loose rules (to live by)
principles to live by (in no particular order)
how > why > what
How you do things is far more important than what you do and why you do it.
I only realized this recently when I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It made me crystallize many thoughts I had been having for the past couple years on the meaning of my life. I had really been struggling to find this elusive answer to all of my questions and solve all of my problems, but each answer just opened up another door to more confusion.
“When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.” - Siddhartha
The more I looked, the more frustrated I became. To me, it made sense to suffer to get what I wanted because what I wanted was so important. I used impatience, frustration, and ambition to find every success in my life and whenever I finally got it, I didn’t feel it was enough to fill this void.
I didn’t realize that it’s the way you find things that matters more than what you find.
Maybe this is just another way to say “the journey is more important than the destination”, but for me it feels much deeper than that.
It’s not just about stopping to smell the roses, but seeing that the price you pay to get what you want is the person you become.
I am trying to replace my wallet with better currency: love, patience, and gentleness. So far, the exchange rate has been pretty fire.
move at the pace of patience
I still have a lot of goals, but I’m just trying to take everything one step at a time and not get too ahead of myself. The slower I go, the more I can savor and enjoy the process of becoming.
I know that I am doing something that I feel is important to me and that is simply enough.
Whether or not I succeed, the goal is not a pre-requisite for my inner peace, self-worth, or happiness.
Each time I summitted the mountain, I only saw off in the distance that there was another peak to climb.
I measure myself by how I take each step.
I see that things are rarely so straightforward and good things take time.
I can wait and I can walk, so the only thing between me and the top is time.
make some space
There was a time when I was very depressed, all I wanted to was be “cured”. I couldn’t accept that I was depressed and wanted to be “fixed” and “happy” again. I tried lots of things and read studies to research how I could cure myself
I tried walking 10k steps everyday.
I started taking fish oil.
I got married.
I got promoted.
I took anti-depressants.
I went to therapy.
I tried meditation.
Nothing helped. I made no room for this depression in my life. I pretended like everything was okay while it wasn’t at all. I remember when everything changed it was at a lunch with some friends and they asked me how I was. I have no idea why..
but I just blurted out:
“honestly, things have not been good lately, I’ve been really depressed”.
It was like admitting to myself that “yeah, I’m depressed.” It was when I started to accept it and started to feel it all that I started getting better.
In so many ways, my life was a recurring cycle of problem -> inability to accept problem -> solution -> find new problem.
I couldn’t make space for anything or let anything go, so I just kept getting in the way of… well everything.
So I say, feel it all. Don’t reject, don’t judge. Make space for it.
Let it come in and let it go out just as easily as it came in.
It ebbs, it flows, it breathes in, it breathes out.
You’ll see. There’s room for you. There’s room for me.
We just gotta make some space.
leave more love
The only thing we leave here is love.
My grandpa passed away last year and it was really beautiful and sad. My whole family flew out to China to be at his side as he was declining and it was really shocking to see someone in a state like that. He was in and out of consciousness because of all the pain meds he was on. My family and I felt so helpless that the only thing that we could provide is money for a nurse to help his wife or a 我愛你.
His wife really showed me the true meaning of unconditional love. She stayed with him almost 24/7 for months, feeding him, cleaning him up, and sleeping next to him on this small crappy bench in the hospital. I was really moved by her because she made me see that the only thing we leave behind in this life is not our house, our money, or any possession… it’s love.
When I was born, my grandpa quit smoking and he took care of me every day until I was 7 or 8. I remember he would walk to my school every day and we would walk back together, picking up golf balls near the golf course. I got really fat because he made me 饅頭 every day and I ate it on the couch ruining it with oil stains.
By the time we got to China, my grandpa couldn’t speak anymore. It was after a couple days or a week or so, I was holding his hand and he woke up and I got up and he recognized me. I said in my broken Chinese:
爷爷，我来了。我爱你。
I started smiling so big and he smiled so big back at me. We both started laughing and I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life. All the years apart and all the drama yet he is still my grandpa and I’m still his grandson.
He was not a perfect person, my dad always tells me that I get my short temper from him, so I’m sure he messed up how he loved a lot of people. But his love continues through me and it’s my responsibility to keep filtering that love so I can leave it better than how I received it.
爷爷，謝謝你，我想你
thank you
We hear in songs and cliché after cliché these basic lessons, rehashed again and again by different people on how to live. We want to impart a little wisdom so others can learn from it, so I can’t help but want to impart some of mine. (at the cost of sounding like a fool) I hope 2026 is lit and you experience amazing things and keep growing.
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” — Siddhartha
- winston, a guy who has read exactly one book in his life (yes, it was siddhartha)