In my journey towards cultivating self-compassion, I’ve been chewing on a big meaty question: How has the framing of “right versus wrong” shown up in my life? Exploring this question has uncovered some very deeply entangled bits of my psychology.
It starts with scarcity. I recently finished Pachinko, following the story of a Korean family in a hostile 20th century Japan. These war shaped years led to global food shortages, worsened by discrimination for Korean immigrants in Japan.
Scarcity is a breeding ground for fear, leading to scrutinizing your actions and existence to see how you can improve your lot in life through jobs, education, or marriage. While a century has passed since my grandpa was born, the world he was brought into continues to shape me two generations later. At 16, my Ye Ye enlisted in the Korean military, leading him to put high pressure on my dad to get the education he never had access to. My dad soared academically, eventually getting a PhD in Japan and postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF. These values have carried over into the expectations my siblings and I were held to: study hard, get into a good college, secure a job, and avoid a bad life.
This pressure starts to reinforce a right vs wrong framing in our minds. It’s right to go to college. It’s right to pursue a business major. It’s right to do the right things for crafting the right resume. It’s wrong to pursue humanities. It’s wrong to take an unpaid editorial internship. It’s wrong to do anything that doesn’t accrue to something, to waste time on anything not producing results. Our need for external validation, such as competition results or GPAs continue into post graduate life in the form of performance reviews, bonus structures, credit scores, # of rental properties, fitness classes taken, or whatever else you choose to ascribe meaning to. Our surrounding culture and world further validate these judgments, with terms like “high performing teams” and “low performer” frequently punctuating our conversations.
This right vs wrong framing becomes so innate in how we experience the world, seeping into all other aspects of our lives. Outside of work it seeps into dating with milestones like after x many months someone should say “I love you” or meet their parents. We consider platonic connections through this lens too, questioning if we’re socializing in the right circles in the right manner. Self-care is ripe with these insecurities: Am I exercising in the right way? Am I eating the right things? Am I consuming the right media? This internalizes perfectionism, people pleasing, and an iron grip need for control. Which then leads to an existence where you’ve lost touch with your own self and true north as you constantly shapeshift into what you believe other people want.
Turn off the fear faucet
When you allow fear to run your life, you evaluate more than you exist. Therefore, the antidote to fear is to courageously exist, and embody a message that at your core you matter. FULL STOP. No buts, no conditionals like “I matter but only after I work hard.” SHHHHHH SELF LOATHING YOU CAN BE QUIET NOW!!!
Turning off the fear faucet is critical for creating the spaciousness your body needs to feel safe and for wisdom to emerge. It’s hard to get to know yourself when you’re constantly spinning in a state of self-scrutiny.
So this next month, I ask you to re-engage with the seat of your power by embracing the following mantra: May I love myself, may I accept myself, may I be at ease with myself. Then, during a time where you tend to be more grounded and at ease, explore the question for yourself: in what ways has right and wrong shown up in my life? In what ways is the right/wrong framing perhaps interfering with what I really want in this life?
Toybox
🎙 You must listen to “Wiser Than Me” hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Eileen in Seinfeld), who gleans rich stories and wisdom from women aged 69-90. She asks questions like what their aging experience has been like and what they’d tell a 21 version of themselves. Listening to this always gives me a much needed boost of levity, especially after learning that men’s sexual desirability peaks at 50 and women’s start declining after 18. 🛒Don’t sleep on TJ’s chocolate babka and mini cheesecake cones. 🍿 I was sobbing minutes into Past Lives. This goes deeper than just the who got away, and had me pondering the nature of connection. Greta Lee does a beautiful job exploring the complex feelings of being happy with the life you have, while also experience the intense pull of nostalgia. 📺 I am so shook by the rawness of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. Always love me some Workin' Moms too. 📚 Back to my Murakami ways with The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. I was so engrossed in Pachinko that I accidentally stayed up past sunrise finishing it (truly, I thought only 1-2 hours had gone by and before I knew it the sky was lightening and it was 5:30am).
That’s it for this month’s edition. Take care until the next.
XOXO JZ
that was beautiful, thank you Jiaxin