Naturally, as species, we become selfish, right?
We start thinking about ourselves. This is something that we’ve always done.
When we are caught up in our own survival, how can we empathize with anyone, when we were just trying to keep up with ourselves?
I thought a lot about my thoughts. Recently, I see that there’s a huge shift in my thoughts that is eye-opening to me.
On May 22nd, 2021, I came back to Vietnam not knowing exactly what I’d do. My romantic relationship was shaken to the core of it, my family relationship was nowhere to be found. I was drowned in sorrow, I only think of myself. My baggage of pains and hurts was so heavy that I could not have any space for anything else.
Over the past 2 years, my blog is drained with sorrow, the darkest of my thoughts, the dark moment of my life. I am the victim, but also the accused. I didn’t let my pain go, I drown in it, making it my source of life, my energy, and my go-to strategy to operate in this world. There were times that I could not stop working and writing. Working in the morning with a different attitude, going home at night writing on this blog with a completely different attitude.
Not only that I let my emotions take the better part of me, but also hurt and blame others for my own sufferings.
It was always me, me, and me. And whoever gets the benefit was just consequential.
Recently, Vien – while working on Bliss Playbook, argue with me about adding the term ” Customer First” into our Values, like we are a company that focuses on the customer. My argument to Vien was, I was never the one who think about customers, I created this ice cream because I like it, and it’s for me.
Well, it’s not exactly true, I didn’t like any strong flavor, so I couldn’t eat the Mangonada, but I made it for the people, so it’s also for customers.
To be fair to me, I think I was thinking about others, but I couldn’t do much because there are so many things on my back that I need to get rid of first.
That moment has come, finally, like today, on a very beautiful morning of Saturday in my very chillax home in Saigon. I feel at peace, almost every day now.
My mind is no longer crowded with the pain of loss, the resentment of love, the trying to control death, and the tiresome of life.
I’m a little bit burned out from overworking, it’s tiring, but it’s an easy fix as in we know exactly the cause, and the exact way to cure it. It’s not lurking behind like my other stuff, that took soooo long to remove.
If my life is a movie, I can say that season 1 and season 2 have finished where the main character was happy, went through loss, and sad, and happy again. I’m excited for whatever is new yet to come.
I mentioned earlier about how my thoughts have amazed me, I started thinking for others. I started to understand the other’s feelings, the kind of actually understanding of the logic of why they think the way they think and accept their thoughts.
In my recent session with my Therapist, he asked me: “Remind me again, what’s the cause of your fallout between you and Camel, in one word, just tell me in one word.” I responded almost immediately: “Empathy”. I cannot speak for him, but I can speak for myself, on my side, I was almost unempathetic to him, to his worry about his family, his mother, to his feeling of being abused by my never stop complaining about my sorrow, to his way of working and receiving information. In short, I treated him like I treated my mother, unempathetically. Looking back, it was always about me and my troubles, our relationship was so crowded with my stuff that he’s so suffocated and couldn’t breathe the same air as me. I was drowning and I was pulling him down with me. My love was so heavy and tiring. I can totally see now that we would end up hurting each other so badly if I was not to change. Thank God, I did, I believe that I changed a great deal.
Today, my father is no longer in my thought, my mother is no longer in my thought. They are just images from the past like an old cousin that you completely forget. My mind has so much free space for me and also for others, I think that’s why I have space for music now.
There are moments that just through the chat screen, I can see exactly the facial expression, the voice of the person I’m talking to, even better, I accept their thoughts the way it is because that’s the logic that ran in their head and heart. It’s different from my logic, but it’s also logic.
In one of my recent trip to my VR game on Occulus named:” Where thoughts go?”, a question was asked: What if we were to remove the uncertainty of death? What if we know that we are going to die in exactly 365 days? What will you do differently than you are doing now?
My first thought obviously is to sell the houses, get the cash, and live happily every day in Hoi An. As I once said: “Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea and drink the wild air.” But then the second thought immediately arose, what about Bliss, I’m still the most important factor in Bliss, without me the wheel will stop spinning. So then I decided that if I know I’m going to die, I’m going to live for 2 weeks in Hoi An and 2 weeks in Saigon until I die. That gives me the balance, something for me and something for others.
You see, I’m very surprised by that thoughts, my thoughts now are not about me only but started including others who need me. I didn’t care about the business, I didn’t care about leaving things behind ( a legacy), what I care about is to let others have a good life when I’m gone.
It seems like either I was able to clear out the space around me, or my space has been enlarged to be able to hold more space for others as well in my life. It can be both. My mind is noisy but I’m free to observe my noisy thoughts, and that’s what is interesting.
Today is the first Saturday that I can sit quietly at home and do things I love. I’m not tired, but I have been coughing for the whole week. The cough is quite tiring, and the sounds of it are very scary. Weed helps to relax my Phế quản, but then I will feel sleepy. Sometimes when I cough my brain felt shaking, I wonder how long this will last.
