The Invisible Weight Is You

I know this blog post is very bouncy and all over the place. I lowkey don’t plan these posts. But I also get this random feeling of amazement, of wondering how I am alive right now.

French toast in southie was gas, no relevance to the post tho.

Like, how am I thinking, conscious, and able to see my surroundings? I know that may sound weird, but how is there genuinely something rather than nothing?

We all know that one day we are going to die. We are going to live our lives, and a lot of the things we worry about may never truly matter.

But for some reason, I feel this invisible weight that brings me down.

It’s not negative. It’s more of a pattern.

The way I think, feel, and express myself all stems from something. It’s me, but there’s also this barrier stopping me from doing whatever I want.

It’s not a logical part of the brain that’s making me think like me. It just happens.

That’s the thing I get confused about: how much can a person truly change? A lot of times in TV shows and movies, drastic change happens, but it almost feels surreal.

Even one of my favorite shows, Vinland Saga, sometimes makes it feel a little too ingenuine. How does Thorfinn, a warrior at heart, suddenly change into becoming a monk? Or even Breaking Bad. Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher, all of a sudden drastically changes into a drug lord because he has cancer.

So when shows give us these drastic transformations, maybe they feel a little fake because they skip the part that actually matters: real change is rare, it’s slow, and it usually costs you something huge. Most of the time, what looks like a new person is the same person in a different light.

Thinking differently is harder than it seems. If you were constantly shaped by religion, people arguing, people saying STEM is important, or your dad grew up watching hockey, there are chances that you will inherit those things.

How am I alive, thinking, but can’t think differently?

Because it’s not really a free will thing, because yes, we can say our experiences shape us. But at this moment, I want to challenge me and you. Why can’t you think about a totally unique lifestyle, approach dating in a new light, try to cook cleanly, or think about a new unsupervised machine learning technique?

Your ideas might be yours, but are they uniquely different to you?

A lot of times, my ideas for CS projects stem from a need to solve my own problems. Like an AI referee, habit trackers, a reviewer to help me learn how to check code, a networking tool. All great ideas, if I do say so myself.

But why aren’t they related to space, hardware, or chemistry?

Because those ideas don’t interest me, and therefore I won’t even give them a second thought. Maybe I’ll ask ChatGPT to help me brainstorm some ideas for projects, and it will come up with:

OrbitWatch: AI That Detects Changes on Earth From Space.

Okay wait, that’s kinda cool. Nobody steal that idea.

But we get into bubbles of things we like: matcha, football, tennis, board games, yapping, whatever it may be, and it makes you close-minded subconsciously.

The fact of the matter is that I can think about OrbitWatch. I can think about matcha (ew), and I can think about Christian McCaffrey, but for some reason my mind thinks about Haaland, interviews, Core Power, and philosophy.

You can think about anything, but you choose not to.

The invisible weight is you. That sounds depressing. I don’t think it is.

It’s almost like this anchor of tension, not being able to be 100% free. Because it’s so hard to fight it, change might also be performative to an extent.

A lot of times, you look at change at face value: looksmax, gym, make money, eat healthy, run, drink only water, be less toxic, less social media.

However, after you cut those things, you become “better” in a physical sense, maybe get more confidence because those are rewards, and maybe more compliments. But does your thinking change?

Again, probably to an extent.

You might think about more ambitious ideas, more peaceful ones, just slightly new patterns. But who you are doesn’t change. You tend to think about similar things, just in a different light. Weirdly enough, it’s not like anyone is holding us captive from thinking freely. It’s also ourselves.

You have the ability to do… so why don’t you?

Again, it’s not that you can’t think about new approaches to life. It’s that you don’t because you’re thinking about, yes, some tensions and problems you have in your life right now.

But it’s also that there is this limiting belief that you can’t.