A Giant of Introspection - Herman Hesse Book Review

"It was never about the grapes or the lettuce, it was always about the people."

I’ve read two books by Herman Hesse (he wrote Siddhartha), Demian and Strange News from Another Star. Hesse’s main focus is on an individual’s search of self-knowledge and enlightenment. 

Demian is a pseudo-autobiography of Hesse’s youth as he learns how to understand his own unconsciousness. Hesse is initially lead into his unconscious by a classmate, Demian, who brings forth a counter-cultural understanding of the bible story of Cain and Abel. 

In this story, Cain and Abel are two brothers that work on a farm. Abel is much more successful, so Cain grows jealous and murders Abel. God punishes Cain by forcing him to be a lonely wanderer, and Cain walks around with a mark on his forehead for the rest of his life. Society’s understanding is that Cain is evil and Abel is a martyr. 

Demian suggests an alternate interpretation of this story. Cain’s mark was not an actual mark, but a personality trait that caused him to be exiled. People misunderstood Cain because he was so different, and automatically labeled him as evil. Sidenote - Isn’t it funny how quickly people label different = bad? 

Demian challenges society’s view that Cain was the bad guy, and further, that people should decide for themselves who is evil, what is the truth. After Hesse is exposed to such radical thoughts, he can’t take school or his parents seriously, and has to leave his home to discover the truths of the world for himself. Essentially, Demian is the story that follows. 

Cain represents Hesse's main focus, that certain individuals stand out as weird, and represent a different subset of humanity. Hesse and Demian are both such individuals, described as: 

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.” 

Basically, Hesse believes only these hyper-introspective types are really alive. Sidenote - I've come to disagree with this, I’ve met plenty of excellent non-introspective people. That said, I’ve also chatted at length about these marked individuals, referring to them as being on the plane. 

I’ve been trying to understand the plane for a long time. 

I’ve read several authors on the plane, three off the top of my head: Herman Hesse, David Foster Wallace, and Bill Simmons. All of these authors share the common trait that they are involved in the intense pursuit of truth. 

I’ve also met several people on the plane, and the unique thing I’ve experienced is that it’s a pretty immediate and mutual understanding that we’re both on the plane. Conversations blossoms more smoothly, maybe based on the mutual recognition that we both empathize and share a strange life on the plane. Most recently, when I went to interview at Wash U med school, I met a professor with whom I had a heartfelt conversation about solving the great problems of mankind. 

From these books, and these people I’ve met, I’ve learned a little bit. In Hesse’s novel, Demian is clearly on the plane, and he helps Hesse on to the plane by instilling the confidence to believe in his inner voice, and to see the importance of introspection as a way to listen to the voice inside. So, part of it is about the confidence in believing in yourself. 

But there’s more than just being a deep thinker. It’s also about taking your own life, and the world way too seriously. It’s about feeling the weight of every single moment, and understanding the unbelievable significance of life. 

If you think you know what I’m talking about, please feel welcome to shed some light on my confusion.

See you on the other side. 

from ken  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

We might lose

It was winter 1998. The NBA conference finals had the five-time champion Chicago Bulls pitted against the underdog Indiana Pacers. Michael Jordan and his Bulls were in a bind, forced all the way to a game 7. 

In a tight must-win situation like this, what would you expect a coach to tell his team? 

“You’ll come through.” 

“If you play this game ten times, you might lose nine, but not this one.” 

Instead, the legendary zen Bulls coach, Phil Jackson, told his team: 

“We might lose.” 

-- 

This past week I went for an interview at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the best medical schools in the country. I thought I was a pretty good applicant, but I wasn’t really expecting to be given a shot at such a prestigious school. Just by the numbers, I would land in the lower 10-20% of their entering class. Numbers aren’t everything, but it means something. 

The first day was a casual day for the nine of us being interviewed that day to meet students and see the facilities. While eating lunch, we chatted about where we were coming from, etc. Everyone else was from Harvard or the NIH or Penn, top cut institutions. I guess I should have known that these are the kids that come to interview at a top 5 med school, but I was still caught off guard. 

I came from a small school in Ohio, and since getting out of college, I’ve gotten used to the casual attitude of Portland. I guess in those five years, I forgot about all the eliteness, and it definitely threw me off. I spent a few hours after that being intimidated as we took a tour of the facilities – shiny and expensive. 

The second day was the real test, a lineup of seven or eight faculty interviews, including a 20 minute panel interview with thirteen faculty members. I didn’t do my best, but I walked away feeling like I tried my best. I had good conversations, made some friends, and communicated at least to a couple faculty members what I was about. There’s not much more to life than feeling like you’ve given it your best. 

But walking away that day, the realization on my head was that I might not be going to medical school next fall. I always thought since I was a good candidate I would get in somewhere, but I realized the pool of candidates is overflowing with qualified candidates. 

If you’ve tried to find a job in the past couple years, I’m sure you know all about this. 

--

Phil Jackson showed some serious swagger to acknowledge that the Bulls, despite having an unmatched history, could still lose. Jackson didn't want a pity party, but he just wanted to lay down the simple straightforward reality. In sports, one team wins, and another team loses. And it is always important to know the reality. 

Nobody ever wants to talk about losing or making mistakes, but it doesn't have to be a negative part of the reality, and it should be ok to talk about it. 

Of course, the 1998 Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship. 

See you on the other side, 

from ken  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Will the real John Galt, please stand up?

Atlas Shrugged spoiler alert

“In fiction you can pose a question, but you dare not answer it.”
- Anton Chekhov

I finally finished Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which is over 1000 pages. I started reading it back in February, and I’ve spent roughly three to four full days reading it. It was a serious hinderance to my goal of reading 50 books in a year, and my new plan is never to read another book over 300 pages. That said, Atlas Shrugged was truly a beautifully crafted novel.

There are several writers that I highly admire, including: Christian author Donald Miller, sports columnist Bill Simmons, pop psychologist Malcolm Gladwell, author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert. Reading them makes you feel like you’re having a chat with your buddy, thinking, “Hey someone else feels just like me!”

When I read Malcolm Gladwell or Bill Simmons, I think, yeah these guys are hilarious and amazing, but I could dream about doing what they do. Accordingly, I’ve crafted my writing after these guys. The pop culture laced title to this post screams Bill Simmons. However, Ayn Rand is just on a whole different plane of writing that I can’t even wrap my head around.

She develops several complex characters through a thousand page journey, and creates an incredible page-turning sensation that I have never felt before. Having read about three novels in the past year, I am comfortable calling Atlas Shrugged a literary stalwart.

Anyways, as Chekov’s quote explains, fiction is meant to raise questions and conversation, not answers. So what is the most relevant conversation raised by Ayn Rand?

First, some background on Atlas. Rand’s words:

“This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world – and did… It is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder – and rebirth – of man’s spirit.”

Atlas is set in an industrial era when the government is worried about business giants getting too rich. They try to place restrictions on these businesses, but in an act of rebellion, the business leaders leave the world to create their own Atlantis-like community. There, they build a pursuit-of-greatness utopia with only the greatest minds. The world is left without these intellectuals and goes in a tailspin.

John Galt is the man who started the Atlantis-like community and stops the motor of the world by depriving the world of all the great business leaders.

I could easily write five blog posts on ideas I had about Atlas, but here I’ll talk about Galt’s victory.

In my eyes, the greatest accomplishment of Galt and his followers is that they break free of societal constraints. They have no qualms stating that they are out for their own greatness, and they will not stand for a government that limits them in any way.

I can see the left wing/humanitarian argument building against this: life is about sacrificing for the whole, the rich shouldn’t be greedy. Arguments I’ve tried to make on this blog.

From the one who has been entrusted with much,

But Galt had it right. Life is about being real.

Last winter I read a book by self-help/addiction expert Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection. The short summary: Brown has found that the most satisfied people are not afraid to be themselves, and believe that they will be worthy of other people’s acceptance despite their flaws. Ie – drug addicts are not defined by their addiction, friends are not defined by their selfishness, etc.

So, who is John Galt? Galt is a man who stood in front of the world, and asked them not to be ashamed of themselves. Society might say drug addicts are uselss, or that it’s wrong to be out for yourself. Society might be right, but I don’t think I am at any point to judge what is and is not wrong. I think Galt and Brown are in the right camp. They just want people not care so much about what other people think, they just want people to be themselves.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Stages of Life

I touched ground in PDX on May 27^th, 2010. That means I’ve officially been here for twelve whole months. If that sounds familiar it’s because I started the “I’ve been here for 6 months” post with the same sentence. Congrats on noticing! This post may or may not be similar.

Anyways, I recently decided that a year is a good unit of time to label as a stage, so I labeled my last year as: the stage Ken goes off into the wilderness to pray/think/meditate/write.

The last four years of my life I was in college, so I was basically surrounded with people non-stop. Going from roommates, to classes, to the dining hall, to the study lounge, to track practice, even as an introvert I couldn’t avoid being with people all the time.

The biggest difference in my life since then is that it’s a lot more solitary. Since I didn’t know anyone living in Portland, I chose to live in a studio. On top of that, I thought I would save some money and live sans TV and internet. And surprisingly, or maybe not, the alone time has been life-changing.

With no roommates, constant community, or distractions like ESPN or gmail chat I’ve had a lot more time to analyze my life to an unnecessary level, and read more books than ever before.

Sidenote: here are the top 5 books I’ve read in the last 12 months in the order I’d suggest them:

1) The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Super heart-warming and inspiring, you could read it in a day.

2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – A novel written from the perspective of a teenager growing up on the reservation but going to a white school.

3) Bird by Bird by Anne Lammott – Readable book about writing and being honest with yourself.

4) The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons – Absolutely hilarious, breaks down the history of the NBA, would be #1 by a moonshot but it’s about 800 pgs long.

5) The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown – Self-help/addiction recovery book about accepting your flaws.

But of course, the practical question: has all that alone time really changed anything?

I think my set of beliefs is about the same as it’s ever been in my adult life. Some mix of: serve people, follow your dreams, relationships are the point of life, and work hard. I would say the biggest intangible I’ve developed is the ability to be honest with myself and allow myself to be guided by my internal GPS.

I’ve used this newfound ability to debunk old life goals I had for myself, be the next Paul Farmer (global health icon), and replaced them with new ones, be the next Atul Gawande (surgeon and NYT best-selling author) or Siddhartha Mukherjee (physcian-scientist and Pulitzer Prize winner). I decided this based on a key realization: my new favorite stress-relieving activity, showering, is hard to come by in a doctors-without-borders setting.

Sidenote: I thought my all-time favorite showering setting would be post-practice locker room showering with ten other distance runners, but I’ve actually taken a liking to the peace of showering by myself.

I’ve also used this newfound ability to change how I behave now. I’ve learned that I don’t need to transform myself into a socialite to cultivate community. I can be the same awkward introvert I’ve always been and still contribute in my own niche way.

So I guess what I’ve learned can be summed up as: you do what you can.

Top 3 predictions for next stage of life:

1) Ken moves to Texas, buys a Texas flag, loves irrationally talking about how awesome Texas is

2) Ken moves to California, learns to surf, becomes a beach bum/scientist

3) Ken changes his mind about life, again

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Mid-life crisis, pt 18

Recently, I’ve struggled a ton with writing. I haven’t been happy with anything I’ve written nor have I had any fun ideas. Pretty much, I feel like a complete failure. I figured this would be a good time to reassess why I wanted to write in the first place.

Brené Brown speaks about the human need to live with authenticity and belonging. She emphasizes how people have to allow their true selves to be seen, and through that vulnerability, authentic connections can be established. Further, she suggests courage as a key component, and defines courage as the ability to tell our stories with our whole heart.

That’s really why I wanted to write. I know writing is the best way I communicate. I wanted to get at what my story was. I wanted to let others relate to my struggles. Really, I just wanted to keep it real.

So, I’m going to write about my biggest struggle right now. It’s one that has haunted me for years.

I recently read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a Latin American fable about following your personal calling. It was a heart-warming and inspiring story, but it made me think... What is my dream? What does a dream even look like? In the midst of the typical post-college fog, my question is really: What am I doing with my life?

That's right, at the age of 22 I have already attained mid-life crisis status.

I’m currently in the process of getting ready to apply to med school, and I have no idea what sort of role I want to play in medicine. Well, the problem is more like: I have somewhere between one to two bazillion ideas of what I think my role should be.

Sometimes I love science and get caught up writing about the role of acid resistance systems in enteric bacteria. This makes me feel like I would love to pursue a research-oriented career, thinking and chatting about science all day. Of course, this also makes me feel guilty. Don’t I have a social obligation to help the poor?

Then, I see such a dire need to engage with people that I would love to be a primary care physician. I feel like that job is fundamentally to care about people and walk people through health-related fears. It also really puts you on the frontlines of medicine and social justice outreach. Although, do I really have the patience to put up with people all day?

Other times I’m inspired by global health heroes like Paul Farmer, and I’d love to be an ER physician working in disaster-response in the developing world. But… I do love the city life.

Other times yet, I want to work in leadership and policy development, and fundamentally change the way medical students are selected. Really make wide-scale change! … or would I just get buried in paper work and bureaucratic meetings?

I’d like to have a life that encompasses the best of all these worlds. Somehow combining writing, social justice, science, and leadership. … I guess that is my dream! And I suppose I need to just keep living a life that cultivates each of those things. How to do that is an entirely new question… Progress!

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

People Helping People

I’ve been excited to write a post reflecting back on my first six months out of college/in Portland (not this post), and one of the things it’s made me realize is that my biggest struggle is the same as it was in college.

I tend to throw myself into too many things, a sort of, my eyes being bigger than my stomach mentality:

Oh yeah, of course I can take on that additional responsibility at church. Learn a new mouse surgery technique? No problem. Dinner on Wednesday night? Sure! Activism group? Sign me up!

I had this exact problem in college, and I still haven’t struck a good balance of giving myself a break.

The other night, I had a few of my friends over. One of them was my friend Maureen, who is a real southern smily girl that says y’all, a novelty in the northwest. As we were chatting she explained her struggles in her job search. She was especially frustrated because she had such amazing work experiences before moving to the young-people-mecca of Portland, aka job-hell.

My other friend Lee, who is the kind of guy that covers his face in makeup and wears a diaper to be a baby for Halloween, chimed in with a similar situation. His first job as a chef was amazingly rewarding, but when his second job didn’t match up to that same level of meaningfulness, he could barely handle it.

I had similar experiences. In my undergrad lab, a bacterial physiology lab, my experiments worked so beautifully that I had myself thinking I had a god-given scientist’s touch. I had ample data to put together a publication within an academic year of working part-time, an impressive feat. However, it wasn’t easy because of my unreal talent as a scientist, which after seeing the hyper-competitive world of biomedical research is admittedly average, but because bacteria are used to growing in weird places like your fridge. That makes them easier to grow and a lot easier for me to churn out good results.

On the other hand, I work with mammalian liver cells now. Have you ever seen mammalian cells popping up in your old milk? No? Well that’s because they’re needy and aren’t engineered to grow outside of your skin. Basically, that just means it’s a lot tougher to handle them. My experimental success rate has plummeted lower than I ever imagined. Seeing wave after wave of failure and troubleshooting is exhausting.

But that night the simple act of sharing reminded me that everyone struggles. I’m not unique in having stress in my life! Of course, that’s intuitive but to share those burdens is a beautiful thing. It not only lightens the load of the sharer, but it was a great reminder for me as the selfish listener that the world doesn’t stop when I’m stressed and that other people have anxiety too.

Maybe chicken little was right when he said the sky was falling, and maybe all we can do is to accept that life is stressful, be nice to each other, keep each other company, share, and laugh a little along the way.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

What's your word?

I came across an interesting insight from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Every city has a word. For example, New York’s is achieve and Rome’s is sex. Similarly, every person has a word. This got me thinking, what’s Portland’s word, and naturally, what’s my word?

I’ll put the Portland question aside for now, since I’m still basically an extended-stay tourist, and focus on my word.

I’ve heard that you should be able to sum up your current state in life to a few sentences. If that’s true, it’d be way easier just to be able to explain your life in a word, right? I like this idea because you really have to be true to yourself to funnel down everything you believe into one solitary word.

But anyways, I decided that my word is: sacrifice.

I don’t exactly know why I am sacrificing, I tell myself it’s for society. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, I like to think it is. I don’t even really know what I am sacrificing. But the way that word came to me, I know that sacrifice is my word.

I’ve always had an uncomfortable taste for suffering. Mostly, I think I developed this taste through running.

I think the most memorable period of my life is the summer I spent in Wyoming. I loved the friends I made there, climbing Middle Teton, working at the restaurant, but most of all I will never forget the absolutely heart-wrenching running I did there. Running twice a day, day after day, running more miles in a week than I ever believed possible. I ran over a thousand miles that summer.

It sounds strange, but I think everybody should experience that sort of suffering. Not necessarily through running, but somehow. Maybe to understand what real suffering is like. Maybe because there is immense beauty in human struggle. Maybe because I am too proud to accept limits.

It is absolutely scary how accurate John L. Parker’s Once A Runner, a novel about the trials of an olympian in training, portrays this sort of beauty in suffering. You should definitely read it.

I assume this sort of constant suffering can’t be healthy, and I am starting to learn to cut myself some slack, for the better, hopefully. I think one of the reasons I came out to Portland was because I thought I needed to relax a little bit, have some fun, and enjoy myself more. On a sidenote, I think Portland’s word is something like chill, or fun, or happy. I started taking up new hobbies, forcing myself to get more sleep, etc. etc. And I probably should do some more of that.

But another one of the reasons I came out to Portland was to learn to be true to myself. And one of the things I sincerely believe about my life is that I want to learn how to play with that border between pushing the edge and falling over to burnout.

A Vince Lombardi quote:

“In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.”

When I burnout, or die, or both, some combination of which will probably happen to me, I just want to know that I tried. And maybe suffering is my way of knowing.

Suffering drives me, to be able to push further and sacrifice myself more for the world that has given me so many amazing chances. And I guess that’s how I know my word is my word.

So anyways, that’s my word. What’s your’s?

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

photo by Paulo Brandao

I find that I like to hide from criticism

A quote from The Usual Suspects:

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

I am terrible at accepting criticism. It always makes me uncomfortable to see someone disappointed with me, probably because I like to see myself as flawless. I usually prefer to wade in the risk-free zone where I know I won’t make any mistakes. But I know it’s inevitable for other people to disagree with me if I want to carve out my own path to life, so I figured I should start getting used to being criticized and people being unhappy with me.

I took on my reluctance to accept criticism head on as I was sitting in a disability training session. The discussion was supposed to teach us to how to interact with people with disabilities. Even though I consider myself to be a somewhat compassionate human being, I pretty much have zero experience with people with disabilities, so I figured this would be a good learning experience in caring for others.

Knowing this would be a good opportunity to face my judgment of people who are different from me, I watched a video of how not to interact with people with disabilities, and I saw myself in those videos. Being patronizing, and convincing myself I was being polite, but really I was seeing people with disabilities as less than human. Coincidentally, I also started to notice how annoying the woman leading the discussion was. She was also ugly, she had bad breath, and in all likelihood she was the devil.

Of course, this made me realize how quickly I get defensive even when someone is indirectly criticizing me. When somebody is revealing a side of you that you don’t want to see, it’s easy to respond by just jumping on their back. Way easier to judge someone else than yourself, I suppose.

I think it’s necessary to allow yourself to be criticized, and expose yourself to that sort of brutally painful honesty. Without it, I would’ve just gone on judging people different than me as less than me. I will still do this, of course, but if I can get out of the denial zone where I convince myself that I am perfect, I can at least try to change.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

photo by clagnut