Eric Tian

Not every good thing needs to be difficult.

Studying doesn’t need to be difficult. Just do one Anki card, watch five minutes of a lecture, review one set of notes.

Exercise doesn’t need to be difficult. Just walk for ten minutes, do one push-up, hold one stretch.

Reading doesn’t need to be difficult. Just read one chapter, one news article, one blog post.

Assuming that tasks are difficult creates unnecessary friction to get started; a shame, since getting started is often the most important thing.

Today while in a bedside tutorial a neurologist told our group of medical students, “When you are talking to a patient, you need to go back to when you were three. What did you always ask?” None of us answered.

“Why? Why? Why?”

Always keep digging, he explained. There is more to one’s medical history, social history and history of presenting complaint than what is initially revealed. There are more stories longing to be told, more emotions to uncover, more meaning behind this conversation. If you are impatient or take someone at their word, you will miss a whole lot. And with enough time and listening, you might even begin to understand them.

I’ve noticed that a common feature of my lowest, most depressive moods is a profound lack of curiosity. When life and nature and people are no longer interesting, depression is at your doorstep. The world turns lifeless, smells disappear and nothing surprises you. When I attempted suicide many years ago I wrote in my journal, “The world looks grey. I cannot see colours. My world once full of beauty is now meaningless.”

One of the reasons I decided to live was because of a garden bush near my apartment. It belonged to a house a few doors down, one I had walked past many times but never noticed, and what struck me was its colour. The bush was by no means impressive – it was disorderly and unkempt – but amidst the pitch black sky and the grey filter it threw over everything, this bush seemed to defy all odds and shine bright green. The vividness of its shade was extraordinary.

And then I turned my attention to the house the bush belonged to. I saw there were engravings on the ceiling and that it was shaped like a palace. The design was actually quite lovely. On the front wall was a sculpture of a Greek-looking face with curly hair. “I wonder who that is?” I thought. And suddenly my world became more interesting, less unmanageable.

They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I suspect that far more lives, conversations and beauty have been lost by a lack of wonder than too much.

“The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” Albert Einstein wrote. “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

Team sports are a funny thing.

Compared with individual sports, the lows are lower. If one person makes a mistake, the whole team suffers. One mispass, one slip, one lapse of attention results in not just one person’s demise but that of the whole group. You are only as strong as your weakest link.

Yet compared with individual sports, the highs are also higher. One person’s victory is the whole team’s victory. When you rely on other people, as you must in team sports, you achieve greater things than if there were just multiple copies of yourself. Your teammates can amplify your strengths and cover your weaknesses. And in this process, you forge new friendships and a bond that runs deeper than most acquaintances.

Even though I’ve competed for many years in table tennis and distance running, my most memorable sporting experiences were in volleyball, a sport I only played seriously for one year in high school. I remember being terrible when our team first came together – forgetting positions, fumbling passes, missing serves, and the frustration that came with miscommunication. I hated that the whole team lost a point off of one person’s mistake. But I also remember the exhilaration we felt when we pulled off a rehearsed play, began to serve, receive and spike more consistently and having our team progress as a unit, beating teams we previously lost to. I cried more in that year of teamwork than all my years of individual sports, tears of both pain and joy.

The losses hurt more when you had six on a court. The wins also felt more glorious. The whole experience was more exhilarating, more addicting.

Not far from the hospital is a vietnamese cafe that makes amazing banh mis for $8-9. I discovered it thanks to my partner’s recommendation and have visited it regularly these last few weeks.

All the banh mis are delicious but my favourite order is the crispy pork. I rarely eat pork but the one here is my guilty exception. I have ordered it twice this week and have been very happy both times.

Today I went in for a late lunch, ready to play the dance of scanning the menu when I already know what I want, when the shop owner looked at me, smiled and said, Crispy pork? At first I thought I misheard him since he said it so casually, like him saying, Good day, or How are you, but then I saw he had already put the price on the counter machine. He had remembered my order.

This is the first time any store has remembered my order. I’ve never particularly cared about this since the food is the same regardless, but this small acknowledgement was very touching. I suddenly felt that my previous visits were meaningful, that the store owner didn’t take me for granted, but remembered my face and made the effort to associate my order with it. He must have over 100 customers a day and the thought that he was able to remember me out of all of them was comforting.

Too touched and shocked for words, I nodded and paid on my phone.

One of the best ways you can appreciate someone is to remember the things they have told you. In this era of digital dementia, memory is a scarce resource. So if someone knows that they occupy just a little bit of your storage space, it can be a big deal. And maybe, this comfort will unlock more trust and openness in the future.

Here’s to more crispy pork orders.

When we read a novel, we expect characters to change. If a character at the end of a journey is the same as when they started then it was a pretty lousy journey. Every good story has change and conflict scattered throughout to test the characters and build them into people worth reading about. These stages of growth are signalled through chapters.

There is a book written in reality too: the story of our lives, and we are writing it every day. To make this book into an interesting story, it helps to think what chapter we are living in and let that guide our focus. Here are three ways to do this.

First, remember that we cannot stay in this chapter forever. There are more hurdles to overcome, more giants to battle and more riches to discover. We were not supposed to stay stagnant here. You will eventually graduate, drift away from friends and live independently. And indeed, despite the uncertainty, you will need to.

Second, remember that this chapter exists for a reason. Whatever lesson this chapter is supposed to teach us – love, learning, suffering, discipline – it plays a role in the larger story. This chapter might be entirely different to a previous chapter. It might even feel you are writing a tangent, a dumb side plot or ruining the progress you’ve made earlier. No matter. Good journeys are rarely linear but often messy and random. Change course if you so desire but keep on writing.

And lastly, recognise when a chapter is coming to an end. A graduation, a promotion, a new job, a marriage, a death – these are all daunting but necessary transitions. No interesting character can come about in safe seclusion. Step forthrightly into your new adventure.

And maybe, at the end, we will have something worth reading about.

A few days ago I went to to unlock my bike from the apartment carpark and was met with a surprise: my front wheel had been stolen. Not the back wheel, not even my lights – just the front wheel. My bike, which normally hung from the rack by the front wheel, now dangled like a dead branch. The only thing holding it to the rack was my D-lock. It looked pathetic, like something from a trash pile.

What was worse was that just one year ago my previous bike had been stolen from this same carpark, in nearly the same spot. And around that time my housemate’s front wheel had been stolen from this spot too. It was a little absurd that this kept happening.

This morning I dragged my broken bike to the bike store to buy a new wheel. Dragged is an appropriate verb – the store is usually a 15 minute walk or a 5 minute bike ride but this arrangement took 30 minutes. A bike without a front wheel is difficult to walk because you need to hold up the front of the frame so it doesn’t fall on the ground and so you are left holding constant bicep curls. It was like pushing a poorly designed, obese unicycle. Due to this awkward situation my half-bike and I could not move faster than a crawl and we were frequently met with looks of pity from passers-by. And all this time I knew that once we eventually reached the bike store, the cost would be at least $200 for a replacement. It was all very sad and I began to feel sorry for myself.

But during this walk, near the peak of my irritation, I stopped at a red traffic light and looked up at the sky. There I was met with a gorgeous canvas of grey and blue. It was mesmerising, a serene mix between sunny and cloudy. Around me I heard dogs barking, couples laughing and two high schoolers hollering as they rode scooters past me without helmets on. And all of a sudden, I realised that it was a beautiful day and this trivial bike problem nearly made me miss it.

A strange thing happens when we see that there is good in the world, and that it is worth noticing and fighting for – our worries begin to dissolve. When put in the grand scheme of the universe, what was once a tragedy now becomes trivial. We are free to laugh at ourselves and take ourselves less seriously. It is a feeling of lightness.

Being the hero of our imagination is in many ways, a curse. When we have the spotlight on ourselves by default we miss the world passing by. We miss vivid colours, beautiful sounds and heavenly tastes. We miss interesting conversations, complex ideas and kind people. It’s like playing Pokemon and never leaving your house. There is so much more to learn, live and explore.

Let us open our eyes and see what we can with them before they close forever.

Today I was walking to the library when I encountered an old man. He was standing still on the sidewalk, wearing a thick grey sweater and brown shorts, muttering something to himself. As I got closer, I heard that he was repeating one phrase over and over again.

It will be fine. It will be fine. It will be fine.

Just then it began to rain. Still he stood there, chanting. Do you want an umbrella, I asked him. He looked up, surprised by my presence, then felt his forehead, as if only just realising he was outdoors, and hurried away without a word. As he went away I noticed he walked with a limp and wasn’t wearing any socks. His white ankles stuck out against the backdrop of brick buildings like a daisy in soil.

My friend, I wanted to say to him, I have no idea what horrors and hardships you have seen, how broken and beaten down the world has left you in, and how long you have been chanting this wish, but I also pray your situation will be fine, whatever it is. It is dangerous to hope, but in many times hope is all we have.

“Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

The biggest lesson I have learnt in writing: simplify.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Omit unnecessary words. Avoid adverbs that add no useful meaning to its verb (“smiled happily”, “yelled loudly”). Don’t use a long word when a shorter one will do. You want to strip down each sentence to its core meaning, free of ambiguity or wasted breath.

But Eric, you might say, this style of writing looks awfully boring, and I’m rather quite exciting like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, so this does not apply to me.

It does.

While I am sure you have a wonderfully creative mind, you can only add style when you have built your prose on a clear, precise foundation. If your writing is messy at its core, adding style is like adding decorations to a house built on quicksand. There is no point in making the house look pretty. It’s going to crash and burn regardless.

Only once you have built a strong foundation, can you move onto decorating your work. You may experiment with punctuation, catch-phrases and tone. Maybe you love to use dashes or semicolons. Maybe you like writing At all costs, or Albeit and wish to include these in every piece. If you find appropriate ways to use these, then by all means.

But they must be hung on a solid base. And the best way to ensure a solid base?

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Yesterday was a bad day. It was one of those days where one bad thing happens right after another and never ends. When the first two bad things happen you think Sure, it’s just one of those days, on the fourth or fifth you think, Come on God, this must be a joke, on the seventh or eighth you’re on the verge of breaking and by the ninth or tenth you’ve finally snapped.

After I snapped it was 7pm and I sat alone on a chair in the city. There were many people and cars about but I felt little inside. I opened my bag to read a book, hoping it would cure my depression, and two oranges fell out onto the floor. One of the oranges rolled onto the ground two metres in front of me and the other orange disappeared from sight. I slowly went to pick up the orange I could see and looked around for the other one. I looked all around me but couldn’t find it. The orange had vanished. I sat back on my chair, defeated, on the verge of tears.

Then a man came up and said, Hey man, you dropped it there, and he pointed to the road. And there it was – my orange hiding behind the curb, underneath a parked car. I said, Oh, thank you, and went to pick it up and when it was in my hands I held the orange like it was my missing child. When I turned around the man was gone.

In that moment I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was a very small act of kindness over a simple orange but the man’s actions had touched me. We were both strangers to each other and he probably had nice, interesting things to do on a Saturday evening yet he made the effort to help me in my moment of need. And in that simple gesture, all my day’s stresses and burdens quietly disappeared.

It is incorrect to call small acts of kindness small. Though they take minimal effort, these things that we do for each other – a smile on walking past, a Bless you on a frightful sneeze, a You first when lining up – make our interactions divine. They can be the rope that rescues one from the depths of insanity and the gates of hell.

It only takes a tiny star to illuminate a dark sky.

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“Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris:

“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

“August in Waterton, Alberta” by Bill Holm

Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.

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I found this poem in “Bird by Bird“, a part-memoir, part-guide on writing by Anne Lamont, an American novelist. The context was that one day, one of Anne’s students had received honest but harsh feedback from another writer that left him distraught and in tears. This poem is what Anne wanted to send to this upset student.

Here are two takeaways from this poem.

1. Harsh wind is inevitable

Above me, wind does its best / to blow leaves off / the aspen tree a month too soon.

It is one of the universal truths: life is suffering. We see this concept in books, many of the world religions, and most importantly, in our personal experiences. In the best of times, these hardships will seem like mere nuisances; in the worst of times, they will threaten to blow our leaves off and tear us to shreds.

In the poem, the phrase “Above me…” indicates some divine providence, or a force beyond man’s control, being the cause of this suffering, further adding onto its inevitability. “…a month too soon” also nods to the unexpected timing of suffering – that we may never predict the next tragedy around the corner.

2. Suffering is beauty

No use wind. All you succeed / in doing is making music, the noise / of failure growing beautiful.

Upon first reading, I thought this section was describing how beauty is often shaped from suffering. We all intuitively understand this – there is no muscle without breakdown, no jewel without heat, no wisdom without mistakes.

But if you read those lines carefully, this is not what it means at all. This poem is saying that suffering itself is beauty. Whether it is a quiet heartbreak, a tear streaked face or eating giant tubs of ice-cream, moments of suffering are inherently beautiful.

Why the poet takes this stance is unknown and I would love to ask him. But from my experience, there is a certain magic taking place within failure. In these moments of embarrassment and frustration, we experience more of the world in its entirety, for failure and suffering is all around us and this is beautiful.

Let us create music in the noise of failure.