I first fall for her at 14.

I hang my camera off my desk, four books keeping it in place. I arrange my hand-drawn polygon characters, and snap a photo; just like I'd seen in Kevin Parry's stop-motion videos. One photo, one frame. Second photo. Third photo. Play them back quickly, and our ape-brains think that Henry Hexagon is dancing across the screen.

She makes me feel powerful, my fingers wielding magic.

Her name was filmmaking. The next Black Friday, I proposed. $70 into a drawing tablet and microphone. It was my life savings, but I’d do it for my girl.

Sometimes, problems arose. My parents wanted me to marry a STEM boy. Instead, I spent intimate moments exploring RGB curves in Premiere Pro. Soon, I had to cut it off. True love wasn’t enough—I needed to marry rich. I left our honeymoon early, driving home to flirt with quantum mechanics.

I didn’t speak to her for months. _I never wanted her anyway_, I told myself, _especially not those anger management issues_. She’d eat all 20 gigabytes of my remaining disk space, then storm out in a temper tantrum when I refused to give her more. My cursor turned into a perpetually-spinning wheel, until I forced the power button: there goes hours of work.

I met other lovers.

Philosophy showed up to our first date in a black trench coat, and gaslit me into liking 2000-year-old texts. Together, we delved into Seneca’s letters and wrote essays about Buddhist musings.

Math was a bit pedantic. During dinner, she forced me to derive the half-derivative of x^8 on her napkin. Still, I looked forward to Sunday afternoons, when we’d elope to the abstract paradise of topological manifolds and vector fields.

Quantum computing was flaky—I never knew when he’d show up. Sometimes, we’d swim together in a pond of optimization algorithms. He showed me how to track ripples with Fourier transforms, then predict where they’d collide using gradient descent. Now, we’re sending a paper off to peer review.

Web development wore high-top sneakers and ripped jeans, and took me skydiving through JavaScript frameworks. Together, we built Tinder for HOSA members, social media for daily bloggers, and two notetaking apps.

Occasionally, his CSS animations reminded me of _her_.

I was happy… I guess?

Out of the blue, she rang my doorbell. Hades’ pomegranates—a taste, and I was addicted. As soon as I opened After Effects and hit play, I couldn’t resist fine-tuning the green screen’s edges.

Fine. One big project. I will indulge.

I put together a team—9 of us, producing a professional film, reawakening a school tradition that COVID killed. Giselle, the sound sorceress, splices in audio at every microphone crack. Selena, the color conqueror, defeats the harsh stage lights; Annie’s dress blazes white. To commence the grand finale, I imitate Marvel’s intro. A three-dimensional logo, footage playing on the letters’ walls.

TOPS Night. Our magnum opus, 2 hours and 40 minutes long. 500 team-combined hours of work; she held my hand through it all.

In the back of the room, three eighth-graders lean forward, a glint in their eyes. The same energy we had 3 years ago watching our first TOPS Night, excited for this new and dazzling high school.

All along, I should’ve known. All of us—computer science, filmmaking, math, philosophy, and I—don’t have to be competing love interests. Instead, we can all be best friends.

With AeroPure: I coded the website’s frontend, then drew a dozen diagrams to make it sparkle. The Essence of Quantum Computing, a YouTube video: I animated quantum statevectors whirling around a Bloch sphere. A blog post on Ted Chiang’s _The Story of Your Life_: hand-drawn physics diagrams overlayed musings on free will and determinism.

1.2% of a proton’s mass comes from the three quarks that compose it. What else is there? The binding energy between them. Like quarks in a proton, we’re stronger together.


binding energy

In Greek mythology, Zeno punished Sisyphus by forcing him to push a burdensome boulder up a hill. Whenever he reaches the top, the rock rolls back down for Sisyphus to retrieve and strenuously push back up. This was condemned to repeat for eternity. When asked to imagine themselves in Sisyphus' shoes, a couple of my friends chose to commit suicide rather than perform such a labourious yet pointless task to no end. When faced with a life of harsh suffering, many do not see the value of staying alive. On the other hand, French philosopher Albert Camus believed that Sisyphus represents the ultimate embodiment of a good life. In choosing to devote all of himself to lifting his rock, he embraces his destiny head-on, becoming stronger than the Gods that condemned him to his fate. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart," he writes, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" (Camus 112). Although most of us do not need to push a rock ceaselessly up the same slope, we all face work that we don't want to do. Instead of avoiding painful tasks, Sisyphus' happiness shows that we can derive enormous satisfaction from embracing our arduous work. In this essay, I present my life philosophy that the meaning of my life comes from continuously striving towards a goal and loving the struggle.

To start, the fulfillment from hard work is more meaningful than immediately enjoyable pleasures. In mid-May, I committed that studying French would be my main focus for the next month, in preparation for my C1 level language exam. In the month that followed, I found myself most fulfilled when listening to a French podcast or audiobook. During those times, the knowledge that this current moment was undeniably getting me closer to a goal (understanding spoken French confidently) made my existence feel purposeful.

The morning after the exam, I didn't know what to work on now that I no longer had a north star to anchor my efforts to. So I did what my generation is used to when feeling directionless: numbed the pain with music. Although the Melanie Martinez album was pleasurable, the knowledge that time spent listening to it won't improve my future weighed on the back of my mind, both preventing the current moment from being as enjoyable and making me feel that my current existence serves for nothing. In contrast, when watching French videos on special relativity, I know that my time is serving a greater goal, making my life feel worth living. Finding meaning from striving is distinctly different from finding it in happiness (as stated by hedonist philosophies), because one excites a desire to keep living while the other doesn't.

To put this to a scientific study, psychologists Csikszentmihalyi and Larson sent subjects occasional messages throughout the day asking what they are doing and how they feel. Because they were recording their feelings about the activity they were currently doing, their responses are likely to be accurate. Most people believe that they would be happiest when relaxing, but Csikszentmihalyi and Larson empirically found that people reported themselves happier during work than during free time (Newport 48). It is universal for human beings to derive better fulfillment from making efforts than from pleasurable activities.

Furthermore, it is the work itself that's fulfilling, rather than the achievement of a goal. It is well-accepted in psychology that humans tend to return to a stable "baseline" level of happiness a short time after good or bad events happen. Just a couple of months after their win, lottery winners’ self-reported levels of happiness are no longer higher than a control group who didn’t win the lottery (Raghunathan). This is known as hedonic adaptation. Because this theory applies to all external events, people return similarly to their baseline after achievements. Right now, as an anxious Grade 11 student with university applications approaching, I may think that I will be happy forever if I get accepted into my top school with a full ride. This is what some of my friends in Grade 12 thought last year. But once they got their admissions letters, they found new things to desire, new things to be anxious about. Therefore, achievements are not a sustainable source of long-term meaning.

To love running, it is not enough to love the elation of crossing the finish line. Instead, one must love the burn in their taut leg muscles as they put one foot in front of the other. One must love the process and all the pain that comes with it. This is the next part of my life philosophy: to realize one's potential in working towards the goal, one must learn to love the struggle.

Although I like French, listening to it was still frustrating. Some days, I did not want to drill through the podcasts in accents I could barely understand. The work felt Sisyphean—repetitive, exhausting, and with no end in sight—and I wanted to give up. I discovered that all work is painful in some way, even the work that you're passionate about.

It is precisely in bearing this pain that gives life fulfillment. Nietzsche advised us to “say yes to life,” to live as fully as possible in every moment, to feel the deepest of both the good and bad emotions (“Albert Camus”). Since moods are inherently fluctuating, one does not always want to practice the saxophone, for example, even if the instrument is their passion. Thus, to maintain consistency, one must love the suffering that comes with the process, to love the journey rather than the result. "Passions are created rather than found," one of my mentors told me. To love your work, you must spend time with it, to stick with the French accents both when you love them and when you hate them.

In his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F\*ck, Mark Manson says that we should not aim to avoid suffering, as that is unachievable. The first noble truth of Buddhism states that all life is dukkha, a Pali word that roughly translates to "suffering" (Rahula 16). Hedonic adaptation demonstrates that we can never be free from suffering, as no attainment of any object of desire will make us happy.

Instead, Manson says to choose your struggles. Choose to suffer for what is worth suffering for, in the pursuit of goals that matter (Manson 31).

I would like to conclude with a quote by writer Paul Kalanithi: "You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving" (Kalanithi 67). Permanent happiness is unattainable, but it is through enduring the continuous strive towards a better life that one makes their suffering fulfilling. In pushing his rock up the hill, Sisyphus makes the choice every day to love his struggle. The meaning of my life is not something I achieve once and then my life is labelled a success, but a choice I make repeatedly whenever I decide to love the painful process of making efforts towards a better life.

## Works Cited

“Albert Camus.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/.

Camus, Albert. Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai Sur L'absurde. 1942.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air. Vintage Classics, 2020.

Manson, Mark. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F\*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. HarperLuxe, 2019.

Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing, 2019.

Raghunathan, Raj. “Would Winning the Lottery Make You Happier?” TED, TED-Ed, 27 Feb. 2017, ed.ted.com/lessons/would-winning-the-lottery-make-you-happier-raj-raghunathan.

Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. Motilal Banarsidass, 2017.


Love Your Struggles

_parody of lungs by maggie o'farrell._

It’s after school, late afternoon, and a group of teenagers wait at the 925 bus stop. They compare who slept latest last night (Emma wins, at 4am). They fill the air with how it’s her third time drinking coffee this week, how he fumbled the linear algebra test yesterday, how she has a data presentation tomorrow. They are stressed, yet bored; busy, yet not moving forward, in that mind-shriveling way peculiar to this stage in life.

They are waiting. They’re waiting for Ms. Elamad to finish marking their induction tests, waiting for the night before their physics presentation to cram all 17 slides, waiting for university application season to be over. They’re waiting for the wave of HYPSM deadlines on January 1st, for the COMC honor roll, for the school admin to decide if they’ll have a graduation trip, for Ms. Lau to reply to their email. They’re waiting for winter break; that’s when they can pursue their goals full time.

Some want to be doctors, some programmers. Some want to buy a house and settle down with a partner, some want to make the world better, some just want to prove to their parents that they can be successful. Some want to move far from this city. They are, all of them, waiting, because that’s what teenagers who grow up in Chinese immigrant families do. They wait. For the day they leave the assembly line that is school, each day a conveyor belt from one class to the next. For the day they graduate, go out into the real world, and do something meaningful with their lives. They’re waiting for the day they no longer have to wait, when they stop sacrificing today for an imagined tomorrow.

One of these teenagers is me. I’m thinking about my MIT essay, how programming would have lush brown hair billowing around her as I stare into her eyes. My secret lover, a guilty indulgence, an education system that pushes us apart.

Three more weeks, I tell myself. Three more weeks, and then I submit. Then, I don’t have to spend 3 hours each evening and 8 hours each weekend writing. Then, I can spend as much time with her as I want.

Now, though, I have to clamp down. Make the MIT admissions officer feel my joy as I run out the door with her, my surroundings blurring around me.

---

TOPS.

On the outside, we’re the top 60 in Toronto, selected out of 800 applicants. 50% of us will go to University of Waterloo; a few of us will go to the Harvards and UC Berkeleys.

On the inside, we’re trapped in a castle of our own expectations. It’s the way your fists clench when a Stanford friend tells you he had great standings with his high school teachers, because he’s one of the only kids that did all the assignments. It’s how a mark out of 100 is really a mark out of 10, in the range from 90-100. 95 is a pass.

As [Peter Thiel says](https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/) about the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, _On the outside, everybody wanted to get in. On the inside, everybody wanted to get out._

You thought you made it after you got into TOPS. Then,

People told you Grade 11 marks would matter the most. You’d better work harder, because it’d be much more difficult than Grade 10. it wasn’t.

Then, you thought your life would be complete after you got a $50,000 scholarship. Then, after you self-studied the French fluency-certification exam. Then, you said you’d travel and live in SF after application season. Girl you worked 4 years of high school to culminate in getting into university! What a shame if you cop out now.

Next year, you’ll say you’ll party hard after you graduate college. Then, you’ll create that animated documentary after you get a job. Then, after you’re financially free. Then, after you get married. Then, after you retire.

Then, you’ll start living your life.

In the rat race for happiness, you don’t break free when you attain any amount of money or status. You can only break free from the inside. When you decide to stop wanting more and be happy where you are now.

It isn’t after any exam is over, or after any application. It is whenever you decide you’ll stop making excuses.

But what if writing college apps, arguably the most important thing you’ll do all year and what will decide the people you spend the next 4 years with, is not the time to question your unyielding discipline?

You decide to suck it up. You’ll work on applications, and nothing but applications, from September to December. But this really is the last one. Nothing after will be as important as applications. Then, you will start living your life.

---

Talking about Lungs by Maggie O’Farell in my English seminar, I realize, good writing makes you feel. You never tell the reader you feel angsty, that you’re bored, that you’re confined. You tell a story that makes the reader feel how confined you are.

Without telepathy or brain computer interfaces, you write to transmit your mental state into someone else’s head. Editing is the task of picking the metaphors, adjectives that wrap around your feelings like a soft blanket. Words you want to reach out and grab them and tuck them next to your heart.

---

I bring this approach to my applications.

I’m meticulous about it. My base chance for MIT is 2% because I don’t have US citizenship, which means I need to be radical. After the admissions officer reads her 50 allocated applications for the day, she’ll go to sleep thinking about mine.

---

At the bus stop now, I think about my English assignment, an argumentative essay. I want to form an opinion about sex—read some papers about your brain’s neurochemistry, explore what philosophies other than Buddhism and Stoicism say. I have a boyfriend now, so it’s no longer rainbow theory philosophy that will never be thought about outside debates.

But last year, you’re angry that your favourite coding projects were the game and website you made for your CS class. While your paper on quantum optimization algorithms sits unpublished, your personal website unupdated since last year. How your Laura Complex prevents you from working on a project without devoting all of yourself to it. A website with a car that drives down as you scroll forward because you think you know the javascript to make that happen, and you won’t be able to live with yourself if you didn’t try.

> "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You’d rather have good MIT essays than a good English essay. You have to learn to make sacrifices in accordance with your own values, or else the world will choose them for you.

---

You hit submit. Your back against your chair as Common App’s confetti rolls down. Your chest doesn’t untighten.

---

From the front of the room, Ms. Brennan calls out. “Laura, come up here.”

Before I stand up, I already know what this is about.

She gestures to the computer. “Laura Gao,” next to a blank document.”Laura, what’s up? This is not like you.”

There’s a reason she’s not scolding me for not handing in the assignment on time, asking if I need help, telling me to stop misbehaving. I sense it in the way she doesn’t say anything more. How she looks at me, her eyes, searching for an explanation.

The same blue eyes you stared into when she said your Common App essay showed her how obsessed you are with filmmaking and

“Uh… I don’t know. I didn’t do it.” Any explanation I give will sound like an excuse, so I try not to give one. Inevitably, a lame one slips out. “busy with applications, I guess.”

There’s a reason she tells me to focus on the summative now, and how afterwards, I wordlessly go back to my desk.

What I should’ve said was: you’re right, it’s not like me. I should’ve said: It hurts me more to do a task mediocrely than not at all. I have this sickness that I’m putting off my art, a sickness that grows every time I say, “I have the rest of my life to code, after this deadline,” or “I’ll write my yearly reflection after exams.” American university applications was the last straw: a 4 month coding hiatus, my days filled with “How does Maggie O’Farrell write Lungs such that we experience the sexual harassment with her,” “how do I make MIT admissions officers feel a hole in their heart after I leave Atlas,” forced to master a foreign craft. I can’t stand waiting another second before I code my 2022 into a game: a project that hones my skills, that would pay dividends in my future career, that makes me excited to wake up and seize my life in my own hands. Even if it’s for English, a course that pulled me through applications, that showed me how to live the lives of others through literature, that makes me want to get on the 925 bus every morning. C’mon Laura, you promised you would live your life after you submit applications. I didn’t expect to take so long to recover, just a few days a break from writing, I’m sorry, I really am. I’m sorry I broke the unwritten code of integrity with the one teacher who makes me see ideas in the air, the one teacher whose respect I want more than the grade, the one teacher who makes it worth it to preserve the bits of Laura left. I have to concentrate everything on staying true to myself, in this school that prefers me as a rule-following robot, with these classmates who take computer engineering because it’s a “free 100.” I have to get away. I have to work and work so that I can leave, and only then can I create a life that will be liveable for me. I cannot bear for anything to slow me down, distract me; I vowed that nothing would, not after T20 applications. I also should have said: thank you.

Thank you, thank you.


the sellout's dilemma

It’s March. I stand outside a Japanese croissant store with you and Giselle while we wait for the rest of the group to order. Evelyn pokes her head out. "Giselle! Amanda wants to talk to you. Come in.” She winks at me.

Now, it’s just you and me.

We admire the croissant poster on the glass window. I know what I want to say. I open my mouth, but the words are a sneeze stuck in my throat. My heart rate brings me back to my cross country race.

The others walk out the store. Oops. Evelyn set me up perfectly. I let her down.

On the bus home, I get another chance. I’m sitting on the sideways-facing seats beside you. Evelyn and Melinda across the aisle.

You tell me about Precision, a bridge bidding system. 16+ high card points to open 1 club, 12-13 to open 1 diamond with a 5-card major. I love hearing you talk. Even if it bores me, as long as you aren’t bored.
Three stops before yours, I choke it out.

“I like you.”

“Ah. Sounds about right,” you respond.

I’m looking straight ahead but I don’t see Evelyn or Melinda. I see myself reaching for your hand yesterday morning. I see myself texting you out of the blue, asking if you’ve been in a relationship before. I see myself inviting you to hang out over March Break, after drafting replies to each of your possible responses.

“What gave it away?”

“Er… it wasn’t obvious. Just… your vibes, I guess.”

You’re speaking to me but I don’t hear you; your words a whirring ticket machine at Chuck E. Cheese.

<br/>
It’s April. I jump out of bed. Instead of breakfast, I grab an apple to eat on the way. The bus you take arrives 25 minutes before class starts, but I rip my mask off to sprint for it.

I ask you how you’re doing.

“Life’s great. I totally won’t get yelled at tonight when my parents see my biology test.”

How are you feeling?

“We’re fine. Everything will be fine, right Laura?”

Our interaction is a tree stump trying to sprout branches. Will we ever have a conversation without sarcasm?

We’re standing on Don Mills Road after school, a group of us around the bus stop. You laugh when you yell in French. “J’ai aucune idée ce que tu fais maintenant!” You laugh when you trash talk the Canadian bridge team. “They’re trolling.” You laugh when you tell me you want to be a music teacher, but instead, you’re at TOPS. “My middle school in Gatineau has a better music department.” Does your personality have more than these three parts?

I sit beside you in chem. You’re walking around shaking classmates’ hands. “I like handshakes,” you say. When it’s my turn, I put on my best business grip. When we let go, you do it first.

Why do I keep trying? Why do I ask about you although you'd most likely respond sarcastically? Why do I never miss leaving the house at 7:55?

<br/>
It’s May. You don’t initiate DMs except to send math memes. A William Rowan Hamilton parody at the back of the chem room. I laugh like a maniac until Ava turns around, looking at me. We’re on the bus home from band practice and you attempt to derive the derivative of ex without using the derivative of ln(x). I admire how you’re not satisfied with memorization. I skip physics to go to Mr. Gani’s room and you teach me fractional derivatives on the chalkboard. I admire how you plug the square root of negative one into the gamma function. Perhaps coming to TOPS was the right choice, if only to meet a fellow math nerd.

Your hand starts to linger longer. You lace your fingers with mine as Ms. Wilson talks about alkenes versus alkanes. I squeeze as if feelings are skin-transmittable. Chemistry is now my favourite class.

We lock eyes as you step on the bus. The rush-hour crowd between us feels like an insurmountable barrier, but you manage to wade over to where I’ve saved a seat for you. Amy watches us geek about special relativity. “You two’s conversations flow so well. You guys are so in sync; you’re practically the same person.” You say thanks. I let out a sigh. I’m not the only one who wants to talk.

<br/>
It’s June. To work on our chem project, you’d asked to come to my house. Now, you’re sitting on the wooden floor of my room. We’re Not Really Strangers cards are stacked between us in 3 messy piles.

We’re on level 2. I flip over a card. “What could you benefit from letting go of? Why are you still holding on?”
You break out that distinct derpy smile that I would’ve interpreted as sarcastic a few months ago. Your eyes in upside-down semicircles. Your forehead in wrinkles.

“Gatineau,” you say.

Now, I think it might be your coping face.

“Can’t find anyone in Toronto equally good?” I ask.

You’re looking down. You’re gluing cardboard pieces together monotonically. You’re whispering, as if another straw will crack your voice. “They were my family. They were everyone I loved.”

All those times I was turned off by your sarcastic “It’s fine”s, the classic “You think I’m competent?”s, the slight jabs at Toronto kids being cold in -10°C, were you trying to communicate something? Were you trying to convey that you desperately hoped your biology test would be fine, that you were insecure about your cello performance, that you longed for Gatineau although it’s been three years since you left? When you laughed about Canada’s bridge team losing, were you hurting about not having a long-term teammate in the sport you practice 20 hours a week for? Was this your way of expressing emotion without exposing your insides for the world to scrutinize? As if in disguising your emotions into jokes, you could pretend you weren't being vulnerable?

I think about trying and failing for weeks to crack open your shell on the daily 40-minute bus rides. Now, a card game brings it out. When you're sad, you sit on your bed and cry for a bit. "It's quite nice," you tell me. I made efforts to know you, not because I wanted to expand my network. You might be the first to achieve both. You talk about Precision and I listen because you're cute when you're passionate. Liking you taught me to love human connection like one appreciates a Jackie Liu painting – for the beauty of the art rather than a larger purpose. The art of peeling back those sarcastic layers and touching that fuzzy core of yours. The art that spilled into my other friendships.

I want to hug you, lean into your gentle TOPS sweater. I don’t, because I’m scared you'll interpret it wrongly.


Art of Vulnerability

_I'm sitting on the balcony couch of Atlantis, the Atlas house, under night stars and fuzzy blankets. Berkeley's frat parties are the background music as O tells me about her dad crying when his best friend fell into depression, her own mental health struggles a few weeks later and she could only tell her mom, her sister currently estranged from the family, her brother dying of cancer, given 2 more years. Her brother whom she loves, and she’d come back during Christmas mainly to visit him. Or not, she doesn’t really want to go back to her super-religous family._

_She puts her face in her hands, looks up, tries to keep her eyes open. Her eyes with intricate patterns across her blue irises, red veins on the white sclera, brown eyebags._

_"You look tired. Maybe you should sleep."_

_"You're right." She stands up, yawning. "Goodnight, Laura."_

_We climb up the stairs. I watch her disappear into her room. When I tiptoe into mine, the clock reads 3:02 AM. My roommate, U, is long asleep. Moonlight streams through the open curtains._

Bringing my writing into the moment has the side effect of bringing me into the moment. For a slice of a second, I’m back. I’m on the balcony, overlooking frat houses blasting some Top 10 hit, California air through my hair. I’m walking back to my room with warmth in my blood, E’s challenge to my abortion opinion to sleep on.

After Atlas, I’d associated its memory with pining. A void. Controversial opinions unvoiced, criticism unuttered, disagreements unspoken, in every conversation.

I tried to recreate the culture I loved. I told M that I want friends back home to be more thoughtful. (A dick move, I now realize.) I wanted to scream at this world for giving me a glimpse of emotional and intellectual fulfillment I want in my life indefinitely, then ripping me away, before I was ready to say goodbye.

But for the first time, writing about Atlas didn’t hurt. Wasn’t accompanied by longing bubbling underneath my lungs. For the first time, I was happy to have slivers of my feelings preserved in eternally-lasting words. To reread my descriptions and feel it again.

Cohort 4 of Atlas 2022 will never happen again. I'll never sit on the second-floor balcony with H, E, and U again; I walking in past midnight asking us how we're evaluating the game theory of staying up. Perhaps that is fine. Perhaps it is enough to have not just photographs or ephemeral memories, but my narrative essay to tuck next to my heart. Perhaps I don't need to optimize for more Atlas environments.

When I started writing this piece, missing Atlas was messing with my peace of mind. I couldn’t take it anymore. I know that writing reveals gaps in your arguments by forcing your logic onto the page. Perhaps the same applies for feelings?

But now, I realize, writing doesn’t just help you understand your emotions. It makes you at peace with them.


why i write

Canvas tarp of the Otentik raps  
Slits between flaps  
glimpses of night.  
Around the wooden table  
Miranda, Ella, Amy, and I  
We're Not Really Strangers cards 3 neat piles.  
Amy flips a card.  
“Happiest moment last year?”  
Pauses.  
Er, I don't know.  
C'mon, you've been happy.  
Summer, I guess. You?  
Finishing my chem test, probably.  
Next card?

We played this game at Atlas  
underneath fuzzy blankets  
nighttime balcony.  
John a 5-paragraph essay for each question,  
Each tangent an hour derailed.  
But here  
an anchor against undertows,  
squeezing water from stones.  
Each card a blink,  
a flap of a bee's wing.  
Toronto friends are less opinionated,  
less thoughtful,  
less.

After Atlas,  
A void.  
Controversial opinions unvoiced,  
criticism unuttered,  
disagreements unspoken,  
in every conversation.

I have agency, I thought.  
I can recreate the culture I loved.  
So I give my hot takes:  
Coffee is mental weakness.  
Thought is missing from school.  
Stressing about applications  
Makes you a fool.

A week after camping,  
Amy tells me I'm a metal monkey mom,  
Harlow's test subject.  
I have the milk of thoughtful ideas,  
but no fur.  
Being with me  
doesn’t bring comfort.

Not everyone likes arguing,  
Emily tells me.  
If I challenge every belief I’m hearing  
The shy will be quiet  
The reserved hold their thoughts in reserve.  
I said I want Toronto friends to be more thoughtful  
Amy said nothing  
not because she agreed.

I realize,  
my pursuit of thoughtful gatherings  
turned people off, and  
prevented them from happening.


essays

binding energy

Love Your Struggles

the sellout's dilemma

Art of Vulnerability

why i write

i'm a metal monkey

Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem

Writing as a Path to Clear Thinking

How to have a fulfilling high school experience

quantum shmantum

rationality isn't the way to live

babble room