Disclosure: no interest in trying to replicate my Mirror work here atm.

Reality Check-In

This post, and protocol itself, is more personal and effervescent for me - in the sense that it is less structured, directed, and more of a hobby than tackling crypto abstractions for consensus revelations.

Vietnam

Just spent three work weeks in Vietnam; traveling from the capital (Ha Noi), to their paradise city (Da Nang), and ending in their mecca (Saigon).

It was a fascinating experience beyond the unthinkable traffic patterns. The food, the contrast of each city, Mr. Vin's empire. Including Cuba and Russia, I've now been to all three communist countries relevant to American history.

Very fortunate to have seen the world, this trip cemented some feelings that started surfacing a couple years ago.

At time of writing these are the cities I've spent considerable time in.

Buddha, The Pendulum, & The Internet

After seeing plenty of abject poverty in the world, hearing the story of a man's family robbed of their land by the government meant to protect them... I feel confident in my strong distaste for the applied communist manifesto.

To hear from that same man, "soon they'll take my house and we'll have to move to another" in such a nonchalant manner - it scratches the scab open and resumes the emotional bleeding I tried to repress.

Buddha

The story of the buddha can be simplified to a prince born into impregnable privilege by a well intentioned father. Who grew to pursue his curiosity and experienced a psychological crucifixion at the reality of a world less privileged.

Through the course of his duress he pursued enlightenment, and even achieved it for a time. Only to return with a revelation that I'll modernize to "it's pretty fucking hard to be enlightened when you live next to atrocities."

I resonate greatly with this story at the moment. To sit in a penthouse overlooking Saigon merely hours after a kind woman allowed me into her home, fed me, and told stories of women being sold for $100; it certainly makes one think.

The Pendulum

It swings back and forth, forth and back. "The pendulum is always swinging" my mother used to routinely remind me. Similar to the sine wave analogy, it's rather common to agree that life is constantly changing.

Leading me to a conversation I had over dinner about 'being content'.

"Well what is being content?"

It's being perfectly ok with life

Long conversation less long; a carrot in the front or a fire in the rear - these are the forces of magnetism (push and pull) that move us.

To pursue something out of lack, or out of desire, inherently signals a dissatisfaction with the current 'life'. And it wasn't until that dinner, where Buddha was talked about, that it clicked why the story ends the way it does.

If you wanted to 'get off the pendulum' and make it stop... that would be death. And within this conversation, that would mean that you are truly content... when you die.

Life may not be about being content at all - at least that's where we landed.

The Internet

So the complicated emotions still in my gut; the luxurious penthouses, fine dining, and modestly beautiful and perseverant less-privileged people who spent time with a foreigner day in and day out, reveal to me that pursuit of discomfort (the opposite of content) is my current direction.

Related to all things I currently hone my career toward, this leads into a retracing of the internet.