I met a bunch of people yesterday. They were amazing: friendly, welcoming, and incredibly honest for a room full of semi-strangers. Although it was my first meeting, I didn’t feel any of that fake friendliness that dissipates after a few weeks. Instead, I felt real warmth and support from people who were genuinely interested in getting to know me.

Personally, I am tired of so much homophobia, especially on UCLA’s campus. Now is the chance to broaden our understanding of other people, not shy away from our differences. I can no longer step back and say I understand their feelings. I don’t. I should stop talking and start learning.

I saw a girl smoking today. She was pretty in an Urban Outfitters checkered-tunic sort of way, and she pulled off the slouchy beanie on her head flawlessly. She was in all instances a normal girl, who happened to be smoking a cigarette on her way to class.

As I walked by, I thought about her friends and whether they had sat her down and asked her to quit. Whether they had treated her with love and said, “I care about you and want to see you live a long, healthy life, and I’m asking you to quit, for yourself.” These questions passed through my head soundlessly as I hurried to my own class. I wondered whether the words of her imaginary friends would have any effect, or whether her friends perpetuated her habit.

I know that I am in no position to judge others, but it is difficult for me to understand why so many young people smoke when we have been inundated with the negative health consequences since childhood.

I have a lot of friends who smoke, and most of the time, I shake off my worry because I know that smoking is their decision and I shouldn’t judge them for what I believe to be harmful. However, if I were to sit down with my loved ones, would my words prompt change? In other words, can we change our friends at all?

In some ways, I believe the answer is yes. Humans are impressionable beings. Despite what we say to the contrary, praise produces joy, however faint, and derision makes us reconsider our actions. However, in another sense, I do not believe we have the power to change deeply inset beliefs of our friends, nor should we try to force this change.   

When I think about talking to friends who smoke, I know that their minds will not be swayed by the fact that smoking can cause cancer, respiratory infection, or heart disease. They know these details and yet their habits persist. I try to look at it from their perspective. Smoking feels good, it’s a quick high, it takes the edge off.

Instead, I must appeal to their hearts: “I love you, I don’t want to see you hurting yourself.” If that doesn’t work, I must learn to accept the habits of my friends. I cannot change what they believe, nor should I try to force my belief system onto them. Most of all, acceptance is important between friends; relationships cannot be contingent upon one party changing his behavior. All I can do is share my concerns, express my continued acceptance, and let my friends discover for themselves, over time, their own incentives to quit.

I think back to that girl in the checkered shirt, and wonder if her friends have come to the same conclusion.

I’m counting down the New Year with cherished friends. Toasting with champagne. Singing and dancing. Laughing. Playing silly childhood games that never get old. Waking up. Time for traditional Japanese breakfast. Crunching on homemade Mochiko chicken. Sipping ozoni soup and chewing mochi balls. Biting into a sour pickled plum soaked in green tea. Five hours later, at another grandmother’s house. Eating shu-mai dumplings soaked in soy sauce. Laughing.

It’s the New Year, and if I know anything, it’s that I’m so lucky to be surrounded by love wherever I go.

Over the past ten years of my life, I have pursued many academic and personal goals. At age nine, the goals were simple: ace my math test, score during my soccer match, perhaps run a mile in under ten minutes. As I matured, my goals became more diverse: get this boy to like me, get straight A’s, be perfect in school and in life. It took me until the eleventh grade to realize that life wasn’t just about the pursuit of individual goals, but about sharing these goals – and the happiness of meeting these goals – with other people. Simply, life is about the connections we make, and the opportunities we have to express and receive love.

Now that I am in college pursuing even larger goals, I often set aside the importance of sharing and receiving love. My daily life is consumed by balancing professional obligations with individual growth, and I place great weight on this delicate balancing act.

On one hand, I am no longer a child, and I must take responsibility for my professional aspirations. Along these lines, I spent many afternoons this fall working at a real estate internship, learning how to sell commercial buildings at the expense of spending time with friends at UCLA. I often prioritize tasks with deadlines, like homework and recruiting events, over the less “required” telephone calls with my family or talks with my roommate. It makes me sad sometimes, but I know that if I want to become financially independent by the time I am thirty, I must sometimes sacrifice fun for professional development. I understand and accept this sacrifice as a part of life.

At the same time, I am not yet ready to become an adult. I see the world with a sense of wonder and optimism, and nothing delights me more than experiencing something new. Everything I dreamed of when I was a child – skydiving, studying abroad, running for political office – is within my reach, and I often find myself yearning to abandon professional responsibilities to go out and explore.

I feel most alive when I forsake reason and simply act. For this reason, I postponed studying for my midterms to walk through Olvera Street during the Dia de los Muertos celebration. I headed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art rather than review my statistics material. I spent an entire Saturday walking to the Botanical Gardens and refused to wear a jacket, simply to delight in the beauty of the wind on my bare skin. Nothing brings me more happiness than exploring somewhere new, especially if I have a loved one by my side.

But ultimately, all this balancing simply brings me back to my simple childhood message: that nothing is more important than loving and being loved.  

When I was walking by myself to the Botanical Gardens, the wind whipping against my bare arms, I yearned to tell someone – anyone – of my foolishness and how I was bound to get a cold because of it. I wanted to share the moment, to laugh, to point out odd flowers and run through the trails, if only to make what I was experiencing all the more real.

The same goes for professional accomplishment. When the real estate company hired me, I wanted nothing more than to dance in circles with my roommate and to shake hands with members of my fraternity. When I got an A in political science, I wanted to tell my parents all about it. Individual accomplishment is meaningless without loved ones to share the joy.
 
Over the past two years, I have realized that it is the connections I form with other people that brings meaning and happiness to my life. It is with the hope that I will build upon these connections that I write today.

Sometimes, I feel discouraged by being stuck in the precarious balance between work and play. I ask myself why I am not achieving higher grades in school or exploring daily the streets of Los Angeles. In the end, however, I accept my inability to be perfect. Nobody short of Wonder Woman can explore the city every weekend, catch every basketball game, rock a 4.0, manage twelve hours at an internship, and stay sane. I can’t expect myself to do so.

I have come to accept that it is a sign of maturity to embrace life the way it is and yet continue to strive for better. To above all remember that balance is only a piece of the puzzle, that balance is only useful as far as I can love.    

Above all, I want to live my life in love.

Happy New Year, everyone!

How could I have hurt someone as beautiful as him? To me, he was the very epitome of love: if there was ever evidence of selflessness in this world, he has shown me the closest manifestation of it. 

He has sacrificed countless nights of good sleep (during nights when I would sleep-talk constantly and grumble at him to stop stealing the blankets) so he could wake up beside me in the morning. He has brought me food when I was too tired to head down to the dining halls, encouraged me to study when I was falling asleep in my books, and made me smile when all I wanted to do was complain. 

In many ways, he knew all of me, my faults and my insecurities, and yet he always chose to see the best of me. He helped me keep my wits about me, to secure my confidence, and to see the person who he thought I was. 

Over time, I fell in love with this intelligent, kind, understanding boy. I grew to admire his confidence when meeting new people, his welcoming nature to newcomers, and his patience when explaining obscure physics concepts. He is brilliant: he aced his five classes in a quarter when I was overwhelmed by four, and he can instinctively grasp logic puzzles that take me longer to comprehend. To me, he was my protector, my lover, and most importantly, my best friend. 

I could never offer him as much love as he offered me. Next to his selfless actions, I always felt like a self-absorbed person. I prioritized school, case competitions, Alpha Kappa Psi, recruiting, work, and self-growth over him. Yesterday, he asked me if he still fit into my life. I asked him if the opposite were true and he said yes, I can make you fit into my life. For a second, I envisioned my future: him attending AKPsi events with me, us squeezing in dinner between Ultimate (for him) and work (for me). Would it be fair to him to continue to sacrifice for my time schedule, my life, when I could not do the same for him? 

Knowing that I could not offer him the same intensity of love which he gave to me, I knew we could not be together any longer. Stuck in the zone of more-than-friends, but admitting nothing in public, loving each other quietly — it just wasn’t fair to him or to me. Too long, I have cowered in the comfort that we love each other, regardless of title, but I can do this no longer. I have to be brave, stick with the truth, and be okay with truly being alone.  

I came into relationships believing that honesty and communication were the two building blocks for a strong relationship, but I have realized that equity is equally, if not more, important. In my relationship, my love poured his heart out to me, ecstatically, joyfully, passionately. It was hard for me to muster the same intensity of conviction about him and me, about us. I doubted our ability to converse with each other about topics that genuinely interested both of us, and I was never as affectionate as he was. Perhaps, it was because I am more introverted and reserved than he is, or perhaps it was because he has more love in his heart than I do. Whatever it was, our relationship lacked the equity it needed to grow and to flourish.

Now, we can no longer be together, because our relationship’s lack of equity is tearing us both up. I often feel overwhelmed by his love, while he feels rejected by the lack of time and love I have for him. Although I know this, I feel heartbroken. I can’t imagine not calling him after midterms or bumping into him coming out of the gym, not throwing a disc with him in the quad or eating dinner with him at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Severing all ties with him, to help us fall out of love, makes me feel as though I have also lost my dearest friend at UCLA. 

It will take time for both of us to stop feeling so sad. But time will pass, and hearts will heal, and eventually, we will move on. Maybe we will be friends again. I hope we will be. 

Until then, I pray that he finds somebody who loves him for exactly who he is, and who can love him as he deserves to be loved. Equitably, ecstatically, without reserve. Anything less is not good enough for him. I am sorry that I could not. 

It does not matter how much an individual loves serving his country or feeding orphans in Tanzania; he cannot be classified as selfless. Good or admirable, sure. But selflessness cannot exist, as long as individuals are independent actors. Why?

Game theory can easily explain. The basic concept behind game theory suggests that in making decisions, individuals choose between strategies with different payoffs.

The individual acts when the payoff he will receive for acting outweighs the payoff he gets from choosing another alternative or doing nothing. If his payoff is not high enough, or if he is not receiving enough personal benefit (either in the form of personal pleasure or vicarious pleasure through helping others), he will not act, regardless of how many orphans he could be helping.

Individuals go through the subconscious process of valuing different courses of action every time they make a decision. If an actor can choose either to cram for upcoming finals or to sing Christmas carols to children, he must consider his feelings on both. If he is pushing for an A in his Calculus class, we may find him studying at Powell instead of singing at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center. If, instead, he values seeing little kids smile over acing his Calculus final, we may find him in the children’s ward of the hospital singing away.

No choice is objectively superior: everyone’s payoffs are unique and meaningful only to them. But the question remains. Does the individual who places others over himself deserve the label “selfless”? Is the boy who is singing Christmas carols instead of studying for his finals inherently more “selfless” than one who would make the opposite choice? I argue no.

In conducting the valuation process at all, the individual remains just that – an individual, with his own hopes for himself and for others. He considers the payoffs that matter to him; he needs his payoffs to be high enough to motivate him to act. Although the individual may value helping others over helping himself, what matters most is that he asks himself what he wants to do.

In my example, the boy goes to sing to kids because he loves the feeling he gets from singing to them, or he loves the idea of them being happy. His aims may be completely altruistic and noble, but he is still considering his own feelings at the end of the day.

Thus, I conclude that the act of doing is all about the individual self. One can no more give up his “self-ness” (to take a bit about essence from Plato) than he can tear out his soul. Man needs motivation to act, and he can only find that motivation within himself, regardless of the form that motivation may take.

Why is Hufflepuff so universally reviled among us commonplace Muggles? Today, my friend James accused my other friend, Mohini, of belonging to the Hufflepuff house. His assertion was met with horror and disbelief, and all around we shouted insults, mostly consisting of “No, you belong in Hufflepuff!” But why?

Today, I begin my blog, One Lovely Day. I am committing myself to writing at least once a week about anything that catches my fancy — politics, society, business, or simple pleasures in my life.

You may ask, “Why so suddenly or when you are so busy?” Well, friends, the truth is that, while I have been pretty good at holding myself accountable, I have never made good on my promise to myself to keep a journal or to maintain a blog.

Hopefully, that will change. I am a firm believer in pursuing what makes you most happy, and in my short nineteen years of life, nothing has brought me more contentment than writing. It is my goal in writing this blog that I will remember to find time for this passion of mine, that no matter what life brings my way — be it a job, difficult classes, or new friends — I will always make time for myself, and for discovering more about myself.

Thank you for visiting, and for reading. I hope to write honestly and to share myself with you.

When I think of freedom, I am suddenly pedaling past parked cars, the wind whipping across my face. I am lying in the warm grass with my love Max, picking out animals in the clouds. I am calling my best friend Ellen – no, I am racing into my car headed directly for our favorite Starbucks – and we are laughing.  I am at peace, for today I am young, and I have all the time in the world to find my way. But the question often arises in my mind: Am I truly free?

First of all, what is freedom? History offers many definitions. During the Revolutionary War, freedom equaled liberation from the taxes and dictatorial leanings of the British monarchy, and could only be won by “dissolving the political bands” connecting the colonies to the Crown.

In the years following the Civil War, freedom took on a more literal meaning. Abolitionists worked for the demise of physical slavery, and in 1865, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. Since then, activists have eliminated many of the restrictions on our human rights: women gained the right to vote in 1920, the civil rights movement broke down the color barrier, and disabled individuals and gay rights groups have made great progress in protecting their liberty.

And yet, although we are lucky to live unshackled in a democratic country, I question whether we are truly free. I argue that we are subjected to mental slavery: of being conditioned to adapt societal mindsets rather than learning to form our own.

In childhood, the conditioning begins. Children are taught to respect their elders, to use their manners, and to do well in school. Diverging from the expected behaviors – the mean, in a sense – brings from parents what the social psychologist Michel Foucault calls micro-penalties: scoldings, time-outs, and the occasional beating, all designed to keep the child from edging away from what is socially acceptable.

Even preschools perpetuate the conditioning. Paul Tough’s article Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?, published in the September 25, 2009 issue of the New York Times, documents how schools use a program called Tools of the Mind to help preschoolers exert control over their emotions. The program stresses “mature, dramatic play”, complex scenarios in which young children adapt specific societal roles; for example, a boy might be given the role of a father. When the boy acts in a way that is not consistent with the socially accepted ideal of “fatherhood”, the other children chide him. In this way, the children are conditioned to the “correct” way to act in society.

Both parents and schools thus teach young children to perform within the structure of society. We grow up believing that we want what we have been told to want: acceptance letters to good colleges and stable careers top the list.

As we grow up and enter adulthood, we become slaves to our salaries. We work tirelessly in hopes of a promotion and yet worry about paying our bills on time. Most likely, we too will have children, and we will condition our children in the ways that our parents did us: we will scold them when they “misbehave”, and deviate from the societal ideal, and we will reward them with treats when they prove capable of fitting in.

Over time, we have adapted society’s standards as our own. We have created adjectives like “rational” and “intelligent”, which require a judgment simply for use. Perhaps this is the price of living in society: having a societal “average” against which each individual is weighed, examined, and conditioned to conform.

And yet in this society, I believe that there still exists room for freedom. Too often, we accept what we want without really asking why we want it. So my response to that societal conditioning is to constantly ask myself, “Why?”

Why am I going to college? Why do I enjoy soccer? Why am I going to the beach? I question myself, and if I find that I am acting simply because I’m obligated to and not because I want to, I don’t do it. 

Stripping us of freedom in the modern age is more theoretical than the overt physical enslavement that occurred in the early 1800’s, and yet it is just as crucial for us to maintain a sense of self as it was back then. Be yourself, wildly, unapologetically yourself. If that means jumping onto tables, singing at the top of your lungs, or just being completely lazy, so be it. Be you.