Who are you

I saw this poem on Twitter recently:

who are you
when you are not addicted
by all the internet stimulation

who are you
when you stop doing things
for instant gratification

who are you
when you stop trying so hard
just to get validation

who are you
when no one
is watching you?

– no idea what I’m doing but f*ck it by ron lim

A list of beautiful questions to ask oneself.

I always loved beautiful questions. Good answers invariably get outdated, but beautiful questions are all relevant. Good answers get stuck in a past version of their brilliance, while beautiful questions invite new, interesting responses every time. Good answers make people think they’re so smart, but beautiful questions are humbling.

And this list of questions is pretty poignant, especially coming out Twitter dependency.

Who am I before all these internet, entrepreneurship, business and coding? Who am I before all these different layers of personas for different fields and domains?

Of course, no one truly stays static. We all learn and grow from our own experiences. Some more than others. But yet despite that, certain core parts remain stubborn. Values and world views. Everything shifts, but nothing ever truly changes.

I think I know what that is. The only thing that got me jumping through the different fields and jobs and interests.

It’s play. And the curiosity, passion, and exploration emerging from all that.

Alan Watts talks about how “existence in the physical universe is playful”:

We thought of Life by analogy was a pilgrimage. That it had a serious purpose at the end, and you had to get to that end… But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and we were supposed to sing and dance while the music was being played.

Life is not a journey, it’s a dance.

Maybe that’s all to it. Just play. Just dance.

Just like the title of the book where the poem came from:

I have no idea what I’m doing but f*ck it.