that summarizes books for you. I
filled out their introduction ques-
tionnaire, and I’m told that by using
their service, I can save 56 hours
a month from reading books! It
makes me sick. The part of my brain
responsible for artistic integrity is
trying to unionize, but I placate it:
try it. It couldn’t hurt.
On Blinkist, I “read” the
“Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People” in 15 minutes. It’s a blur,
but more pressingly, this method of
reading saves time, and tomorrow
I can listen to another Blink — the
app’s name for a book summary — as
a podcast while I work out. Maybe
I’ll finally subscribe to one of those
meal kit delivery services: I like
cooking, but it’d save me time. And
I always sleep too much; maybe I
could try polyphasic sleep, too?
With all of this saved mental
and physical energy and all this time,
I work. This must be what I want.
***
Through the fervor of self-
improvement culture, I’m promised
that meaning in the world is simple,
with my path to enlightenment tied
to its methodology and morning
routines. When I have streams of
passive income and fully optimized
schedules, I will be fulfilled. Method
books and Medium articles, then,
become its scripture – “Save 20
Hours a Week By Removing These
4 Useless Things In Your Life” or
“19 Rules for a Better Life (from
Marcus Aurelius)” or anything that
takes that sense of worthlessness
away from yourself or our uncar-
ing world and into your habits, into
those things that you have control
over and can change. I don’t know
how true this dogma is, but I do
know it’s deeply comforting to me;
maybe to do otherwise is to surren-
der control and face the abyss.
It was Albert Camus who con-
cluded, “One must imagine Sisyph-
us happy.” In the reinterpretation of
the infamous Greek myth, Sisyphus
is not crushed by the hopelessness
inherent in his situation, but liber-
ated by it. In the face of the absurd,
Camus sees true freedom and hap-
piness.
I sometimes feel that I’m being
turned into a machine designed for
better auto grader scores and email
replies. Like Sisyphus, the roots of
my discontent sprawl over the same,
repetitive flowerbed: Am I injecting
my life with meaning or do I accom-
plish nothing? Self-improvement
was supposed to offer liberation,
and to some extent it does, but a part
of me wonders if it’s just adding fuel
to the existential inferno.
Regardless, it’s Sunday, and
tonight’s meditation asks me to con-
sider my idols. As a child, I wanted to
be like Steve Jobs. I think everyone
has wanted to be Steve Jobs or Mi-
chael Jordan at some point in their
lives, but maybe we don’t consider
how they’re acidic people. I mean,
look at them. They’re tortured by
their greatness.
Who do I want to be now?
David Foster Wallace, I think, or
Mark Rothko, with their brilliant
minds and tantamount works of art
that they’ve blessed the world with.
And, surely with their entrance into
literary and artistic immortality, with
their rightful place among the greats
and with their achievements that
their childhood selves couldn’t even
begin to digest, they’re happy. They
practically have to be.
They weren’t.
They struggled with what all of
us, fundamentally, have to face: the
human brain is in such stark con-
trast entropically with the rest of the
world that we’re so, so desperately
lonely, looking for any semblance
of structure out of whatever bit of
stimuli, praying for the sand grains
to align when they decidedly don’t.
We’re order-starved, condemned
to search for clarity within a world
that offers none, so when something
comes along and promises that,
yes, your worth can be as simple as
working out this much and reading
this many books, we become en-
grossed by the direct feedback that
self-improvement provides and how
ordered and comfortable everything
seems through its lens.
But when the end goal of self-
improvement becomes more about
those external metrics than actually
increasing our well-being, without
realizing it, our workouts become
pushing boulders up the same hill
every day, and the time spent on
our habits become building blocks
for an empty tombstone, and when
we inevitably die, it reads: Here lies
the reader. They bench pressed this
many pounds. They read this many
books, and spent this many hours a
day working on their passions.
Overall, though, it was a posi-
tive experience. If your goal is to
become your ideal self — go on more
dates or make more money or break
into all of your desired industries
— those will be the actionable steps
for you to have the requisite physi-
cal and mental clarity to be able to
achieve them. You just won’t be
happy.
***
It’s the last day. It’s 7 a.m. and
I’m at Barton Pond, preparing to
dive into the freezing water. It’s a
cold plunge: the culmination of ev-
erything that I’ve immersed myself
in this week.
I hop into the water and it’s
soul-suckingly cold. I’ve come to
the pond with faint hopes of being
reborn — maybe, when I emerge
from the water, I will be that person
I always wanted to be, and for a brief
moment, it works. My body feels
clear, and I experience a moment of
profound mental clarity; everything
else except for the ego washes away.
It tells me to stay in this cold
forever. It beckons me deeper, and
deeper, until nothing.
That thought is quickly dis-
carded as I scamper out onto the
lakeshore, wrapping a towel around
my shivering body. My foot is cut
from the rock bed, but I don’t no-
tice because it’s also numb, and I
don’t really feel better: just aches,
and freezing, and a voice in my head
saying, God, what a stupid, dumb
decision.
I’m a heavy sleeper: Everyday,
when I wake up, I forget who I am
for a fleeting moment. I sit up and
watch the rising sun cast shadows
on my bedroom wall: shadows that
dance to their ancient, iambic tunes,
to their own cultures and histories,
and for a moment I see everything,
before it slowly fades as I remember
my day’s work: as I remember my
life. Then, I get up and I make those
same Sisyphean choices anyway,
minute by painful minute, second
by beautiful second.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023 // The Statement — 5
Photo courtesy of Darrin Zhou
Photo courtesy of Darrin Zhou
Affirmations self-portrait.
Barton Pond cold plunge self-portrait.