The Self

One week ago, I watched 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days with [REDACTED] over Discord. We cried a lot. It was a sentimental movie similar in story to Your Lie in April, but different in its message. What stuck with me was the pursuit of serendipity – how people solo travel because they do not know what will happen. Jimmy constantly met new people who would briefly become a part of his story as he treks to Ami’s home. I felt uncomfortable at times, knowing that while these moments were to be cherished, these people were only part of his life for a brief moment. Perhaps this is a mere fact of life: everyone we meet, everyone we become and everything we do is transient. Yet we still find value in the time spent despite knowing that it will soon come to an end.

As I realized last year, things tend to be more beautiful as you say goodbye. Often, the goodbye isn't that far off from the first hello.

This term has been rough at times, though unlike W25. Last winter, I wondered if I belonged here. This winter, I fell in love with Dartmouth. I often tell myself that I pursue variance, but I also crave stability. I wish that the people around me will stay with me. I wish that I could cling onto my emotions and the person that I am for longer. I suppose I want the variance in my life to be manufactured by me, rather than have them imposed from the outside.

I began to resonate with Naval Ravikant: I, and I alone, am responsible for everything I think and feel. The world around us will continue changing. We will continue changing. We spend too much internal anguish worrying about worries that never actualize nor are within our control. We can’t control what happens, only how we choose to experience it. Because we are responsible only for our response, the outcomes that follow fall outside our control. Is this not liberating? We are but just observers in this world of stochastic events. As observers, what can we do but witness it and enjoy the passage of time?

And yet, these ideas only matter when they are lived. This recruiting cycle was a test. There was so much uncertainty and so much that felt out of my control. In time, though, things unfolded. I received an offer from Amazon’s Moonshot Lab. My first thought were my parents. I didn’t just want to help pay off our tuition, but I wanted to show them that they can trust me. My dad admitted that he’d been worried about the job market and me choosing CS. I didn’t choose CS because it was easy. I chose it for a high-variance field with asymmetric upside that offers the chance to do meaningful work while pushing the boundaries of knowledge and innovation forward. It is my responsibility to prove that, not theirs. They risked their future moving from the China to the US. The outcome of that gamble rests on me. And I refuse to fail.

Now, I sit at the top of the Hop as the Dartmouth Green turns from white to true green. I ruminate -- I want to proclaim that I am free. I can take classes and focus on the beauty of learning. I can build projects and bask in the non-linearity of discovery without needing to think about producing signals. I watch the snow piled on roofs collapse, I stop to play the piano that I so often walk past because I’m in a hurry, I take photos of the snow and throw playful snowballs at my friends that spiral into a snowball fight, I find time to journal, I book tickets to listen to Rachmaninoff, I spend more time thinking about the why than the how and I can give more time to my friends, even little things such as listening to them play guitar or showing up to their events. I can be more joyful around my friends and I can feel happier about their wins because I truly want us to all win together.

But was I not free before?