Eric Tian

The morning of June 13th was bright and sunny, with the warmth of a mid-summer day. Orchid trees swayed in the distance and the grass in the gardens shone a rich green. Young children ran barefoot in the fields and picked stones, making noises like wild animals.  

Between 9 and 10 o’clock, the kids were called back home. Parents barked orders to shower and the best clothes and perfume were put on. The raffle was beginning.

The elderly villagers were the first to arrive, who had witnessed the raffle many times in the past. They walked slowly from their houses, always alone, and smiled sadly at passers by. Many wondered if it would finally be their turn this year.

The families were the next to arrive. Some of the older children formed groups and talked of the school semester just passed. The boys discussed teachers, pranks and sport, while the girls stood together gossiping, occasionally glancing over at the boys. The parents did not speak but nodded at friends and colleagues while keeping a watchful eye over the children. 

Finally, the workers assembled. Keys jangled from their pockets, having just closed shop for the day. The mechanic’s face was covered in soot, the baker smelt of bread and the librarian carried a bag of books. They hurried towards the crowd, sweating, and whispered greetings to the other villagers.

By noon, all the villagers were assembled in the local square, in front of the stage. 

The raffle was conducted by Mr. Barkly, the village’s mayor. He was a short, fat man and was generally liked because of his gentle and kind, yet pragmatic nature. He walked carrying a small black box onto the stage where a small table lay. He waved to the residents and called out, “Hot day, isn’t it? Let’s get this started, folks.”

Mr. Barkly placed the box on the table. His face was red from the sun and the boys noticed sweat patches under his armpits. “The raffle should be good this year,” he announced. “Our neighbours found dramatic increases in productivity from it.” The villagers didn’t respond. 

“Is there anyone who would like to be exempt from this year’s raffle?” he asked. No response. Mr. Barkly waited patiently. One minute, then two passed. But just as it seemed nobody would respond, a woman’s voice pierced the crowd. “Please, I beg you, take my youngest son out of the draw. He is too young and sick.” It was Mrs. Young, the local electrician. Her husband had died of pneumonia six months ago, leaving her alone to care for little Billy.

“Exemption denied.” Mr. Barkly said. “Unless they are being sent to another village or under the age of five, all children are eligible.” Mrs. Young bowed her head and cried silently, not bothering to argue the decision. Billy had just turned five two days ago. The crowd around her patted her back and whispered assurances in her ear. Billy stood next to his mother holding her hand, too young to understand the situation. 

“Nobody else?” The mayor’s eyes scanned the crowd, giving ample time for a statement. The whole town was silent. He nodded slowly and removed a keychain from his back pocket where one dozen keys lay. After fumbling around, he found the smallest key and unlocked the black box.

Mr. Barkly stared at the pile of names inside. The pile was smaller than he remembered, he thought to himself. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and reached his fat hand into the box. After some rummaging, he finally closed his hands onto one piece of paper, and slowly pulled it out. The whole town watched quietly.

“Mrs Young.” 

Faces slowly turned to the pale electrician, still holding little Billy in her left hand. The crowd around her backed away with a sigh, offering their apologies. Schoolboys took their rocks out of their pockets, having prepared them already, while others went to get their own from a small pile nearby. Mr. Barkly walked over. 

“Come here, Billy.” He gently called out. “Come here.” Billy looked up at his mother, who gripped his hand so hard that it began to hurt. The boy did not move. Mr. Barkly, with a sigh, beckoned to a giant man in the crowd with his finger. It was the local blacksmith, Mr. Smith, and it was usually he that sorted out situations like this. The large man approached the boy and forcefully broke the grip between mother and son. Taking Billy in his arms, he walked back to the crowd. 

Mrs. Young began to break down in sobs, having acknowledged her fate. “It is better me than him,” she reflected. If only she could have spent more time Billy and made more memories. She wondered if he would even remember her when he grew up into a man. If he grew up into a man. In her last moments, she prayed, despite having never prayed before, that God would give Billy a long and meaningful life, full of happiness and health…

“Sorry,” Mr. Barkly said, with genuine sympathy. “This is the only way we can provide adequate resources for the whole town.” With a final smile, he stepped back and the villagers closed around her. The first rock sliced Mrs. Young on the calf, opening an artery. The second hit her on the chest, where she cried out temporarily, winded by the force, but was soon silenced by the deadly flurry of stones. Even when she was quite clearly dead, some, especially the younger men, continued to hurl rocks at her, further distorting the lifeless corpse. After a few minutes, the villagers stopped and her body sat in a pool of blood, her face unrecognisable. 

“More rations for us all,” Mr. Smith muttered quietly. The town dispersed and headed home. 

Inspired by: “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson

After a two month break from blogging, reading my old posts again has made me realise how mediocre my writing is.

There is a clumsiness and childishness in my prose that is absent in “proper” writers. Some posts are too long, boring and redundant. Others are too short, ambiguous and unclear. Of the 300+ posts written before this one, I can say there’s only a handful that I’m truly satisfied with. For the rest, the temptation is to pick up a giant red pen and substantially edit.

One of the great benefits of a break is perspective. From reading other authors, I’ve come to realise that a great idea is insufficient by itself – to be powerful, it requires clear prose, correct grammar and a sensible structure.

When you read the likes of Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Alain de Botton you find a sense of astonishment, for their words are like magic; each sentence has a distinct, marching rhythm, and each adjective is perfect in its place. The prose isn’t tiring but flows like butter, and you find yourself being drawn into their universe without even really noticing it.

In light of this, part of me wants to delete everything I’ve written before and retire.

But similar to how one vows change when when confronted with disgusting imperfections, there is hope. By seeing the gap between my writing and strong prose, there appears a destination to run towards. And embarking on this destination, like any adventure, is exciting. The chasm to better is simultaneously daunting and comforting.

It’s like mercilessly being destroyed by a computer at chess; it feels terrible, hopeless even, but you can’t help but feel inspired at how great one can become at the game.

And one day, with enough persistence, one may even approach greatness themselves.

The last two months were a painful experiment.

I stepped away from regular blogging for a while – for reasons I’ll share another time – and not writing made me realise how much I need to write. To compensate, I’ve begun journalling more obsessively, taking more online notes, and writing compulsive short stories, some of which I’ll share in the future. But it just hasn’t been the same.

In particular, there are three main reasons why I’ve come back to blogging.

1. The thrill of clarity

The more I write, the more I realise I have no idea what’s actually in my head. It takes a lot of painful exploration to even begin to understand your thoughts. But when a breakthrough occurs, the feeling of clarity is completely worth it. It’s like finding a little crystal in a room full of dust.

During the blogging break I’ve begun noticing my ideas aren’t as sharp anymore. It takes more time for me to explain my thoughts now and it’s often in incoherent ways. That’s when I realised writing online was crucial in examining my ideas. Without this practice, the quality of my conversations and reflections rapidly deteriorated.

2. Sharing is fun

I find something beautiful in throwing your voice into the void and leaving it for the world to discover. Most of the time, the call goes unanswered. But the thought of a stranger reading a post and having their life improved, even for just a moment, brings me enormous joy.

I have had the trajectory of my life drastically altered from other people’s blog posts. Despite the increasing abundance of social media, I still firmly believe in the power of this medium.

3. I like the pain

Finding ideas worth sharing is difficult. But it’s kind of satisfying in a weird way, similar to how bodybuilders enjoy muscle soreness. The exhaustion that comes from finding and consolidating an idea is one unlike that from studying or exercise or in other domains. It is unique, more addictive, more intoxicating. One I will keep running back to.

More thoughts to come.

This will be my last post for a while. After writing 300+ articles over three years, I’ve decided to take a break from writing publicly.

This decision was not made lightly. This blog has been a sanctuary for me to share my most sincere thoughts. I’ve rambled about about religion, happiness and art; shared stories on medicine, introversion and suicide; cried over suffering, poetry and love. My ideas and writing have evolved over time and this blog has captured some of its most precious, delicate moments.

It depresses me to step away from this sanctuary, knowing the clarity and relief it brings to my conscience, but a time has come where I no longer feel able to write with genuine honesty. And if one cannot write with honesty, one should not write at all.

To the readers: this blog was never written for you, but I am deeply moved by the possibility of it having improved your life. Every email, comment or like on a post touches me like no other compliment can. It is a terrifying thing to cast your voice into the void; to hear it reaffirmed is endlessly comforting. Thank you.

This site will still exist to keep my old posts and thoughts alive but will no longer be updated. As for me, the future is uncertain. But if it contains books, stories, challenges and love, there must be good waiting.

Take care.

Eric

Sometimes a random memory pops into my head. When this happens, I always search through my journal or memory banks to relive it. And whenever I do, I always wish I wrote more of the moment down.

It could be a joke somebody said. The clothes somebody wore. The feelings I felt. The details feel unimportant and excessive at the time, but in retrospect you wish you had more to look back on. There are few things more painful than a half-remembered moment.

Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

Whenever I get writer’s block, it’s always due to one cause: I’m terrified of writing something bad.

What if this idea isn’t interesting enough? What’s the best way to start this piece? How will I structure my argument? What even is my argument?

The considerations can be paralyzing. There are days where I’ve spent literal hours staring at a blank text editor, unsure what to do and how to start.

Here’s an idea: just write anything down. Anything remotely interesting that comes to your mind. Just one line. And then elaborate on that line as if you were explaining it to a child. And then keep going and going, making wild and brilliant tangents in the process, until you discover something in your messy pile you can write about for a post.

It’s messy and unprofessional. Your sentences don’t make grammatical sense, the logic disappears then reappears again paragraphs later, and there are misspelled words and missing punctuation everywhere.

But from this chaos comes form, and with the tools of editing and hindsight, you can shape the form into something tangible; something beautiful. Like all sculptures beginning as a messy block, so too can we carve out ideas from our block of words and experience.

It all begins with one line.

One of the greatest ironies is that to be happy, you need to experience sadness.

If you are always happy, you are not happy. That is your normal state. Happiness ranges from contentment to immense joy, and these only exist if a discontent and immensely sad side of the spectrum exists as well.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been hit with waves of sadness. Patients passing away. World issues. Getting silly questions wrong in an exam. They all suck in the moment. Some days I seriously considered disappearing just to get rid of it all. You could call it a season of sadness.

But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. When you crawl through the battlefield, scathed but alive, a different person emerges. You have metamorphosed into a more complex, appreciative and tender creature.

Change is always difficult and often follows sadness. But these low moments are what make the high moments ones shine, like how the bliss of sleep feels warmer after a long, hard day.

As a cyclist, I hate traffic lights. More specifically, I hate the moment when the light goes from green to orange. In this moment, there’s this grey zone where it’s not clear whether you should speed up to make the light, or slow down to a stop. This uncertainty is one of my biggest dreads, and hesitating in this moment has led me nearly getting run over multiple times, or braking to an abrupt stop.

One day, I was riding my bike and realised that for most of the times I was slowing down for a red light, I could’ve easily made it if I sped up. From that moment, I told myself I would try to make the orange light every time if I was reasonably close enough. This meant I would accelerate towards green lights as much as possible, and once past a certain “point of no return”, I just maintained a high speed until I got through.

The most interesting thing about this experiment was the shift in mentality in other areas of life. There are many “orange lights” in our day-to-day experience. These are moments where you have made progress in an area, like applying for a job, finding a romantic partner or finishing a project, but there is a final hurdle waiting to be overcome. And the annoying thing is, the hurdle is time-sensitive.

If you wait too long to send a job application, the recruitment period will be over. If you wait too long to ask your love interest out, the other person may have lost interest in you. If you procrastinate on a project, you face a criticism from your boss or your own self-talk.

You have a choice in these moments. Speed up and chase for the green light, not letting the opportunity pass, or slow down in the face of a potential rejection. Make it or wait. What I’ve found is that meeting an orange light and accelerating through it through the finish line is the best feeling ever. You feel an amazing breeze against your face, and the world around you stops as cars wait for their turn to go. In that moment, you feel like the world is watching you.

And braking last minute at the red traffic light, knowing you could’ve made it if you put in just a little more effort, is terribly heartbreaking.

My favourite piece in chess is the pawn. Why, you might ask, a pawn, when there are far more powerful, interesting pieces like the almighty queen, the elusive knight or the game-deciding king? The reason is because of the pawn’s potential. A pawn, upon reaching the back rank, can become any other piece in the game. It can start off the game as a most ordinary henchman, but 40 moves later, turn the tables as a game-winning queen. To me, that is beautiful.

My favourite moments in life are the ones that force change. Most of my life decisions are driven by a search for sights, conversations and ideas that make me go, “wait a second, let me reconsider that”. My hobby of reading gives me insights to new ideas, my career in medicine gives allows me unexpected conversations, and my practice of journalling allows me to reflect on these for change.

The frustrating thing is that change is difficult. We hope it will be as simple as taking the pawn off the board and replacing it with a queen, but it rarely is. Change often requires two processes: recognising a flaw in ourselves and initiating its necessary death. Both are immensely difficult to do.

For similar reasons as the pawn, the caterpillar is one of my favourite animals. Its transformation into a butterfly is extraordinarily beautiful, and unique in the animal kingdom. But the process of change in a caterpillar is far from easy. From The New York Times:

“It turns out that the inside of a cocoon is — at least by outside-of-a-cocoon standards — pretty bleak. Terrible things happen in there: a campaign of grisly desolation that would put most horror movies to shame. What a caterpillar is doing, in its self–imposed quarantine, is basically digesting itself. It is using enzymes to reduce its body to goo, turning itself into a soup of ex-caterpillar — a nearly formless sludge oozing around a couple of leftover essential organs (tracheal tubes, gut).

Only after this near-total self-annihilation can the new growth begin. Inside that gruesome mush are special clusters of cells called “imaginal discs,” which sounds like something from a Disney movie but which I have been assured is actual biology. Imaginal discs are basically the seeds of crucial butterfly structures: eyes, wings, genitalia and so on. These parts gorge themselves on the protein of the deconstructed caterpillar, growing exponentially, taking form, becoming real. That’s how you get a butterfly: out of the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.”

Did you catch that last line? The origins of the beautiful butterfly are from the meltdown of a modest caterpillar.

I often wonder what goes through a caterpillar’s mind as it begins releasing enzymes to digest itself. Is it terrified at the pain it will endure? Does it consider dropping out halfway through its metamorphosis? Does it ever ask itself, “Who ever said I needed to be a butterfly? I’m damn happy being a caterpillar and will stay this way.”

But of course, we know that becoming a butterfly is the natural progression of a caterpillar’s life. A caterpillar deciding to not metamorphose is like a child deciding to not become an adult. Even though the change is difficult, causing a destruction of itself in the process, it must happen.

Change is difficult, but simultaneously necessary. It requires a painful dissolution of the old, and a slow rebuilding of the new. Yet like a pawn becoming a queen or a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, the result is beautiful. And because of the effort required for change, its beauty is exponentially greater.

For most my life, I assumed the worst in people.

I assumed people were dangerous, untrustworthy, naive, stupid, uninteresting and pathologically selfish. It was up to them to prove to me that they weren’t these things, and then we could start being friends.

These questions made me terrified of interacting with strangers. I make no eye contact when walking in public, interacted solely with my friendship group and rarely revealed my secrets to anyone.

But recently, as part of a social experiment, I’ve decided to take the opposite approach: to assume the best in people. That means to assume people are trustworthy, intelligent, kind-hearted, immensely talented, can keep secrets and have a strong moral compass. With this baseline, everybody is a friend by default. If they later prove to me that they shouldn’t be a friend, I gently let them go.

This experiment has gone on for about one year now. Having to drastically re-engineer my worldview has been exhausting at times, but overall it has been a wonderful gift.

What I’ve come to realise is people tend to become the person you perceive them to be. If you don’t trust anybody and keep to yourself, people owe you nothing and have less reason to back you. But if you give people the responsibility of your trust, they generally live up to it and prove themselves to be trustworthy.

If you think people are dumb, you will never ask anyone interesting or difficult questions so they will never have a chance to prove their intellect. But if you believe people are smart and give them a chance to speak, even the most unreflective minds might surprise you. The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

I wish I could go back and tell little Eric to chill out a little more. I would urge him to see the world as a good place, rather than an evil one, because this would make the world a better place. Being cautious has its context, but to constantly walk in fear and suspicion seems like a sad road to embark on.