the audience.

In a college class on war and conflicts, I was introduced to Steven Pinker's famously debated thesis — that violence of every form was on the decline in our modern-day world.

We debated the topic profusely, divided on our stance. Pinker argued that the spread of Enlightenment values was bringing humanity closer to peace and further away from the impulsive barbaric retaliation that has shaped much of humanity's history.

Some agreed and echoed that from a rational data-driven standpoint, Pinker had a valid point. Political scientist and statistician Bear F. Braumoeller calculated about a 1 percent chance that we would see a new war today as deadly as World War I, and it's not surprising. If we look at the absolute number of war deaths post-World War II, it's a fact that we've lost fewer lives. It's safe to say that international law and state governments have to some degree reduced the likeliness of bad actors to act out without severe repercussions (if they're not the ones being the bad actors themselves).

And then came technology's glorious swoop, stitching itself into the fabric of our livelihood.

The second world war left behind societies that were tired of fighting. We sought out alternatives — different ways to get what we want, to be more powerful, and more importantly, to spend our time. Education levels around the world have doubled since then, with more people spending time in school and the workforce. The technology we use every single day is a result of us that. I suppose we learned to redirect our energy and emotion away from fighting and toward creating.

In an interview with NPR, Steven Pinker sat down to discuss how his decline-of-war thesis would answer the question"Is the world getting messier?" And this was for an article called "The Summer of 2014 Has Been A Messy Time For The World" — as we all know, things have only got much messier since then.

When asked if humanity would continue on this downward trend of violence infliction, Pinker said, "Well, how likely is it that we're going to start throwing virgins into volcanoes to get good weather or that you're going to have a return of slave markets to New Orleans? I think pretty unlikely."

Ask me that question today and I honestly wouldn't be so sure.

I disagree with Pinker for a few reasons, and to make this clear, I view these reasons from a personal perspective: my identity as a young lady in the 21st century, someone who struggles with mental health, a digital native who lives and breathes content online, and more importantly, how all three of these identities interact with each other.

Pinker brings up this thesis in relation to war and conflicts, but I believe that any conclusion about war, conflict, and human nature is incomplete without taking into account our behavior in digital spaces. Violence today doesn't happen on battlefields, it happens in the place we spend most of our time every single day.

Online.

The decline-of-war theory suggests that humans have progressed by learning the rules that keep everything in place — like listening to the state, following the law, and not starting an all-out war with whoever you want. But on the Internet, rules don't have to be followed so strictly. It's an opportunity to disguise violence, and the spread of something hidden is always more destructive.

Four years before World War I, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, where he said “How can we possibly expect to keep alive warlike qualities when all our interests and activities … are peace-like?”

If we are indeed becoming more rational and educated creatures, can we say with confidence that our online behaviors are peace-like?

The Audience

What is The Audience?

I define it as a network of emotions, perceptions, and a sense of identity packaged into an online presence. This presence is a personality speaking to an audience and a personality who wants to be part of an audience. We're bound to the people we are online because we're hooked to how it feels to be in with The Audience.

Our reliance on The Audience fuels violence, whether that violence is to ourselves or to others, physical or emotional. We’re getting angrier and lonelier in a world with so much for us to consume and lose ourselves in.

Every morning, I grab my phone and I scroll through Twitter. Although I make it a point to keep my social media feeds free of anything that heightens my anxiety, I've done my best to avoid creating a filter bubble that keeps reality too picture-perfect. My Twitter timeline is a sharp barb of tangled wire, scraping in a stubborn mix of political and philosophical debate, passionate (and pretentious) techie talk, Korean boy bands (and the fandom fights that come with it), and heavy-handed opinions about topics like race, wealth inequality, religion, and ethics.

It doesn't take very long to find something that gets me uncomfortable — especially in the cross-fire between two raging little icons in a long harsh thread. It may be the lack of mass human interaction over the past 12 months, but I've become increasingly aware of how casually we try to 'fix' intolerance in digital spaces. We can label it "woke culture," accuse "social justice warriors" or continue to put the sole blame on liberals being liberals or conservatives being conservatives — the reality is the majority of us are bound to an unspoken expectation that everything we do is up for public discussion. We want to show everyone that we know better, and when we come across people that don't agree with us, we seek comfort in proving them wrong.

I watch conversations unfold as a member of the audience, sometimes perceiving these responses as shared experiences of my own. I get riled up, emotional, happy, amused. I’m connected to what I’m tuned into, and there's a high chance that my own conversations and social interactions online are a part of someone else’s experience too — as a passing statement, as a punch line to a joke, or maybe as leverage to a bad judgment about me. Being a member of the audience comes with a trade-off. You have to accept the fact that there are others in your audience too.

Everything we do, we've learned in order to gain some sort of social acceptance. Online, that social acceptance is amplified far beyond our schools, workplaces, cities, and countries. Everything we do is up for interpretation, and everyone supposedly has a right to respond and react in their own way.

Humans are social creatures, and for that reason, I think the extreme connectivity of our world today must be approached with caution. We've learned to perceive realities far beyond our reach, and the outcomes have undoubtedly been amazing. The Internet and social media have made information more accessible and transparent while helping create spaces for people of ages to build, educate, heal and rest.

But on the flip side, we've proven time and time again that we're consumed by the convenience of having an audience right at our fingertips. Our relationship with the Internet and social media has been dictated by our obsession to control a narrative. Couple that with technology's ability to help us visualize our utopias and you get an explosive combination of illusion and denial.

The Identity Crisis

If you think about it, human conflict tends to arise to fill a gap, whether that be a gap in wealth confidence, intimacy, identity, or faith.

As social beings, we have a natural desire to impress and emerge victorious because it gives us the acceptance we long for. Conflict becomes a means to an end, and the hurt along the way becomes mere collateral damage to reach our end goal of being respected and more importantly, not being left alone.

The problem isn't the Internet, it's our relationship with it. By depending on The Audience, we've amplified what's missing in our real lives and learned to turn away from it, creating a false sense of identity to be pursued — an identity that isn't ours alone. We are comforted by the idea that we can find a million other people on the Internet who agree with what we think, and that gives us the bravery to lash out at those who don't without an ounce of remorse.

We can't make up our minds. We go wherever we fit in, wherever we can get an audience, and the context doesn't have to remain constant — the only thing that remains constant is how we feel. The temporary feeling of adrenaline after tearing someone down and making a point, or the short-term bliss you get when your pictures and posts get more reactions than someone else.

Are we really becoming socially connected if we're evolving into digital communities that are being socially inept?

Over the past five years, we've slowly uncovered the ugly side of social media and the tech giants behind them who have monopolized our attention. We're beginning to question the autonomy that corporations, like Facebook, have over digital communities that account for almost half the globe.

However, our relationship with the Internet is a push and pull.

Besides chasing after tech giants, there needs to be just as big a commitment to empowering everyday digital users with the resources needed for a responsible Internet experience. That would mean making digitally transformed infrastructures accessible across all economic sectors. The disproportionate usage of online platforms across income groups and education levels further divides our conversations online — hence the reason why conversations on Twitter may differ vastly from conversations on Facebook, considering the platform's popularity concentrated among users who make 9% more than the average American.

Corporations and their business practices are half the equation, and the other half is us. It's how interact with the information before us, how we perceive that information in relation to the world around us. It's how we separate an escape from reality.

step 3: learning to love what I see

In my series of steps taken to understand discomfort this past year, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about introspection.

Step 1: Changing my mindset. What does that mean? Recognizing inherent flaws in the way I perceive the world, and learning to uncover beauty in the present.

Step 2: Chasing the right goals. I've learned to set goals that reflect a stronger and more optimistic mindset. I focus on what I really need to accomplish, and they don't have to be impressive. They just have to be mine.

And now, step 3. Learning to love what I see. My face. My body. The self that I present to the world.

Why is this necessary to understanding and overcoming discomfort or pain? It's pretty simple.

There's a vehicle to carry these sentiments into the reality I live in. Loss, judgment, disappointment. I witness my emotions unfold through my own facial expressions, habits, and movements. I feel with my body and it's the most honest unfiltered form of expression. That's exactly why the relationship between the mind and the body is so fragile. I guess you could say the body scares the mind a little bit with its truth.

When a thought sits at the edge of my consciousness, it begs for something to devour. Something to give it closure, a conclusion to accept or renounce.

Where does it go?

It looks for stability, something constant that it can depend on and trust for some answers. For as long as I can remember, I would find those answers in the reflection staring back at me. I think many girls can agree that one of the purest forms of self-expression is the way we want to look. It's the way we want to perceive ourselves, and the way we want the world to perceive us.

I've come to learn that it's really impossible to put a strong mindset to work if the confidence I have in that reflection is low.

My body belongs to nobody but me. It's the single most powerful sense of ownership a woman can have, and it acts as an anchor for the person I am and the person I want to be. If I don't build a loving relationship with who I am on the surface, I'm never going to make progress with the person I am within.

Confrontation

It's a strange sense of hopelessness looking in the mirror and being thoroughly disgusted by what you see. It's a reflection that bites back and it hurts. It hurts knowing that this reflection is genuinely and authentically you.

It feels like a betrayal. You think to yourself, "My body's betrayed me for being this way. It's not what I want, and it's too far away from who I want to be."

And then you fall into a harsh cycle of disbelief and confusion, unable to digest the amount of hostility you've just exerted onto yourself. This is the betrayal that stings the most when you realize you've turned your back on the one thing that makes you, you.

I started trying to lose weight when I was 12 years old. I rapidly cut down the food I ate, emptying out more than half of the things on my plate. I hated every second of it, but I felt like I had no choice.

I was trying to shed more than just a couple of pounds. I was trying to shed whatever image people had of me. I didn't want to be her anymore. I didn't think she was taken seriously. I didn't think she was respected enough. And for some stupid reason, I was under the impression that my confidence came from everyone else's approval.

The good news? I lost a lot of weight! The bad news? I didn't get any happier. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I learned that self-depreciation was addictive. You never get enough of it.

The weight I shaved off didn't matter as much because a couple of weeks later because I found something new to hate. The more I changed, the more I needed to change. The more I failed at doing so, the more I accepted that having any form of confidence just wasn't for me.

The pivot

Over the past decade, I've taken my relationship with my body through sporadic changes. I wanted to be thin, then I wanted to be athletic (team sports really isn't my thing and never will be), then I wanted to be strong. I've done a good job at taking care of myself physically, out of fear that everything I put myself through when I was 12 would go to waste.

I may have said this a million times by now, but 2020 really changed the way I looked at myself.

I call it a period of intense scrutiny, and it was as daunting as it was enlightening. Nobody likes admitting to themselves that they're doing things wrong — especially when it's something that gives you a sense of security and reciprocated acceptance.

When 2020 started, I had a consistent gym routine where my goal was to lift heavy weights and break my PRs. I was never a gym person up until 2019, and it started off as an exciting journey. I thought I had made a big breakthrough with my confidence and self-respect.

But there was always this nudging restlessness in the back of my mind that told me I could be doing something more. At first, I thought that meant amping up my workout routine.

Maybe I wasn't pushing myself enough, why else would I feel unsatisfied? It took a busted lower back and a pandemic to show me that the weights and the number of times I went to the gym weren't the answer.

Being at home for the past 8 months forced me to confront that reflection in the mirror like I never had before. I needed the distance from everything, and it gave me the time to think about what I was expecting from my body and where these expectations were coming from.

I realized that my intentions were all wrong.

Somewhere in the excitement of doing something I've never done before and seeing results I've never seen before, I turned this journey into a battle of comparison. Another vicious loop of addictive self-depreciation.

That was my wake-up call. I have to do this for myself.

The mindset that I've been building to protect me from nightmares and anxiety is the same mindset I need to protect my body from the distorted view I tend to subject on it. Going back to the three building blocks of this mindset I'm talking about: I need to be appreciative, remember my intentions, and admit my mistakes.

1. Appreciate the steps I've taken before counting the steps I need to take.
   

2. Practice intentional body movements and eating habits that prioritize focus and consistency over speed and results.
   

3. Be honest about my body's limits and what it can take

I call this my 3-step plan to better mental health for even better physical health. I really can't have one without the other.

Acceptance

I haven't gone to the gym in close to a year now but I've found Pilates to be the most effective start in marrying mental health and physical health together.

The Blogilates YouTube channel introduced me to my earliest and fondest memories of working out, and I decided to start there. Following Cassie Ho's weekly challenges in my early years of high school helped me get my first real taste of transformation — it was how I started developing strong abdominal muscles, which is still the strongest part of my body today.

I went back to Blogilates because I remember doing it purely for myself in the confines of my room, not worried about what anyone was thinking or how I looked with sweat beading on my forehead and staining the underarms of my shirt. It was liberating to get back to that again.

The changes I've felt my body go through these past few months have far exceeded my expectations. I feel these changes, I don't just see them. I know I'm stronger now than I ever was and that's proof that I was too caught up in things that didn't matter back then.

My heart and my mind can agree on one thing — they depend on my body for balance, purpose, and action.

So it's not the number of times I go to the gym in a week, the number of weights I lift, the number of miles I run, or the number on a scale. It's something that transcends measure. It's a warm pool of energy that sits in my core, radiating outwards and pulling broken pieces back together.

It's a reason. A reason to love, respect, and trust me and my process. I've really needed that.

21 things to remember in 2021

When the clock struck midnight, pulling me into the first few seconds of 2020, I was in a Minnesota ski lounge with my then-boyfriend and now-husband. It was a defining trip for me as a young adult, one that I could thoroughly enjoy with money that I saved up as a working woman, alongside the love of my life and best friend, in a place far away from the busy San Jose streets and Silicon Valley lifestyle. I remember thinking to myself, "This is the most beautiful new years ever I've ever seen."

And it really was. The cold air still felt painfully crisp and sharp against my body even though I was decked out in enough layers of warm clothes to make me waddle as I walk. But I was holding onto a steaming cup of thick hot chocolate in one hand and Kevin's forever warm fingers in the other. At the end of the countdown, fireworks erupted across a pitch-black sky into warm streaks of orange, red, yellow, and citrusy green. Everything else was white with snow — the mountain tops, the wooden floors, the tables and chairs, the tips of everyone's gloves and beanies. I didn't know anyone else there, but we were all wishing each other a happy new year and hugging like family friends. Everything felt perfect. So perfect that I could feel my eyes getting wet and my heart dropping to the floor. I couldn't help it, even though there was nothing wrong.

There's a sense of weight that falls onto your shoulders when a new year comes around. Even though the mood was merry amidst the hugs and shots of alcohol, I could feel that weight in the air. Everyone's expectations, everyone's desire for something new, everyone's fear of falling into the same trap for the umpteenth time in a row.

Thinking back on that night, I recall going into 2020 with so much expectation grounded in pure fear. I was worried about a million things that could possibly go 'wrong' over the next few months. I say 'wrong' because there wasn't really anything concretely wrong about these things I was worried about. They were just heavy piles of possibilities, possibilities of change that I wasn't ready to embrace.

And then three months in, everything did change.

It was never in my plan, your plan, anyone's plan, to be here in the middle of this chaos. Some of us have lost too much to even think about, some of us have come out of this with more to be grateful for.

But this change taught us all something. To me, it was a moment of truth that felt like a slap across the face. If I came out of this year with the privilege of a comfortable bed and warm food, of being able to FaceTime my loved ones and see them right there, of being alive and healthy — then I better have learned enough to stop being so damn afraid of life what could go wrong with it.

In 2020, I learned about the Japanese art of kintsugi, which directly translates to golden repair. It's a beautiful take on repairing broken pottery, a concept dated back to the 14th century when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke his favorite tea bowl. A local craftsman pieced the broken tea bowl together using golden lacquer that flowed through the cracks between the little shards and pieces. What came out of this was a whole new piece of art streaked with gold in places you'd never expect. It turned into an art form drawing inspiration from the Japanese term mottanai, which conveys the feeling of regret over waste — in this case, the wastage of broken pottery pieces that were almost thrown out but were reinvented into something more valuable.

Kintsugi is an art that places flaws in the center of beauty. It rebels against aesthetic perfection as a glorified sign of value and instead accentuates cracks on the surface as an indicator of true worth. The meaning behind kintsugi extends far beyond pottery, as you may already tell. Personally, it was a concept I couldn't shake out of my head and it became a driving force behind the lifestyle changes I successfully made last year.

Much like streaks of gold, 2020 taught me to look at my flaws as a part of who I am. I wanted to understand my weaknesses enough to hold them up somewhere where they shine. Instead of letting my anxiety define my inability to enjoy just about anything, 2020 was about letting my anxiety guide new goals that respected the limits of my state of mind.

I'm finally carving out my own experiences, not influenced by the achievements of others and the personal factors that got other people to where they are. I'm moving at my own pace, and that gives me more time to appreciate what I have that others don't. These things about myself that seemed so bad could actually be flipped into something good. That was crazy to me.

As I sit here on the first day of 2021, I'm caught between a desire for something groundbreaking and the humbling reality that a new year never really feels all that different. But I want this year to be the best I've ever had — and I really feel like I'm at a position in my life where I can make that come true. To do that I'm not going to hold onto resolutions. I don't need high and mighty goals to give me a purpose. If you've watched the Pixar movie, Soul, you might catch the drift here that I'm just going to focus on living. So here's a list of 21 little guiding lights I want to remember as I go about my days in 2021.

admit and accept mistakes To me, I look at this as the core of kintsugi in my life. Perfection isn't the best journey to learn and grow from. My strongest attributes are formed from my mistakes and how I've bounced back from them. The world is too vast and complicated for me to not screw something up. That's living.

love. always. Family. Friends. Hobbies. Food. Love comes in many different forms — as long as I love someone or something, there's this sense of warmth and genuine satisfaction to hold me together and push me forward. I want to spend my days doing things I love with people I love, and I'll always look for that.

say thank you to the sky I spent a lot of my 2020 at parks, and it's reminded me about how different the skies look in America compared to the skies back in Malaysia. Both of these skies are beautiful, and I've created so many memories under them. The sky's always been a steady strong constant, and it's the first place I turn to when I have nowhere to look, nowhere to go. So thank you, sky.

hold onto the 'box'

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received came from an introductory counseling session to help me understand my anxiety and state of mind. "Imagine you're in a room alone, and there's a single box in the middle of the room. Stack all your thoughts, good and bad, into that box. Slowly, one by one. Pay attention to what you're stacking into the box and why they're important to you." I always think about that box. It helps me confront myself.

always have a plan

I like having a sense of direction to help me visualize my growth and progress. A simple plan, a mission statement, will help me remember the purpose behind everything I do. Whether it's a purpose for today, tomorrow, or 10 years down the road. It's going to keep me grounded.

don't worry if a plan fails

I believe that nobody's ever really ready for a plan if they're not ready to fail at it. Life is so unpredictable, and I don't want to waste time wracking my brain over a lost possibility. There are always a million other possibilities out there — but that comes with patience and a willingness to let go.

be intentional Remember the 'why.' Why am I doing this? Why am I reacting this way? An intentional mindset helps me make more conscious decisions. Decisions that are thought through and reasoned and not driven by things like anger and loneliness.

take deep breaths Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Focus on the out-breath, all the way through until the very last second. Breathing exercises with the Headspace app are a lifesaver for me.

focus on today, this moment right now

I can't even imagine how many years worth of moments I've wasted worrying about the future, daydreaming nightmares when I should have been looking at the blessings unfolding around me. So many self-made sabotages. No more of that.

the grass is never greener 2020 showed me that the world is pretty fucked up regardless of where you are or where you move to. I want to focus on what people are going through, and not groundless assumptions and generalizations associate with anything other than the experiences of those who are impacted.

find the bigger purpose The world is so much bigger than me. There are so many people out there. So many people doing things that are making my everyday life better. I want to always remember to look beyond myself, and at what I can do for this world.

apologize less In 2021, it's all about being confident and unapologetic about the person I am. Period.

trust my feelings Accepting my emotions will do me far more good than ignoring them or undermining their severity. There's a reason behind them, and understanding that reason is the only way to beat that hurdle.

prioritize health Before I make a decision, always remember to think about how it will impact my body or mental health. The mind and body are impacted by so many different factors, and they're not invincible. A few mindful moments will go a long way, even more so if I've already developed good habits. It's always easy to overestimate what I'm capable of doing.

do things that take effort Nothing quite like that feeling after I've done something I've pushed off for far too long or something that I never thought I could complete. It's the best return for working hard, and it makes me feel more alive and connected to the world I live in.

have uncomfortable conversations There are a ton of people out there who don't see the world the way I do. 2020 shone a light on that, big time. Silencing anyone isn't going to make the difference, we just need to be willing to hear each other out before establishing our beliefs. Uncomfortable conversations will help me keep my human experience well-rounded. I don't want a filter bubble.

be consistent Habits, habits, habits. 2021 is the year of keeping up good habits. Keep my newly introduced daily habits small and simple, emphasizing the notion of consistency and patience before jumping into something with unrealistic expectations.

loosen up a little Life isn't a competition. I don't need to be validated with the same things that validate other people. The things that make me happy are quaint and simple. I don't need to worry about how they stack up against anyone else's. I don't need to try to get there. Focus on what makes me, me.

don't keep waiting for the 'right time' There is no such thing as the perfect time. There's always going to be something in the way, something that feels more important, something to be scared about. The best people in the world started off with the courage to take a leap, even with doubts. That makes all the difference.

prove myself wrong To do something that I never thought I could do. To be something I never thought I could be. To go somewhere I never thought I could go.

take things slow The most important thing to remember in 2021. I've spent so much of my life in a rush, and it felt like 2020 was the first time I really stopped to appreciate as much of it as I did. I miss out on so many things when I'm scrambling to get somewhere. No matter how big my goals are, I'll only be ready to truly achieve them if I can handle myself with enough grace to enjoy the journey and appreciate all its lessons.