But my new life. Where did it began? I remember a continuum in which was interspersed with momentary leaps into the questions. They are like, what am I. What is this world? I guess a moment of clarity during my time at Cornell was reading Heidegger's The The Age of the World Picture. It is a vast sweep by genius. That he wrote this is the age when the purpose is the set forth each own vision or idea or even what we would call today products or networks is amazing. To set forth as individuals can as individuals, or is it as individuals in a society? For me, the insight may sound obvious, but reading that to set forth one's own produced in me a revelatory moment. I wanted to dwell on this thought, which is amazing to me in every way.  After I had read and understood the article, something in me had changed. It's funny how genius can articulate into words thoughts that elude a constructed mind, wipes clean preconceived notions I didn't even know I had. For it is at once a very simple thing and a very complicated thing. Perhaps he had meant as societies become democratic, as capitalism becomes the ruling order of the day, as science reveals en mass minute bits of information that in some grew, while others become obsolete, that in all these conditions and more, the distinction of being an individual and being a member of a community is at once more distinctly drawn and at once becoming more fluid.  Perhaps all these things and even more than I could find in my mind right now. What got me was the simplicity of the structure of his postulation. Who is this individual? To what extent is included as the community? What preconceptions does this individudal have? In what context does the individual set forth? Am I an individual? I am exceedingly ignorant, and this I know, but what else, what other information have I been exposed to, that I never seriously considered and transformed into knowledge. Academic success is a simple thing, though it often becomes a marker of intelligence, of security, of ability, but there are so many way to cheat the system and appear all those things and in truth, I am master of none. It was a continuous information flow, which I absorbed on the short term and put back out as answers to questions on tests and essays to problems. Could I apprehend the meaning - have I allowed the meaning to change me, to transform what I see and understand? These questions then ballooning in my mind, surely, blew my mind, as I find no point of view to rest upon, there were no opportunities to dwell, to transform into meaning in my very own life. That semester I failed to supply a paper to a professor who had been supportive and generous in the years before - I knew, at first reluctantly and then later with conviction, I had nothing for a premise because, I later realized, I was not myself.

I have left a past behind to start a new life. My new life starts with me. I am tired of starting from other people's expectations, making goals and even achieving them for the accolades and acceptance of those around me. I came to the least likely place to encounter friends and family. My psychological makeup is in such a way I had always presumed other people's responses and their expectations are more valid than mine. I had gone a way along this way, sidelining the things I feel are important to bring to fruits results that neither please me nor displease me, even though I am perfectly guilty to yearn for people's responses. How their opinions would become my life's focus I don't really know. I thought in paving a route to academic success would lead me somewhere in life. My parents, that was all they demanded from me. Going to Cornell, studying architecture, something I have never had an interest in, seemed like the correct path. My parents were immensely pleased. But one more time, I could develop no interest in creating architecture in the way they were teaching it. Although now an actual interest of mine, architecture is, I think I would not find happiness in this way.  Success and happiness are not the same thing; sometimes one is confused with the other. Happiness is starting with myself and slowly and deliberately collect fragments in pieces what interests me and makes me feel elated. It's kinda like love, I boldly conjecture. In your heart you know. At Cornell, I switched out of architecture, though still immersed in friends' projects which I looked upon with admiration and which sometimes called me to be in an honored position as critic. I switched to the School of Arts and Sciences, expecting to explore and find something that empassioned me. Much was interesting, and I carried a full curriculum every semester, sometimes working two jobs, and partied. Partying was an expression of seeking happiness in the other - I was fully aware that it was not to last and may carry detrimental effects. I had not told any of this to my Grandma, but she still insightfully remarked, but you graduated. I didn't realize it was an achievement because my heart was not in it. Beside the partying, which I felt was otherly and so enjoyable to be intoxicated with literal intoxicants but also social freedom. Maybe graduating was an achievement of sorts, but I felt like there are more and more boxes around me, and as I looked into the future, I saw them closing in on me. I don't want my life to be over before it began. Life, being at peace with oneself, doing something that means something to oneself, encountering people before putting up a facade, sincere even if disagreement occur, because it is one's own. There is very little time, yet life is a miracle, an extremely improbable event or phenomenon, so very precious. There is no doubt we live in societies and communities.  There are rules and conventions, but nobody has held a gun to my head and insist on how I should live. I have not been enslaved, but only by my own preconceptions.  Dare to look outside, I tell myself, can I find people who are in pursuit of the life they are seeking, but how many of these people can see beyond what they have constructed around themselves. Are they conventional lifes, repeated across well meaning folks, but have they seen beyond. We live in an informational society here anyway, the lens with which to view the world can vary: which lens are you looking through? Are there ways to see with your own naked eye, and see the universe and your living in this ever grander world in a moment's mind's eye?