Yingxin > Recent Status Updates

“I always felt that the more you let people in, the greater the risk that they would ruin things.
That I would have to compromise my-self, wake up one day and realise I was living a life I didn't understand.”

“If you could constantly reinvent yourself, cut away the parts of you that ashamed or hurt you, then how could you ever come to really know someone else? Were people all just living paradoxes, keeping up an illusion just long enough to survive contact with others? Were people then all a series of lies in the end? And if that was true-then what difference did it make, what history you had, what love you'd shared?

“Surely no one else lived like this burdened by the tiniest details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.”

AREN'T WE LUCKY? Our DNA encodes for innumerable possible people, and yet it's you and I who are here-winners in a stupefying lottery. We came at the exact right moment, a blip in the hundred million centuries of the universe... And in this place, on this small blue rock, innumerable miracles: redwoods, computers, stingrays, pianos, you and me.

“Even without her lifting a finger, the world would keep on changing. The fact stunned her. Even without her trying, the people around her would form connections, intertwine in complex ways, and keep on growing, like the roots, leaves and stems of a plant.”

“You know how in recipes it'll say "sugar to taste" or "a good amount of salt" and so on? A friend of mine who edits cookery books for a living said that they've started having complaints about recipes that leave things to the individual's discretion... people are increasingly worried about making mistakes, and losing faith in their own judgement - they don't know what "a good amount" looks like for them.”

"I love Paris," I said, overemphatically, and felt my cheeks redden the moment the words left my mouth. I often wondered what percentage of things I said were truly original, and how much of what I said I'd heard said before and was only repeating.

“You see, if you want to visit a new world, you don't need a spacecraft.
All you need to do is change your mind.”

It's a silly feeling but I will share it in case you have ever had it too. The feeling is that of the whole world happening. It squares - no, cubes - no, quartics - the now. What I mean is that travel tesseracts experience. It explodes it to the fourth dimension.
And it becomes dizzying to realise how many nows are happening all at once.

“how you sit and read your way through a book then close the book and put it on the shelf, and maybe, life being so short, you'll die before you ever open that book again and its pages, the single pages, shut in the book on the shelf, will maybe never see light again”

“Do you remember the happiest day of your life? What about the saddest? Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn’t have to live on one side or the other?”

“Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you.”