30 years old.

Now that I’ve turned thirty years old, it’s a significant milestone in my life, for sure. Much of that has been learning about myself, who I am, and what I like doing. I’ve come a long way from being born, adopted, then found my birth family in 2002, and now I’m living in Korea for a year.

For those who know me well, I enjoy thinking about philosophy and generally question things. There’s lots of good stuffs on the Internet and I like to think of things in terms of science and universe like what Carl Sagan usually shared. Although Earth is a big planet (maybe not so much with the world population rapidly growing), it’s really really tiny out in the universe alone and it makes us much smaller. I’ve realized that we’ve pretty much existed in our consciousness, taking part in the light. It’s weird that we can hear same sounds, see same things, yet be in different bodies. I guess it’s the mind that binds us and our souls residing in bodies. My line of thinking is similar to that of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche with the idea of existentialism. Kierkegaard maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom. Both of them also believed that one should define the nature of their own existence. It’s a similar notion to one quote I read—“Life isn’t about finding yourself it’s about creating yourself.” That’s what I believe in, and that’s mainly one reason why Facebook is so popular because it’s given us tools to share ourselves rather conveniently.

After reaching thirty years old, the next 30 years should serve to be even more interesting, probably because of what I’ve found with myself and discovering who is my family and friends. I hope to make many new memories with my family and friends. I know that at some point, probably soon, that I’d be responsible for the safety and welfare of my family, so I’d need to act up to my duty and make some decisions. I realize I’ll be 60 by then and I know it’ll go even faster, if you can fathom that. I’ve often played the thought of what’d happen if I was never adopted? I know that my life would be vastly different and after living in Korea for about 9 months, it’s not as bad as some people like my parents may be inclined to believe. I’d probably be poor, may not get college education and be working in some odd jobs like working at a KFC but I’d spend time playing StarCraft at night in a PC bang, no doubts and enjoying those kimchi instant ramen and be somewhat content. I think that is the key to life, to have some sense of contentment, with whatever you may be doing and it’s also important to set some long-term goals and try your best in achieving them, so that when you look back, you’d be proud of what you’ve done. I still enjoy doing my work, still learning more about coding and I’ve realized that codes are like puzzles in that you try to design the output of those code in a format that CPUs can understand and for humans to understand too, so that it can be more self-serving and help save our time as well as earn some money too. That’s what makes it so fascinating and it’ll be interesting to see what the future may bring us, with things becoming more automated and we’d be able to control more stuffs with our mobile devices. I still find it interesting that people don’t really know what they want till you show to them first. That’s what Steve Jobs said. That’s why IKEA does all those design, so you’d drool and want a set exactly like that for your own room.

In the next 30 years, I want to do more things that I enjoy doing things–snowboarding, traveling, meeting people, do more writing and take pictures. I also want to get serious at golf and see how good I can get. I once had a conversation with one friend that I’m a bit terrified of death, the end of things. He replied well yeah, ofc but if we were to live forever, how can we find meaning in life? Basically, it’s the scarcity of things that gives it meaning and value things, like I’d be 30 only once.