the universal value of family. Our next step: seeing all of humanity as one family, inhabiting this rollicking blue orb.

First Contact Question

“If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why?” Tim Ferriss’ billboard question is well constructed and elicits insightful answers, but I think there’s a step further: “Aliens have landed--as humanity’s chosen liaison, you're tasked with first contact. What do you say? What’s the single most meaningful thing they could say to us?”

The alien question raises the stakes. It’s not just a proclamation of your personal philosophy, but an event with profound consequences. It's a contemplation about our place in the cosmos, our meaning and purpose in this universe. Such an exchange between two civilizations would carry implications for all of humanity, potentially Earth's entire biosphere. The alien question also encourages a broader perspective—what wisdom would an outsider deem essential for us to hear? It's an invitation for commentary on "everything," on all that we know and experience.

The Antarctic is another world

Imagine… you are chosen as humanity’s liaison. They want someone ‘ordinary’ to represent humanity, and yet also someone unique and extraordinary, because, after all, that’s what you are. The government takes you to the nearest airport, where a large private plane awaits. You are left to yourself as the plane transports you down, down the globe to the South Pole, stopping to refuel a few times. After many hours, the pilot's voice over the intercom informs you of the descent to Jack F. Paulus Skiway. Mere minutes later, you’re deplaning, riding in a truck to a huge alien structure—how can that fly, you wonder. Silvery beings, somehow distinct from the surrounding snow, await outside. Your passenger door is opened; you get out, and begin walking toward these strange sentinels. You stop some ten feet from them, and wait. What do they say?

The location of Antarctica also adds some depth to the thought experiment. The South Pole would be an ideal meeting point because it’s uninhabited and generally understood to be unowned. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 ensures the continent remains a place of peaceful, scientific research. A rendezvous here would send the right signal to the world: instead of aliens landing on the White House lawn, in Tiananmen Square or outside the Kremlin walls, the South Pole serves as a neutral meeting point. And Antarctica is a faraway, foreign place to almost all humans.

(Peaceful) leviathans of the deep abound

The implications of this exchange would be profound. Imagine how it would impact global politics and society as a whole. Regan pondered this in his speech to the United Nations in 1987: “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” What would we learn about ourselves through such an exchange? What would we say to the visitors? If we sought to convey our values, intentions, and questions, what would we say? Would our fundamental understanding of our place and purpose in the universe change? Would our concept of meaning itself change?

I believe aliens would communicate something along the lines of “you are not alone. You understand very little of this complex, incredible thing called reality. Be humble. Live with love. And we will show you the way.” Humanity is destined to make its own mark, regardless of any extraterrestrial species. But it sure would be comforting to know there’s someone else benevolent out there, willing to help, showing us the most important thing is to not feel alone.

Scenery changes. People are the same.

I long to travel. I feel it in my bones when I’ve been sedentary for too long. I yearn to be up in the air, to land in unfamiliar airports somewhere new. I love that first feeling of strangeness when encountering a new place.

Once you leave the airport and tourist infrastructure though, it quickly settles—because you realize everyone around you is the same as the people back home. Everyone goes about their daily lives, seeking health, wealth, and love, searching for purpose. We’re all the same in that regard, us humans.

My route to work and downtown Cape Town, March 2012

In a way it’s really the Earth that changes the most. People may wear different clothing and eat unique foods, but it’s the geography that shifts dramatically. I think back to how Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles brush up to the sea at the bottom of Africa, or how the plains stretch on endlessly in northwestern Tanzania. I remember the white mountains of Svalbard, the ubiquitous ice of Antarctica. I shudder thinking of the dense hot jungle that is the Amazon, and daydream about the mesmerizing rice paddies in Southeast Asia. These are the unique features of our planet. The people are the same. 

Cape Town and Beijing are unalike. They have completely different histories and are almost on opposite ends of the Earth. (To be fair, South Africa seems to be on the opposite end from most places.) Cape Town is a bowl city smushed between the ocean and mountains. Its 400 years of smorgasbord history and culture dwarfs its population of 5 million. You feel a part of history walking the streets of the Mother City. Beijing is a gargantuan metropolis of 22 million souls, modern skyscrapers slowly smothering the ancient inner rings, the city shrouded in pollution. Even though South Africa has 11 national languages and China has 300+ minor ones, none of them overlap. Denizens of Cape Town are found speaking a number of those languages, and will often switch from one to another to communicate efficiently as needed. Beijing’s residents speak Putonghua, the “standard” Chinese, which serves as the lingua franca for most of the country.

Walking alongside the gargantuan Jinyuan Mall, where I used to work in Beijing in 2013

I was equally disoriented upon landing in both countries. But eventually I found my bearings, and both became home. I look back on my time in both cities fondly, and still maintain friendships with people in each. My friends are culturally distant and have divergent perspectives on geopolitics, economics, the best food, etc. But there’s one thing they don’t differ on: a life well lived. I have proof of this—two of my friends from each country have hung out together.

My roommate in Woodstock, the first suburb outside Cape Town, is South African. Let’s call him Dirk. We became great friends while living together, going on bike rides, playing chess, and talking about the world. I’ve learned a lot from him. When I moved to Beijing, one of the first people I met was a friend of a friend—we can call him Nico. We shared similar interests, namely working out, playing basketball, and partying. We also divulged in deep discussions on politics, economics, and history. These two friends could’t be any more similar, despite their environments. They both enjoyed sport, they were both social and both good, genuine guys. Of course, not everyone has the same personality. But despite cultural differences and different scenery, they wanted the same thing: a fun, happy life.

This was verified when they met, in Barcelona of all places. My wife and I were visiting Spain in 2019, and my Chinese friend had moved to Barcelona a few years before. He served as our foreign local, showing us all the hidden gems—bars, good paella spots, and uncrowded beaches. (Always the best way to travel.) On our last night in town, my South African friend surprised me—he called me and said he was in Barcelona, having driven some 800km that day to meet us before we left. I was flabbergasted! I didn’t expect to enjoy the company of both friends in such an unlikely place. We had dinner together and went out for drinks until the wee hours. They got along splendidly. And why wouldn’t they? They’re both great guys that want the same thing, the thing we all want. To live a beautiful life.

Sunset in Barcelona the night we all met up, August 2019

Well, my wife and I had a 7am train the next day and turned in “early,” by Spanish standards at least (Dirk and Nico stayed out). The next morning was rough: scrambling to throw our things into our bags, getting a ride to the train station, and finding the right seats on the right train were all more difficult when hungover and sleep deprived. We slept the whole five-hour train ride to Granada. Upon arrival, we wandered through the maze of narrow, winding streets in the old town to our AirBnB apartment, and promptly took another nap in the dizzying heat of Andalusia.

Upon waking, I had multiple messages from an unknown number. Dirk had been pickpocketed on La Rambla, losing his wallet and phone. I immediately sent him Nico’s number and connected the two of them. It was all I could really do while 700 kilometers away.

Several hours later, Nico shared a picture of the two of them having dinner. We texted a lot over the next several days, and it warmed my heart to hear how much Nico helped out Dirk. He paid for dinner and, speaking Catalan, was able to get Dirk’s old number on a new phone and access to money. Dirk couldn’t speak more highly of Nico, and it was clear they had built a relationship of their own, independent of me as the mutual friend.

This story illustrates how similar we all are. We may come from different cultures, speak other languages, or, on the surface, have distinct ways of life. But we all bleed, laugh, cry, and smile the same. I believe in the human race. I believe we are good, and that our similarities run much deeper than our differences. Our environments may differ, but we are the same. Maybe, just maybe, if we recognize this on a global scale, we’ll all see ourselves as one race, one species, living on one planet together.

Reading Other Worlds

Immersing yourself into stories changes you. When you imagine and accept other worlds and other realities, your perspective enlarges. This enables us to be more thoughtful and considerate, because we have more “experience” in uncertainty and the unknown. Maybe the world can come together if we simply read more.

Life with Sweat

Life is better with sweat. We are more sedentary now than ever in our species history. Maybe all the sensed division out there can be solved with regular exercise. When we work out we release endorphins and feel better. What if it is that simple?

What about Privilege?

I write from a place of privilege. Because I have security and freedom, because I’m not seeking food or shelter on an hourly or daily basis and because my loved ones are safe, I can afford to have a larger thinking time horizon.

I’m able to muse about the inequity in society, the big picture of our planet and species and the universe itself. Complete privilege.

When faced with hunger, starvation, homelessness, extreme poverty or a dangerous environment, one doesn’t consider global consciousness. You’re in survival mode, concerned only with the safety of your tribe and when and where the next meal will come.

Too much of the planet faces these conditions today. In order for everyone to buy into the one world paradigm, basic needs must be met worldwide. We can’t raise global consciousness, unite humanity, or inspire change while 8% of the human population lives below the international poverty line.

Or can we? Another way to look at it: raising global consciousness in the vast majority of people will motivate us to eliminate poverty. When we see ourselves as one species living on one wondrous planet, we’ll be incentivized to truly unite humanity. The people of privilege will need to act in order to inspire change.

Yes, there are hundreds of millions of people, if not more, who are perhaps currently incapable of focusing on such lofty ambitions. Understandably—they need to focus on surviving. But it’s also our responsibility to help them, and for those who do have a longer thinking time horizon, we can bring about a more prosperous future together.

Simple Things in Life

The simple things in life provide meaning enough. Enjoying an easy weekend, supporting your tribe, visiting with family… maybe we if we all stop and admire the simplistic bliss of walking the dog, we can start to see each other equally. We are all human, and we all laugh and smile for the same reasons.

The Pages Turn Faster

And it’s June. My aunt said something to me that my dad has repeatedly told me: “as you get older, time goes by faster and faster.” Already halfway through 2024, I feel confident that the same things matter, despite the speed of time passing. Love, health, and time itself. We all crave these three things, and are miserable when any one of them slips too far into disarray. Can we recognize that, halfway through 2024?

Toy Story’s Story

I watched Toy Story this evening for the first time in probably two decades. Its magic still blossoms from the screen. The animation, the soundtrack, the screenplay and humor, the voice acting, they all jump off the screen to this day, almost 30 years later.

The first fully computer animated feature length film, Toy Story was successful, and still iconic today, because of its messaging. The real world can be scary. But we get through it together with friends.

It belongs on any “must watch” list for any alien visiting our planet. It represents, I believe, what can be the best of us—through its creativity and technical execution, and through its proclamation of the “human” spirit. It just happens through toys.

Health Forgetfulness

Health is the easiest universal desire to forget.

Time and love are immediately noticeable in absence. When out of time, we wish for but just a few more moments. When alone, the ache for connection is all-consuming.

But we naturally and continuously adapt to the status quo. With health we become accustomed and indifferent; when it worsens we learn to accept and adapt to our new physical reality.

To be grateful for our current health is a strong daily practice—when it’s gone we want nothing else.

I’m asking for more

I’m asking for more.

We all want the same things: to spend lots of quality time with loved ones, to put food on the table for our family, to raise children, to find fulfilling work, to own a home, to have fun. Freedom, equity, and togetherness.

I believe everyone has a right to pursue these basic human desires.

But I also believe we should all do more, beyond those common goals. We can all elevate global consciousness, a true recognition of humanism beyond our smaller national, regional, communal, or familial tribes.

We can all regularly engage in civic participation, not just voting in every election but advocating for what we believe and truly self-governing.

And we can all give—to those outside our normalized group, to others without thought of reward. We can all volunteer our time or money and provide community service to make our world stronger.

This can all be achieved in mere minutes a week. Am I too demanding to ask for more?

Guardians and Beauty

I think about how important it is for children to have positive adult influences (besides their parents) in life. There’s a reason we call them guardians.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have fantastic grandparents, aunts and uncles, great coaches and teachers…all whom have contributed to my psychology today.

I relished the opportunity to do that with my niece today, who is shaping into a kind, compassionate young woman.

We’re only as beautiful as we want to be, together.

Contemplating Consciousness

I can’t overstate the importance of my tribe. They are the dearest elements of my experience.

I imagine most of the other eight billion people on this planet feel the same.

And that’s the point. We all care for our loved ones. We’re all here together. Can we elevate our circle of care to the entirety of our species? Can we raise our consciousness to be global?

Remembering Down South

I was recounting my time in Texas last week and was speaking about the people. Southern Hospitality is a real thing.

But I also recall how similar our viewpoints were. Indeed many folks are more politically conservative down there, but not necessarily more conservative. In fact the friendliness represented a type of openness to experience, so to say.

And we agreed on more than the narrative would have you believe. Texans I talked with disliked the same things about the Bay Area that I dislike. They complained about the same local issues I found displeasing.

Most of us aren’t up North or down South, but somewhere in the middle. The loud minority gets all the media attention, but they’re not the bulk of the reasonable, considerate people in this country. We’re all American after all.

Home Thinkin’

How far can we go from home? It was an interesting journey back to my own stomping grounds today. It offered an inquiry good for us all: who am I today, and would I be happy with what I see?

Uniting through Deepest Desire

We all want the same things.

I’ve lived in 3 countries, all with vastly different cultures and histories. I was young and dumb in South Africa and learned everyone wants prosperity. I grew up in China and learned everyone wants good for their tribe. And as I’ve grown older in the U.S., I’ve learned everyone wants to be healthy. Everyone wants the same thing.

Uniting humanity is simple—we just need to acknowledge we all want the same things. These universal desires are also our deepest desires. They aren’t superficial differences, like skin color or language or environment. We all share our humanity.

So our mission is simple (but not easy): focus on our deepest desires, and recognize that we all share them. We are One.

Reese’s Gone

I thought, “what if Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups went out of production, and there would only be a finite amount left?”

It made me unreasonably uneasy. I would buy and hoard them, ration them for as long as I could.

But nothing lasts forever, not even us, our consciousness, our lives, our species.. where do we go from here?

I offer this: we live, as wildly and freely as possible. Together, in this big beautiful amazing world.

Human Constraints

Family really is the most important thing. We may be constrained by our biology—we easily suffer from information overload, and we produce biases and naturally judge beyond a small tribe. But our humanity also produces love and a grounded perception of life and the Earth. Our biology, and our family, makes us human. It’s beautiful and we must embrace it and celebrate it.

Children’s World

My friends all have children, and it’s been eye opening in many ways. Babysitting my niece tonight, I realized again the simple truth: children are the most important people in the world. It’s our sacred duty to protect them, nurture them, and provide them opportunity for a fulfilling life. They are the continuation and iteration of our species. They are also one of the main drivers of meaning in our existence. Without them, we would be lost. This I believe it is our responsibility to do everything we can in our society to enable their success. Through our efforts to improve their worlds, we can change the world.