I’m not spectacular in the sense of having earned megabucks or achieved fame and renown, but that’s ok. I think all that matters is to have people around you who love you and support you. I have been lucky to find that in various ways. I hope you — anyone reading things — might find it useful thinking about the long arc of life.
I’ve found that I have had many visions of myself and what I could do. Some ambitions might be delusional, but they were useful for a while. I have been incredibly privileged/lucky that I have found different organisations and communities where different parts of my life can thrive and grow. And most importantly, I have friends who love me, and whom I love as well to move through together in life.
I used to have many ambitions and dreams. I guess I should call them delusions now. I had thoughts and desires about wanting to win the Nobel Prize in superconductivity when I was young, hoping that I would create the compound that would create room-temperature-pressure superconductivity. The existence of the material would create revolutions in our energy system, and a new breakthrough (and a theory) will lead to a Nobel. So I went to gobble up Richard Feynman’s three volume-series of his Physics Lectures. Suffice to say, I wasn’t smart enough to continue in physics after a while, and so that dream died.
I dreamt of being a social entrepreneur to fight poverty in the world, or to help expand people’s empathic horizon, and that dream died too, as I…