Written on a plane back from Paris

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

Damn, Matthew McConaughey’s words rang so true in my ears. We gotta do it in THAT order he says. You gotta figure out who you are first, then you decide what you wanna say, and then take responsibility for what you stand for. For the past ten years, I’ve spent so much time reading books, discovering ideas, watching Ted Talks, and yes I’ve applied the mental models I have, but the focus has always been to solve the problem I’ve had through outside help.

When will I start trusting my own judgement, my own thinking, and acting on my own values with confidence. To have my own style.

Well truth be told, I have developed some pieces of my style here and there. My style of cussing in Chinese, choosing to challenge myself when I can, choosing to be rational when problems arise and emotional to experience life’s marvels.

So maybe the focus on what I should improve upon is the “not giving a damn about how I would look” part.

I’ve read too much self help books and watched too many YouTube vids to have “not caring about what others think of you” imprinted in my mind. But I still suffer from caring too much about how I would look. I feel like there’s a subtle difference here, being that the latter is more direct, more attached to how we act daily, what we say day to day, and how we interact with others. It’s how system 1 does intuitively and how system 2 prevents us from doing for fear that we’ll be doing shit out of the norm.

Anyways back to style. How do I gain enough confidence in our style so that it becomes who I am? Whenever I start doubting my own identity, I often come to the song I Am Moana.

Grandma: Sometimes the world seems against you The journey may leave a scar But scars can heal and reveal just Where you are The people you love will change you The things you have learned will guide you And nothing on Earth can silence The quiet voice still inside you And when that voice starts to whisper Moana, you've come so far Moana, listen Do you know who you are?

Moana: Who am I? I am the girl who loves my island I'm the girl who loves the sea It calls me I am the daughter of the village chief We are descended from voyagers Who found their way across the world They call me I've delivered us to where we are I have journeyed farther I am everything I've learned and more Still it calls me And the call isn't out there at all It's inside me It's like the tide, always falling and rising I will carry you here in my heart You'll remind me That come what may, I know the way I am Moana!

The inner struggle and journey to self discovery has been portrayed in so many books, movies, and art pieces. But like with all stories, they suffer from the fact that they don’t represent reality too well. Reality doesn’t have a climax, reality doesn’t include an aha moment. Instead of epiphanies, reality is shaped by the struggles day in and day out. Sometimes when you think you’ve outgrown your past self, the next challenge reveals that you’ve just started.

“Scars can heal and revel just where you are”

Where am I right now? Well, in the past 5 weeks in Europe, trying and learning how to make impact on weekdays and solo traveling to the places I’ve been dreaming of going; where I’ve gotten lost without cellular, forgetting ID while crossing borders, hopped on a train to Vienna on a whim, and got past security twice (they even checked my passport for one of them) with my boarding pass being Andrew instead of Cheng-Han.

I think I’ve gotten a little more appreciative of my relationships, a little more intact with my own mental physical health, and a little more confident in my abilities. Ability to create, to build, to focus, to cook, to live and savor the present and now.

“Here’s to the ones who dream. Foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache. Here’s to the mess we make. She told me, a bit of madness is key to give us new colors to see. Who knows where it would lead us, and that’s why they need us.”

“I traced it all back to then, her and the snow and the seine. Smiling through it, she said she’d do it again.”

As monkeys living in this on this bizarre rock we call home, who knows why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do, and how long we’re here for. As a realist, I think that we might only have one shot in this one short life and it’ll prolly be pretty meaningless in the grand scale of things. Yet as a dreamer, I know I gotta reach for it, minimize the regret of inaction, and try to improve my wellbeing, the wellbeing of my loved ones and the rest of humanity. Now that is my style.