I Deserve to Be Kind

You know I always like to say, I’ve aged 10 years for every year I’ve started my own business since 2018. That’s partly because I am grappling with the concept of getting old, like any other sane 20 somethings who are inching towards the big 30. But it’s also because of something much bigger. 

Now, let me just try to picture the scene for you. The year was 2017. With a head full of bleached hair, I sat smiling, excitedly waiting to meet a couple of my young artist friends while doodling yet another coffee cup into my notebook. I was occasionally depressed and lost and angry, yes, but on the whole, I was happy. The spirit of the young optimist hadn’t yet died in me. If anything, it was strong and kicking, so strong that I decided I wanted to team up with my friend Alix to risk everything for an idea.

You see, back then, I believed that people were inherently good. I took projects and people at face value. Thinking even if flawed, most things are of a good nature. I thought well of people, of events, of my nation, of the world, even knowing that we fucked up most of the time. But underneath it all, I believed, was something wholesome, pure, quite worthy of my trust and help. 

Oh, youthful hope. Something so familiar, so embedded in how I viewed myself and how I lived my life, how could you change in such a short time? I cannot begin to recount exactly just when and where it got polluted, when the black ink started to seep and took control of that pure white hope. 

Maybe it was when naively, I got convinced into signing a business deal that should have been worth 10 times the money I was paid for. Thinking I wanted to help that organization and they wouldn’t hurt a writer and a small startup like me, right? Wrong. It was so messy it almost became a lawsuit at the end. 

But no, that was not it. That was only the first drop of black.

Maybe it was that time I was encouraged to go to countless meetings, even when I didn’t feel particularly up for it, but I felt like I had to “because they so wanted a female voice. They so needed my help.” Just to again and again, see nothing coming out of it but a few pictures proving they have heard my voice. No. It was not it. It was only the second and third and fourth and fifth drop of black.

But the more I thought of it, the blurrier that boundary of black and white became. Maybe it was not a particular time, a particular place, but a slow seep of ink, diffused over time, increased in volume as yet another deal was made in favor of “them” at the expense of “me”. 

I gave so much that I risked having nothing left to give. What I learned in the business world in the early days of my startup and the beginning of my adulthood is that, if you give and give, people will take and take. Why? What have I done to deserve this? Why were my kindness, empathy and honesty rewarded with so many lies?

The thing about living with the adage “treat others how you’d like to be treated” is that you get very confused, even angry when you’ve kept your part of the deal, yet people still treat you horribly. Why?

Before I knew it, I started to be calculating too. How will this serve my company? How will this serve me? Is the profit worth the resource? The topics of freedom, of benefitting the world was less talked of, increasingly replaced with “so what’s the budget?” If we are all going to calculate our loss and gains, I might as well get good at math.

But the calculation doesn’t just stop there. Like an ink drop in  water, it seeps into all facets of my life, and all my thoughts. What would I gain from this hangout with my friends? What would I lost in this argument with my girlfriend? What should be my strategy if I were to win this over my family? What personality should I adopt? What words should I say or not say if I want this personal interaction to go my way? My life became one giant startup. People became resources. And the ultimate business mission? I don’t even know what it was anymore. 

Now, I want to give myself some credit for at least being dumb. Because if I’d known this sooner, I’d have never let it happen. But as it was, it slowly, sneakily made its way into my head. And before long, I woke up unable to recognize myself in the mirror. 

I’d always prided myself in my kind heart. That even with  many  mistakes and awkward interactions, my underlying intention was always good. I was always doing what I thought was best for everyone involved. No matter how big I fucked up, I had no regrets of conscience, just funny stories of mishaps to share with friends over some chicken wings. But now, the same couldn’t easily be said. I have lied too many times, been too “tactful” too many times to claim that white yang for myself. 

But do I regret it? No. Because after all the self-blame and self-pity I could utter, I began to realize. Being purely Yang, was just a naive interpretation of the world. Even though I was hopeful, back then, I failed to see the negative in me, in people and in events, and in so doing, hurt myself and others because I couldn’t see the truth in our nature, couldn’t accept their faults, and thus was unable to appreciate them for what they really were.  

But the experience of being purely Yin was also unfair. Too many people were scrutinized and wrongly convicted of bad intentions. And the most unfair victim was probably myself. I became depleted of hope, of energy, of vitality. Friendship, love, happiness, kindness, became more of an equation of loss and gain, rather than a natural part of life. I started to close myself in. Nothing is fun or exciting anymore, just another business deal to calculate and settle. I hated whom I’ve become, yet can’t seem to have any energy to change back to who I was. I was for the first time, ashamed of my inner self, of my manipulative mind yet I couldn’t seem to stop it.

Then I realized…  There is good in bad people. There is bad in good people. There is good in me. There is bad in me. What is important is, which one do I fight for? Which one do I align myself to?

Being good doesn’t always guarantee you’re treated well. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from all this heartache and burnt bridges. Being kind doesn’t always mean people won’t take advantage of you. But you do it anyway, because that’s the only way you can keep yourself sane, to keep your conscience, to keep your faith in the humanity that is in  yourself. For without this hope, this belief and commitment to kindness, to honesty, to understanding, I was living in an increasingly hollowed mind, ready to just finish it all off because there is nothing else for me to live for. 

But of course, I’ve learned to draw my boundaries. To make sure I’m well taken cared of, before sharing the rest with the world. The kindness, honesty and understanding I’m living for are to be applied first and foremost to myself. When the cup is full, it overflows to the rest of the world. 

Now I realize I don’t need the world to treat me nicely. I treat myself and others how I’d like to be treated. That’s it. People can treat me how they like. They can still take advantage of me. They can still be inconsiderate. To fool me however they like. I will stay kind. I will stay hopeful. I will stay open because I deserve a mind that is kind, hopeful and open. As long as I have these, I can live on, even happily. It is 100 times better to have kindness in your heart while losing, than to win yet with a blackened heart.

I now give people leave to go on with their mindless, selfish ways but they will see sooner or later that though they may win the deal, the black ink will soon seep, blackening their heart and lungs and move all the way into their lips. And when they do realize, I hope they will at least ask for help because I will be happy to lend a hand not because they deserve it, but because I deserve to be kind.  

Maybe I’m not making it clear. Heck, it took me almost two years to put this much word on this excruciatingly impactful experience. And I expect I’ll still need a few more years to observe and try to verbalize it to its fullest extent. But the good thing is, at least I’m writing this now, posting this now, not out of any ulterior motive to reinforce my online brand, or to win over anything. I’m writing it because I feel like it and that’s that.  

I’m 25 and I’d Like a Refund, Plz

“25 is going to be a shit year.” That’s what I keep telling people, because well, for some reason, turning 25 just kinda pushes you into an existential crisis. I mean, I even tried to skip over it by telling everyone I meet I’m 26 now, but tough luck, that didn’t work. Mscheng is too smart for Mscheng. As cliche as it sounds, I can fool everyone except for myself. 

Being 25… It feels really weird. I mean, in this life thus far, there are distinct phases where I just feel different because what is expected of me changed. I felt that when I was 15, because I started to have memories of “10 years ago”. That felt somewhat serious. I felt that again when I moved from a “teen” to 20, it felt solemn, yet experimental. Now again, at 25, it’s like I’m even MORE adult. I can no longer hide in the “young adult” umbrella, the few years after graduation have gone by, and now I have gone through the first quarter of life already! 

25 is a heavy feeling number. So square, 5×5, no longer flimsy like 23. It didn’t help either that my 25 coincided with a global pandemic and economic recession that is 2020. It also didn’t help either that my self-image was screwed after being an “influencer” through vlogs on Wapatoa in 2019. Before I knew what was happening, I became a mere shell of my old happy self. I felt empty, like whatever I was doing was not enjoyable anymore. Work, friends, hobbies, all the things I lived for, now all seemed so… meaningless.

I first blamed it on the influencer self image, so I stopped vlogging and put a cartoon as my profile picture, slowly disappearing from online fame. That seemed to help liven up my life a bit, but not much. I still had troubles in my relationship because I was demanding too much stuff. So many repeated fights for the same reason, I wanted stability. I wanted to make plans for something stable, a family, a house, maybe two cats. And of course being queer in Cambodia makes all these almost impossible without a huge drama and family rifts that we’re all not ready to go through. 

I started asking myself, why? Why do I suddenly want a family and a house? The things that we used to detest so much just 3 years before? Then I realized, for some reason, the comrades, the friends around me have changed too. Just like me, not many are committed to their careers anymore. They just wanted something that makes money so they can get married. Not many are excited about hobbies anymore, they just wanted to be with their significant others. Long talks with friends? Those get rarer and rarer to come by with everyone being so busy with work schedules and relationships. 

How did we grow from idealistic young adults, bright-eyed, with a dream of changing the world, to this? The change is just so… sudden. I didn’t see it coming, and I’m not sure if my friends have either. It’s like overnight, family becomes our first priority again. And everything else exists just to support it. 

Is that wrong? I don’t think so. We can choose to prioritize whatever we want. It’s just personally, I don’t like who I am when I’m like this. I love the old Cheng. The one that didn’t care what was expected of her. The one that found joy in a flower growing through the cracks, in publishing a new article, in celebrating a friend’s birthday or long battles of puns. I don’t like who I’ve become. I don’t want the rest of my life to narrow down to my significant other and our nest. I don’t like feeling like I’m not living a real, worthy life, when I do anything not related to building a family. 

And I guess that’s the root cause of this 25 misery. It’s that expectations have changed for us. We are no longer expected to just graduate and get a job. We’re now expected to find our love, settle down and build a family. I mean, being Asian, that has always been expected of us. But we resisted. Now too many of us have accepted that expectation. For those who can, good for them. But for those who cannot (like me), it is starting to feel pretty lonely up here. But I guess we just have to muster up the courage to go on living our life the way we can. And learn to find joy in it again. 

Maybe the antidote lies in the words of G-Dragon and IU, “You’re not a grownup, you’re not a child, you’re just you.”

(Yes, I’ve been finding solace in Korean songs about being 25, check them out if you want xD 
Pallette by IU &}
25 (Twenty Five) by Wheein) 

Confession of an Attention Seeking Whore

Okay, maybe this is painfully obvious to many of you, but i’m just going to come clean anyway, I craved social approval. There, I said it. 

If you were a literature student analyzing my life from birth to the age of 24, you would see one running theme: this character really REALLY loves social approval and admiration. She literally lives for it! 

This desire to appear cool in the eyes of people I admire. This desire to get praises, recognition and love. This desire to feel like I’m worthy of being alive and known. 

I bet this is not something new to many of you. I mean, we have all been living like that as children. Just take a look at any child in your radius. The way they talk, the topic that they choose, the happiness they get from hearing a “good job” from adults are very evident. 

I thought I grew out of it. I thought by earning my own damn money, making my own decisions, travelling the world and assembling my own cohort of close friends mean I’m an independent woman who don’t need no approval. But it’s strange that I should strive to be an independent woman who doesn’t need approval when that’s the trend that is approved by the people I’m around! 

When I looked back to my old posts, and read my past journals, I saw how much of my life goals such as traveling widely, creating my own startup, learning how to draw good art, becoming a bookworm, becoming financially stable, volunteering to save the earth etc. were geared towards gaining praises from people. Though they were disguised as me exploring the world and building myself up and helping the community, they were also suspiciously trendy and were sure to gain admiration from people!

It wasn’t until I made it that I realized what a toxic desire it was. It wasn’t until I’d given speeches to thousands of young people, when passerbys started to stop and asked me for pictures, when total strangers knew me as the cool bong from Wapatoa before I even said a word that I realize yes, I’ve made it. I have built myself a fanbase. My name meant something to some people now. My words weigh something now. And on top of feeling so loved and fulfilled, I also felt… bad! 

Because the thing about wanting approval is that it’s never enough. When you get it from 1 person, you want 10. When you get 10, you want 100. When you get 100, you want 1000 and on and on and on. Valuing the admiration you get from people also means you have to keep up the work. Whatever you’re admired for, you will have to not just continue, but push it forward. If you’re not careful, that one thing can dominate the other shades of your personality and you risk becoming this 2D character with only one aim and one goal. And well, that isn’t fun. I’ve tried. 

Once I got the bitter aftertaste of social approval, it lost its appeal for me. It was clear how toxic of a fruit it was. And I praise myself for being brave enough to let such a big part of my life go. Just because you’re used to something doesn’t mean it has to stay. If it doesn’t make you happy, let it go. 

That’s what I did and for the last year or so, I had to rebuild my goals from the ground up. Only the ones that served my true purpose: for me to be happy and free on my own, and for me to offer that happiness to others, can stay. Everything I was doing, all the projects I had in mind, the people I talked with, had to be scrutinized. What was done for the only the grams had to be eliminated. What began with mixed motivations had to be purified.

 I started to get to know myself again, because as cliche as it sounds, the only person you really need approval from is you. And before I pleased myself by pleasing other people. How about now? Who am I without social reflection? What am I without context? 

Through this process I had to let go of painting and drawing because it was clear as day I began it not out of a genuine love, but to use it as a vehicle for approval from others because u’know, knowing how to draw is damn cool! Even the hiatus on this blog was part of the journey. I had to really ask myself. Was I writing to get the imaginary praises from unknown readers, or did I really love writing? But well, here I am, so you may guess the answer.

Through this process I learned to love myself. To do things that truly bring pure joy not tainted by a craving to be praised and boast, to announce, to be recognized. To tune out the constant chatter of approval seeking that was in my psyche for as long as I remember. 

Without the busy-ness of trying to live a life that “seemed cool”, I started to be happy just being in the moment doing absolutely nothing extraordinary. If people were to look at my life now, they would be wondering where did the cool Cheng go? How did the world-travelling, three-job hustling, social butterfly, impressive Cheng of yesteryears turn into this room-dwelling, absolutely average Cheng of 2020? 

The answer is partly Covid. But mostly it’s because I don’t have to travel the world to please people anymore. I don’t have to hustle three jobs. I don’t have to appear in big events. I don’t have to know two thousands people to be that awesome well-connected socialite. 

I can just be in my pj’s all day, reading books, listening to Doja Cat on repeat and write whatever the fuck I want. I can just sleep. I can just be totally ordinary. I can have completely normal friends. I can hang out in completely boring ways that are not worth an insta story. And the cool thing is? I’m happier this way. This kind of joy is so pure compared to the pleasure of pleasing that often comes mingled with anxiety to further please, worry and stress to succeed. 

I think at this point, I’m still exploring what I am without the context of social approval. But I know I’m on the right path. I mean, being ambitionless is about the most uncool thing in this day and age, and I’m just that, every single day! 

Declaring War on Beauty Filters

Okay. This may make me sound positively grandma-ish, but I’ve been having a problem. 

It’s the fact that I don’t recognize half of the younger people who have added me on Facebook in real life. And it’s not through a lack of trying. I have spent time stalking their profiles, I have swiped through their photos because I know we’ll be meeting soon. But alas, when the time comes, I am positively blown away! They look nothing like their photos!

Now photoshopping and editing oneself to look smoother is not a new trick. We’ve all done that since time immemorial. But I’ve noticed a rise in beauty filters in virtually every social-media app and photo-editing app there is. They don’t just smooth your skin anymore. They enlarge your eyes, whiten your face, and even mold it into the illusive v-shape. 

So, of course, Cheng has checked it out and lo and behold, I loved what I looked like with the filters.

Cheng, after 20 minutes of heavy editing. The goal was: aging Chinese influencer

I could crop out my long chin, double my small Chinese eyes, and make my straight non-existent lips luscious. That’s plastic surgery and heavy makeup all at the touch of my finger! With these filters, I look closer to my favorite Chinese influencer than ever. And this is like bare minimum. I just woke up from a nap, with absolutely no makeup on, shitty lighting and messy hair. 

But this is why I decided to stop using filters once and for all. Because after using it, I loathed the real Cheng I saw in the mirror after only one hour of redesigning my face to look conventionally attractive. And though I may not be pretty, I’ve worked hard all these years to finally see the beauty in me, to accept my wrinkles and my scars, my non-existent lips and my longass chin! 

And that’s the thing. Like make up, these filters are helping us see a false image of ourselves. The more we see how “beautiful” we can be, the less satisfied we are with our present, unique features and body shape.

Just like with makeup, I started asking myself: who’s to say that this and this is supposed to be beautiful? Who’s to say that large eyes are attractive? V-shaped face? Who’s to say that only whitened, smooth skin is palatable to the eyes?  

It was a huge effort to cut my addiction to makeup. To finally make me see I look beautiful when I smile, with wrinkles and bare-face and all. It took a huge effort to get out of the mindset that kept whispering, “Look around you. They think you look like a piece of shit. Why not just cover that up? And enlarge that? And redden this?” 

It took quite some time to see that all of this is a scheme that is designed to make us restless, to crave to change. Beauty standard is just a game, dictated by the current trend in fashion. White skin, large eyes, v-shaped face, that’s Korean and Chinese game. Big butt, smoky eyes, luscious lips and cheekbones, that’s the American game. All these games are there partly just so we’d feel insecure about ourselves, and buy beauty products, or services. 

And damn, if I’m gonna let myself be a pawn in someone else’ game. I have created my own game, to be applied only to me! It’s tanned skin, wrinkly face, hair with grey strikes, non-existent lips and long chin. 

That’s my game because that’s the gift of my ancestors, the Chinese from Guangdong and the Cambodians in Kampong Cham. They have gifted me eyes that can see, chin that can support my face, and lips that can smile. Life has gifted scars to remember my past by. Who are the Koreans and Chinese and Americans to tell me otherwise? To tell me these gifts are ugly? To make me change what my ancestors were proud of? 

You might argue that you put on makeup and beauty filters to feel happy. That’s valid. We all just do things to be happy. But what if I tell you, you can be happy with what you look like without changing anything physically or digitally? 

I am the living proof that you can love what you look even if you’re deemed not attractive by the world at large. All it takes is a change in your mindset. To switch from being someone else’ game, to creating your own game. To be proud of the gifts of your hundreds of generations of ancestors. To see that beauty lies in the freshness and happiness that radiate from you. 

So yeah, be warned. You’ll still see bare-faced, non-filtered pictures of Cheng on the internet and irl. You may be tempted to be disappointed at the absolute bare minimum beauty standard that is my face. But you know what? No one gives a fuck, especially not me! 

Being an influencer fucked me the fuck up!

In case you haven’t really tuned in, I have disappeared from personal blogging for quite some years. As you can see, I even stopped the personal plan subscription, demoting this dusty little blog back to its original wordpress address. 

The reason for that? Too much damn work from my other blog, Wapatoa.com. Since my switch to Wapatoa in early 2018, much has happened. I’ve done at least 30 interviews for various TV shows, radio shows and social media outlets. I’ve spoken to at least 3,000 young people in various workshops and talks all over the country.

And what came out of that? A group of adorable people who think I’m quite cool and tell me so and always like and share the things I post on social media. They are really the cutest people on earth. And what comes out of that, you may ask? A bigger and bigger, more swollen head on my neck, that’s for sure. 

It’s intriguing, isn’t it? This influencer life. I think the hip thing to say now is to deny you’re one, even if you obviously are. And yes, I was just like that. Many have said I was an influencer (though to like 10 people max), I always refuse, but in the depth of my heart, I knew I was one. What I said online seemed to have the ability to make people think, or pay attention to a certain thing, even if it’s just 10 people. 

At one point, I even got paid to post about a certain event. I can see why this is the life some people would choose and I think if I really put heart into it, post videos of me talking, I’d be on my way to the social positive influencer’s life. And that seems like a good life, doesn’t it? You just get paid to be yourself and talk about stuff! But the hitch is that, are you sure you will still be yourself? The answer is big fat no for me. 

My life’s goal has been pretty clear to me for a while. Everything I do, from writing this now, to creating Wapatoa was to help people get exposed to better ideas and lead better lives through their own initiative. So getting paid to just talk about cool, relevant stuff seems like a pretty good deal. Until it is not anymore. I started to feel like I’m faking the interaction with my so-called audience (mostly friends and followers) just to satisfy my own objectives. 

Being dubbed as the influencer to a better life, I started to look at everything I do personally in the lights of its influenceability. It started innocently enough. I was just doing my monthly money tracking and thought, “Hey, what if people knew about this? A small picture and a caption doesn’t take that much time. Let’s do it!” Then it’s more and more pictures, more sharing of my personal activities and thoughts, that I believed, was to influence people to be better. 

Whether those things actually made a difference or not, I’m not sure. But I sure know it changed me. I started doing things not because I enjoyed it, or because I wanted to, but because I knew it’d be a good example to set for my total of 10 audiences. And I don’t know about you, but that way of living is damn hell! It may look so admirable from the screen, but the actual enjoyment of the activity itself is lost once I focus my mind on how it would look later, instead of being in the present with it. Once something is posted, I eagerly await feedback because I did the whole thing just for my people! If they don’t’ react, that means I did something wrong! 

On top of that, as my head grew and grew, I raised the standard of my being higher and higher. To deserve the love and respect of my 10 followers, I thought I had to be practically perfect in every way: fit, kind, happy, compassionate, joyful, friendly, smart, wise, funny, energetic, etc. And uhm. Needless to say, that’s not possible. But one can really get into the disillusion that it is. 

And that was where I was. I thought it was possible for me to be the best role model for my audience, meaning I’ll just have to try a bit harder to wake up early, to do more, to spend less, to be friendly to everyone, to virtually be happy all the time. Doing something means doing it perfectly, or else it means I didn’t try hard enough and I’m a fucking failure and a big fat fake! 

It’s not hard to imagine how that impacts one’s life. I used to be a curious, and carefree sort of person. This life turned me into someone who’s so afraid of making a fool of oneself, to the point I didn’t even try anymore. I went out less because what’s the point if I couldn’t be 100% friendly to every single person I met in the event? I shrinked from trying new things like volleyball because I knew I WOULD butcher it and what’s the point if I can’t do it perfectly to show off to my audience? I even read less because I knew I couldn’t absorb the book 100% and finish my fucking 50 book goal for 2019. So why even try to read? 

These two things combined made practically everything I did in my day-to-day life a punishment. I had to do it perfectly or I was a fake and a loser. Everything that I did became an act. I was acting the role of the perfect idol, and it was making my real life a hell! 

I stopped going out. I stopped wanting to meet new people because it meant some new people are bound to not like me, which would be my fault because I didn’t try hard enough, right? I stopped exploring new fields like photography, videography, drawing, animation, script writing, all of which I’d always wanted to dive into, because I knew I was bound to make mistakes, make a fool of myself, and people would see that I’m a fake. All my persona is fake. Their perception of me is built on fake fake fake. 

Wow. Those are pretty… emotionally charged words. But don’t you worry. I’m much better now. The fact that I have understood this much is already a sign that it’s healing because during the whole of 2019, I was confused. I didn’t know what caused my few mental breakdowns, and my lack of energy in encountering anything new. I knew I was changing for the worse, but I had no idea what was causing it. 

But of course, I groped my way out quite blindly. Two things have helped release me from this hell hole. One is my decision to let go of helping people. I still want to help people, that’s the driving force behind my life. But I know now, you can’t help people when they don’t help themselves. It’s their lives, no matter how big of an influencer you are, you can’t change someone bend on destroying themselves for some time. 

People need to learn their own lessons. What we can do is to make sure we live what we preach. Our life is the most effective lesson there is. No preaching, no talking, no posting can surpass the way you live. With that insight, I release the idea that I have to be perfect, so I can influence people to become better. They are the ones who will decide to be better or not, and when they do, they can come and we can have a talk over a nice cup of tea. My number one priority is not to help people fix themselves. My number one priority is to be happy and content on my own, and help people after (and only when they want help). 

The other wise decision I made was to quit social media. I deleted Facebook, messenger, Instagram, and whatnot from my phone for the very last time, a big ordeal for someone who makes a living out of posting things online. Instead of sharing my life moment to moment on Facebook, now I share the report of those moments in the form of blog posts both on here and Wapatoa. The sharing spirit is still strong in me, but blogging is a less intrusive, and obsessive way of doing so. I know probably only 10% of my Facebook audience will be reading these reports, but hey, it’s how it is. My priority is not to influence them. If they don’t wanna read, they don’t wanna read. 

So yes, this blog is my goodbye text to being an influencer. If you want to still influenced by me, just come meet me outside! Or you can make sure to follow these three channels:

– personal shit talk: mschengcorner.wordpress.com

– slightly more professional shit talk: www.wapatoa.com

– book shit talk: goodreads/sokchengs

Header image: a 5 minute sketch from yours truly

 

I meditated for one hour a day for a week!

The title really does speak for itself, huh? If you a long time reader of this blog, or have talked to me in general, you probably know I’m a practitioner of meditation. My inability to shut up about this topic to close friends and strangers alike has probably bored not a small amount of people, but I’d risk being a bore as long as I get the words out there.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that I have been trying to practise meditation for the past few years, but never really got into it intensively. That is until I watched this amazing YouTube video from Nathaniel Drew. Besides looking like a hottie, he also does pretty interesting self-development experiments. In one of them, he records the process of one-hour-long meditation, and his thoughts about the changes it induced. 

So my little bean was like, hey, if this younger handsome guy can do it? Then why don’t I try it out? And thus, the one-hour-per-day of meditation challenge began. 

You know, this blog post is actually quite easy because I filmed, yes filmed myself doing the challenge as well as my after thoughts day after day.

IMG_2964
an example of the many vids i’ve taken in that one week

By the end of day six, I changed my mind and scraped the whole vlogging thing out of the window, because I do not want a stranger mortal soul to see me just fresh out of bed at 5AM in the morning, sitting in a corner of my room, IN VIDEO FORM! 

But again, that’s besides the point. The point is that I’ve learned quite a lot from the meditation. Was it hard? Yes. Before this challenge, the most I meditated was 15 minutes. Throughout the week, I realized there were moments where the minute seemed to drag on and on and on. Like who knew time could be so slow? But you know what? I was fine with slow ticking. I’ve been missing the idle, slow life of childhood. Life passes by so fast these days, it was refreshing to see a slow-ticking time where I just sat there and did nothing but looked at the face of a clock! 

But what I also noticed is that no matter how shitty my mood was before the meditation, I always ALWAYS ended up happier after. I mean, I was grumpily stretching my wake-up time from 5:30AM to 5AM. It was a hard week. It was crazy to think that struggling to keep my attention on something for one hour can produce such an effect, but the reality corresponds and it did indeed made me happier. 

What I also noticed is that, there is a pattern in my meditation. The first 5-15 minutes were usually very chaotic, very mindless as I tried to be aware of all the thoughts and feelings inside. Then there is about 20-30 minutes of mindful exercises. I liked to do either the pebble meditation, breath-counting or calm-smile exercise. What is marvelous is that the last 5-15 minutes or so are pure joy! It’s like I’ve made the journey, and arrived at a place of relaxation and mindfulness. I won’t say it was 100%, but it was certainly close, something I never enjoyed. That state of mind is just light, free and joyful. No wonder why I was always smiling happily after every session. 

On day six, I had to travel to a Banteay Meanchey to join Barcamp. Good bye, privacy. Good bye, routine. Because I couldn’t find a good meditation spot in the morning at our hotel, I noticed a drop in my mood the whole day. Not a drop, but I was not as happy as I could be. I’m an old bird. When I travel, it shakes up my routine and my peace and needs at least 1-2 days for the dirt to sit back in. 

Previous days of meditation have boosted my mood and relaxation through the roof, and day-six Cheng was yearning for the same boost. So at about 2PM, I sneaked away from the team, and meditated on the bank of a lake inside the university for one hour. It was amazing! Meditating in nature is surely something else. Even one of the volunteers, Piseth, noticed my mood change immediately when I rejoined them. 

I keep asking myself, am I becoming too dependent on the practise? Without the practise, would I be a grumpy old man forever? Then I realize. It’s not that the lack of practice makes me grumpy. It’s that at any given day, my default mood is already low-grumpy, and meditation helps to elevate that to joy! And among the choices of drugs, alcohol or risking your neck for “some adventures” for some mood elevation, I have to say meditation is the most low-cost, healthiest and most efficient of all! 

Final thoughts? Unlike Nathaniel Drew, who after the experiment concluded that while it was good, it was impractical to practise it everyday, this week has shown me I MUST take the time to do so, or else I’d be a huge fucking fool! It’s like stumbling on a piece of land with treasures in it, but because you think you can find something better, you choose to you just ignore the land, and waste the rest of your life digging at other places instead. Doesn’t that sound like a fool to you? It does to me! I’ve found my treasure plot, and here, I’ll be diggin’ for the rest of my life!

*header image credit: weheartit. I have to say though that this image is quite misleading. You can meditate anywhere, on your unmade bed, on a dirty old bench in a park, or on the toilet seat of a night club because you feel a panic attack coming. You really don’t need to have fancy meditation pants, or aesthetic instagram-worthy views of nature to do so! I just chose this image because the colors are prettyyyyyy~~~~

Hello, Little Kid from Kampongsom, We Meet Again

We owe big parts of ourselves to the places we were in.

That’s mostly why I have tried to keep Sihanoulk Ville out of my thoughts and travel list for the past few years. It’s the place where I was the most innocent, curious and calm. A newly-moved eight-year-old girl who had nothing much to amuse herself but a big yard full of trees and rocks, and a beach ten minutes away from her house.

Most of the fondest memories I have happened with Sihanoulk Ville’s notorious rain as the background sound: peacefully reading on top of a K’Khob tree, pretending I was surveying my kingdom, walking to school and never forgetting to spot any Sompeas plants on the way and collecting bomb fruits to impress my classmates, spending hours honing my Ckers Sat skills against an invisible opponent, and feeling a sense of absolute belonging, among the sunburnt faces of my neighbours and classmates.

In fact, after a few years of moving to Phnom Penh, I made a small, silent promise to myself that I’d move back to the town of magical peace once I graduate university.

And right when I graduated two years ago? The Chinese moved in, big time. Price of land shot up over the roof, casinos sprouted like rashes on an allergic skin and my tiny, silent dream? It got ignored, swept away under the rug, with me pretending it was never a serious dream to begin with anyway.

However, in these last two years, I made sure to never step foot into the town if I could help it. It’s as if the clash with the harsh reality would shatter my precious memories of what it was, and of who I was.

In my times of trouble and identity crisis(es) in Phnom Penh, I always go back to visit the scrawny Sihanoulk Ville kid who would split her allowance with the poor students in class, who would reread the same two books she had with equal enjoyment each time around. It’s funny as I grew up older, I yearned more and more to reach back to that age, to that self, to that stage of life.

But when a friend offered an interpretation opportunity to the ville, I had to jump in. There’s something safe about being the in-between, an interpreter of reality. Like whatever you find shouldn’t really be taken personally. You’re just a mouthpiece after all, a passing tube that should never contain the information for too long.

With that in mind, I embarked on the seven-hour bus ride to the south of the country. Two hours before we even arrived, I was already floored by tears. The random downpours, chilly cold air and mountains as far as you could see, were a signifier of home. I felt an affinity in my heart that I was again right where I belonged, where I could be the best version of myself. Affinity is a strong word, and I’ve only used it twice in my life. If what I felt for the town is not to be called affinity, I honestly don’t know what is.

As we got closer to the town though, changes began to be more visible. Trucks lining up as far as the eyes could see, traffic jams in places usually barren, and of course, Chinese signs and shops erected everywhere.

I went through my old neighborhood, one that I could not recognize from afar any longer. One that used to have 60% barren land and undergrowth, now literally full to the brim with towering buildings and construction sites.

The sidewalks full of bomb fruits I was so fond of, now is filled with rubbish and mud. My primary school, one in which the journey from one end to another used to make me think I was a lone forest ranger, is now covered with nothing but cemented courts and a few extra buildings.

Ironically, the one and only thing that hasn’t changed that much was my Gang Hua Chinese School, as if preserved through time all these fifteen years. I could still see that one broken basketball court where we used to pretend we knew how to play basketball. The well-kept Bodhi tree, rumored to house aloof spirits, but provided excellent hiding spots. The two gardens extended from the entrance to the flag poles, a place where I and my brother used to sit daily for what felt like hours, repeating the school song, picking up small leaves, as we waited for our mother to pick us up.

Even through all these heart-crunching changes, what I realized as I was on my way back to Phnom Penh was that… I was actually not altogether absolutely defeated body and spirit by the visit. Sihanoulk Ville has changed, and so have I.

Is it possible to go back to the perfect past? I doubt it. Even without the Chinese settling in, Kampongsom would have changed. The arrow of time cannot not travel backward, but it also cannot pierce my well-kept memories of what this town used to feel like, and what I used to be like.

Through the interviews, I learned that the Chinese are here because of the future of the town, but its past cannot be erased from the memories of people like me. No matter how much people believe it to be the new Shen Zhen, it’s still going to be old Sihanoulk Ville in my mind.

I take solace in the thought that even if I hadn’t moved, I could not stay that perfectly curious kid forever, and no matter what I and many believe me to be now, and in the future, I still have that sweet eight-year-old salty-skinned kid by my side for the rest of my life.

side note, if you haven’t followed me with your email, what are you even doing with your life? don’t miss out on my ramblies. Subscribe to this site, and go check out my more rational writings on self development and all things good on Wapatoa.com!

Self Care

Self care is not only romantic music playing in the background, while you’re having an exotic massage in a faraway land of holiday. It’s not only a whole ass chocolate cake with two seasons of binge-watching for the night. It’s not only pretty, aesthetic pictures of your newly-dyed hair and made-over closet.

Self care is ugly. It’s crying while doing a spreadsheet of your expenses, and figuring out just how to pay off all your mounting debts. It’s groggy 5AMs, and restless 10PMs.

Self care is smelly. It’s burning off indulgent calories at the gym, even when your whole body aches for a morning in, an excuse-filled day of rest.  

Self care is messy. It’s falling off the curve, taking up smoking again after 2 weeks of progress. It’s panic attack late at nights and smiles in the morning. It is constant recoveries and relapses, tormenting memories and hopeful promises.

Self care is embarrassing. It’s chalking up the courage to introduce yourself to people when your tongue burns with shame. It’s stuttering in your speech and showing up at the gym with chicken biceps.  

Self care is learning how to parent yourself with nothing but a messed-up childhood as your guide. It’s hungrily devouring books and blogs on anything that might get you out of this vomiting mess of a life. It’s trying out meditating for this month, and cycling the next. It’s the long waiting game, patiently growing out seeds of love from a mud-filled pond.

So you see. Don’t buy into that consumerism bullshit that tries to make you spend to run away from the real problems of life. Truly care for yourself, create a life that needs no running away from.

Mscheng’s back, and so’s the smartphone!

Howdy!

Well,  this is awkward… as we haven’t talked for so long. You may have swept me under the rug, or never even noticed that Mschengcorner was inactive for the last two years. It’s all fine, friends. We have our lives to live, and my life took such a turning point that my self-engrossed tendency to write for this blog has faded to almost nothingness.

But of course, like any true love, it is always burning at the back of my heart, waiting for the right moment to be rekindled. I guess the moment is right now! I’m more stable in  my other website, kinda learned the ropes of things, do not have a party-life going on any longer, and have a click-bait worthy title of getting a smart-phone back! This moment certainly is a magically perfect one to make a come back!

A bit of update about the blog

As many of you may have heard, I’ve been absent from Mschengcorner, but not from blogging entirely. For the past year, I’ve been writing almost one article per week for the great echoing chamber that is the internet on Wapatoa.com, my life and blood, my baby boy (or girl or them if the website chooses to identify as that later on).

For the big part of 2017 and 2018, apart from tangling my brain with partnership appointments, coming up with catchy titles for blogs, choosing what emojis to use for captions and getting mju into the office without getting caught, I was also struggling to see how I could write for both Wapatoa and Mschengcorner without getting everything mixed up. They are both my children of blood and finger sweats, but I must distinguish them somehow…

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From Visual Music(k)al

This objective took me a whole year, but I’ve found it! Before this change, Mschengcorner was a place where both sides of myself was laid out: A. The methodical, scientific side that reads research and books and share the knowledge and B. The goofy, petty side that spurs out lame jokes and gets very intimate at 1AM.

Naturally, Wapatoa.com is a more public, and specific website aimed to helping people become better. It’s not about Cheng (I mean, there’s no Cheng in the title). Wapatoa.com is for the people, so I’ll devote the “A” side of myself to it: the rational, information but still a bit goofy friend who just wants to help you get better.

PRIMARY

The petty, jealous, extremely personal “B” side of life? I’ll leave it all to here! So get ready, bitches, Cheng is back!

On a sidenote, Wapatoa.com is very cautious with the pictures we use on our articles, but well, here at Mscheng I just choose whatever Tumblr image that fits the mood! This will continue to be so, if you don’t like that, sue me! (That was just a farce. Please don’t sue me, I’m poor.) But I’m serious, Mschengcorner is for my personal enjoyment, so I’ll continue to use pictures that are easy to find and fit the mood! Maybe I’ll take up smartphone photography and supply my own pics, eh? We’ll see how this goes!

Therefore, please head on to Wapatoa.com for wholesome, self-improvement and artistic gimmicks and do not forget to head back here for some intimate, self-deprecating jokes! For once, you can have the best of both world!

A bit of update about Cheng’s phone

Now to the real meat of the article, the return of the forbidden phone. For better or for worse, I’ve parted with my dear old Nokia phone after 3.5 years (or was it 4 years?) of relationship. Why so? Many things have happened, the biggest of all, loneliness.

Yes, yes. I’m lonely.
Life as a graduated adult is not all partying glamor and rolling on money as it seemed. When I was in school, surrounded by 20+ friends all the time, it was easy to cut off social media and chatting apps altogether. I could just wait the night to tell them the next day. It was like highschool, but with drinking permits.

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From Go Flores Go

But everything changed when we graduated.
Now, everyone is busy with their work (as they rightfully are so). I am also busy with running Wapatoa as a startup. When we don’t frequently keep in touch online, it’s easy to go on a whole week without having any fun social interactions except for work and meetings and more work.

I must admit, I was miserable for the past few months and didn’t even know what the cause was, until I went to Thailand with a borrowed phone from my sister to keep me from getting lost till I die of some horribly funny mishaps.

For that one week, I got access to my friends back in Phnom Penh, access to google maps (a literal life savior) and most importantly, to meme hashtags on Tumblr and Reddit. My life was bright again, fun seemed to ooze out of the phone and my pores, the wifi-connection brought me again human connection.

So YUP! I decided to get a smart-phone when I headed back, and here I am, with a solid Iphone on my left even as I am writing this now! It’s been a wild few weeks, to say at least since I got the old monster back. The ancient habit of over-checking phones has resurfaced, but I think I’m better at catching it (with the help of Screen Time, of course, lol).

Still no regrets though. I voluntarily came back to smart phone with needs long unfulfilled. For the past three years, I felt most acutely the pains of not being connected: loss of distant/busy friendships, loss of convenient apps like Plumvillage meditation app, google maps and photos taking, and not to mention, a source of meme harvesting and distribution.

I’d like very much to be that cool hipster who lives alone in the woods with no internet, who drinks hot tea and reads and writes all day, who has friends over for the weekends and go on crazy, undocumented adventures. And maybe one day I will be, but not now. Not when I live in the city and get lost so often, when all my friends and the whole society are online, when I read and write blogs for a living… an iPhone is definitely a source of joy. 

Featured image from Phonethings
(cuz i can’t take a picture of my phone with my phone. You feel me?)

 

Vanity Wipe Part II: the How’s

In the last part of the Vanity Wipe series, we’ve gone through some reasons why vanity should be wiped out, or at least smudged to the best of our ability. Not only might it stand between you and mastery, caring excessively of others’ opinions (whether consciously or unconsciously) might lead to you waking up wide-eyed at 5AM twenty years from now, breaking a cold sweat because you have no idea who the person in the mirror is. (Read it more in-depth here).

So now you’re ready! You have the sponge in your left hand and gel in the right, ready to wipe this beast of a pest out of your life. I’m grateful for your enthusiasm, but maybe hang that sponge up and put your shower gel down for a moment. Bring out a comfortable hammock, and some mju because we might have to sit down and think… for quite some time. Because you see, in order to wipe out vanity, you need to figure out what will inherit its place first.

Like I said in the previous article, vanity is here because it benefits us. It gives us a sense of self-worth, albeit from other people. So before you think of going off life-support from applause, think first of what nectar your life will be absorbing next. The best answer, as anyone who has had some casual brushes with self-help books know, is to get that love from the well of our own hearts.

And as anyone who has tried could testify, getting approval from your own damn self is capital-h-a-r-d-HARD! However, before you kick off the sponge and shower gel to the corner, and storm off the bathroom accompanied by ugly sobbing, let me just say, it’s hard, but not impossible. It might take quite a long time (and I’m saying years and years of exploring, analyzing and making heaps mistakes), but it’s indeed achievable.

When Descartes realized his education was built upon false hand-me-down knowledge, he dedicated years of his life to examine all of his beliefs and put them back in (or out) one by one. That’s dedication for ya.

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Source: The School of Life

Start now. Begin observing your own actions. Ask yourself what you think about certain controversial issues.
“Do I agree with the current political discussion?”
“Is white skin the ideal beauty standard for me?”
“Do I find fit people more attractive?”
“Should pineapples be allowed to be put on pizzas?” (they should definitely not, just FYI)

Examine your beliefs and likings from topics as big as world politics to something as small as liking thin paper as opposed to rough paper, and anything in between. Then ask yourself, why? Why do I find people with six-pack abs better than a whole belly? Why did I spend 200 bucks on a plain white T-shirt with a five words on it? Why does thin paper feel so much better than rough paper?

Also ask yourself, would I still like people with six-packs if I could not show them off to my friends? Would I have bought that expensive T-shirt if no one could know about the brand or price? Would I still like thin paper if everyone around me hated it? Asking yourself thus can hopefully make things done for the sake of vanity visible. After seeing it for what it is- a mere trick to get the world’s attention- you should ask yourself further, of other reasons you might want to continue doing it. If the only main reason is applause, I’m sorry, buddy, but it’s time to put on the brake. It’s better to make space for what you genuinely enjoy than crowding your hours and headspace with mere attention-seeking actions.

Let me give you an obvious heads up, it’s going to be very unsettling, to say at least. I mean, when you question an activity that is central to your identity, it’s a discomforting experience, for sure. I used to think of myself as a visual art hobbyist, occasionally producing a sketch of a white nose here, a watercolor of waterfall there. During the questioning period, I suspected I was producing sketches, not because I enjoyed the ordeal, but instead because I wanted to get the attention of my perceived social media “followers”. Nothing to distinguish yourself among the rest like showing you’re a sensitive artist wanna-be, you know?

So I took a break from drawing/painting to really ascertain if I liked the craft for the sake of the craft, or for vanity. More than a year later, the dawn finally broke. I came to conclude that drawing added another dimension (pun-intended) to my existence, and it’s worth doing even without the “likes”. So I grabbed my old 2B pencils and began sketching squiggly faces again! The paintings probably have not changed much, but the painter is newly-colored with self confidence and a tad of detachment from public opinion. Whatever people may say of my craft, I know for certain now that I enjoy the brow-scrunching concentration needed to draw a straight line, the soul relief from heaping bold colors on top of one another, and the mind-blowing capacity (or more realistically, the hair-pulling frustration) to realize what’s in my head.

Now, it’s time for you to embark on your own journey. Again, the journey will probably take a lot of time and energy, but believe me, it’s worth it. This will be the foundation of how you’ll judge EVERYTHING from now on.

Would you rather be a dandelion swept left and right by the winds of public opinion, a swaying body devoid of soul, going where the current tells you, or would you rather be a willow seed, toiling for nourishment under the soil for a period of time, but end up growing on your own trunk, with healthy roots and ability to withstand the blowing storms?

This is also where the world outside, including and especially the fictional world comes in handy. When you know of a story- whether a piece of gossip from a celebrity magazine, the backstory of the much celebrated batman, or a piece of philosophical thought from some major thinker whose name you can’t pronounce- ask yourself, what do I think of this issue? Try to draw the parallels and contrasts between your life and the lives you know of. If your memory is not to be trusted, as most youths’ are, try out journaling. It’s an excellent means to maybe learn to express yourself better, and also make sense of what you are and what you want to be!

Now, the solution above might work for people who have little clue of what they like doing, but how about those for some reason, (most of the time embarrassment) dare not do what they would like? Well, here are some things that have helped me (and believe me, I’ve done some pretty embarrassing stuff):

  1. build a support system:
    it’s hard to go through the world alone, like a young bald bird, cold and flightless. Again, we are social animals, and we DO want approval from others. As Bertrand Russell put it:

    Head, Alfred Ernest, b.1923; Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
    Painter: Alfred Ernest Head 

    “Do not attempt to live without vanity, since this is impossible, but choose the right audience from which to seek admiration.”

    The trick here is to choose whose approval you want. I am fortunate to befriend some people of the same values and so have benefited from their strong trunks through the storms of public opinion when mines are too feeble to withstand the rushing torrents. Seek out people with the same values, befriend them, and validate yourself with them when you’re unsure.

  2. Think about loss:
    yes, pretty morbid stuff, and a good morning to you, good sir!
    People of all ages have realized the danger of being attached to our possessions, as Seneca, a rich statesman frequently slept on the floor in a poor house just to assure himself that he could survive even without his riches and influence.
    Power corrupts, ‘tis true, so try to imagine yourself without the power -and power here can mean anything that makes you feel worthy: your appearance, riches, fame, heart or brain- will you survive? If all the wars in the world taught me anything, it’s to distrust a charming man with a toothbrush mustache, but also that humans are capable of surviving so much loss and grief without losing hope.
    No friend? I can find some more.
    Money got burnt? I only need some for basic survival anyway.
    Getting disfigured? My wit will still be intact.
    Everyone hates the sight of my face? My dog still loves me.
    Losing my wits due to schizophrenia? Well, I won’t remember it anyway.

    memento-mori-18
    Photographer: Kevin Best

    If you want to top it a notch, go all the way to the silky road where we will all end up in: death. I’ve written once about the benefits of visualizing death (read it here), but here’s the gist. Nothing is worse than death. It’s the end of your life, most likely forever as we know it. The riches, fame, or knowledge you have earned will be worth nothing in the face of death. The true but often neglected fact is, you will die one day. So why not do this one thing you have always wanted? Will the opinions of irrelevant people matter when you’re gasping your last breadth? I suspect not.

  3. The “I’m going to do it even if all these people will hate me” game.
    I came up with this game when I was unwilling to perform a pretty suggestive hip-thrust routine for fear of seeming improper, though through my thorough research it’s the most effective workout for butts in the gym. I had had an internal debate for days and days, until one day, I flat-out asked myself, “Say you do it and all these people end up concluding you’re an improper pervert, but you have amazing butts, what then?” The answer was obvious. It’s time to thrust, thrust, thrust. No one commented, and the weird coach still talked to me occasionally, so I guess I over-dramatized everything after all. Take note though, this game will only work if you have a clear purpose behind what potentially embarrassing thing you are about to do.
  4. The 5, 5, 5 question.
    Now before you let the fear of public opinion scare you from doing a certain thing you’re sure you want to do, ask yourself, “Will this matter in 5 minutes? 5 months? 5 years?” Most of the little things we are embarrassed about, like getting caught speaking to ourselves in our helmet, or having a slip-up during a presentation, or voicing the wrong views with confidence, are erased from people’s memories the minute after it happened. Even if it’s shocking, people rarely stay shooketh for 5 months, much less 5 years from then. Think back to something embarrassing you’ve seen a stranger done. Can you recall the face of the stranger? You can probably recall the details of the event, but the stranger’s face will most likely be left blank in your memory. You should take comfort that this also happens with other people. What’s the big deal if you tripped, slipped a half-eaten donut to the ground, picked it up and continued savoring it? The people who have seen it probably only remembered you as the disgusting donut dude, but not your face!

So there you go. Now, pick up that sponge, squeeze some gel and scrub, scrub, scrub away!