Lora: Morning! How are you doing in the past week?
Me: Morning, thanks! I’m doing ok. Keep picking up more activities. I do Yoga every day. I also resume cooking, eating more veggies. Not craving carb and sweet that much anymore. Oh and I finally watched a documentary! Thank goodness. I still don’t understand why I just completely lost interest in reading and watching “normal movies” previously. All I wanna do every day is watching those TV series, episode after episode.
Lora: I know! That brainless stuff right? We do this all the time.
Me: Yeah exactly. Oh and…I booked a trip to Hawaii.
Lora: Wow good for you, that’s a lot of information. What caused you to resume these activities? What changed?
Me: I guess it starts with Yoga? I just feel both my mind and body feel better after Yoga - then I have the mood to eat healthier. Then it just kinda creates a positive feedback loop.
Lora: That sounds really good. Ok, tell me about the documentary. How is it?
Me: It’s sooooo good. It’s called My Octopus Teacher. It’s about a filmmaker - he got burnout from his work and just lost motivation for anything in life. So he took a gap year on an island, going scuba diving every day for one year - and that’s how long an octopus can live. During that short period of time, he observed the whole life of that octopus and kinda built a connection with her. It’s amazing. I never know that an octopus is really like a human being - she’s so vulnerable but she can also be so strong. And she’s so smart. She learns how to deal with difficult situations every day and how to recover from them, just like us. And you can actually see how she gradually builds that trust and relationship day by day with the filmmaker. That’s just so touching and relatable.
Lora: Yeah nature is always an amazing teacher. I need to mark that movie down. So that motivates you to Hawaii?
Me: Oh no, haha totally unrelated. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. A friend happened to mention the idea to me the other day. So we’re kinda like “ok, we need to do this”.
Lora: It’s great! You really need an unplug during the pandemic. What’s the last time you did the unplug thing?
Me: Right before the lockdown. I went to Kilimanjaro with a friend for a week. It’s wonderful. It feels so good to just be around with mountains, completely cut off from social media.
Lora: How do you feel when you get back from the trip?
Me: Re-energized. And the byproduct is before the trip I’m actually not that familiar with the girl. But during the trip, we went through so many things together and we keep in touch when getting back. It’s great that you get to know more about another person and kinda develop a connection from there. You know they’re rare to a passive and introverted person.
Lora: Totally. Seems you really like traveling. Is it because you find it helpful knowing more people and building friendships?
Me: I actually never think that much. I guess I like traveling mostly just for fun?
Lora: Haha that’s totally fair.
Me: But to be honest I’m starting to think if traveling is more of an “escape from real life” to me.
Lora: That’s interesting. I could see many people take it as a “recharge”. How do you define “escape”?
Me: I’ve never realized that until the pandemic because it kinda forces you to just stay at home and face your problems. When you travel, you’re having fun and more focused on the outside world, the new experience. But when you’re stuck at a place for a long time, you just can’t help thinking about those things that you don’t really want to think about. You have nowhere to hide. You know what I mean?
Lora: Yeah I think I understand.
Me: Yeah then those thinkings just make me feel upset. Like what’s the purpose of my life? I mean I’m doing ok with my work. It feeds me well. But am I gonna do this for my whole life? I just can’t imagine it but I don’t know what else can I do.I can’t agree more with the saying that “happiness itself is never the goal, it’s a byproduct of being useful”.
Lora: Yeah you mentioned that to me before. Finding meaningfulness from work is definitely a topic we’ll discuss.
Me: And then I kinda just take a step back, start thinking “ok, maybe finding the purpose of life just doesn’t apply to most people in the world except those like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerburg.” Probably most people are just being happily OK with having a not-that-fulfilling life? They even won’t bother to think about these things because they have kids to feed, life to maintain - more than enough to occupy their mind. Oh man, on that note I do feel I’m less bothered with these abstract stuff when I was in a stable relationship. Is that the meaning of marriage or a stable relationship? Keep you from being trapped in these random thoughts?
Lora: Haha wow are we going to discuss existentialism and intimate relationships? That’s a much larger scope.