Sorry I missed yesterday guys, I’ve been away enjoying some sunshine in Rehoboth, DE.

This is day 3+1 of journaling with Selena. Today’s prompt:

What’s the hardest thing to love about yourself?

When I was ten, on a business trip with my mom to China, I went to go see my paternal grandparents. Well-off and eager to spoil me, they took me out to a mall in Beijing. It was shocking how quickly money was exchanged. I so much as looked at a little handheld pinball machine, flipped the levers once or twice, and before I knew it, my grandfather was haggling with the store owner about the price.

I protested that I didn’t really want it, that I was just looking around, but he insisted. The 300RMB trinket that I held for the rest of the day was far heavier than the hockey bags that I was used to slinging over my shoulder. After arriving back home, the pinball machine would sit on a shelf, gathering dust. From time to time, I’d play with it, not with joy, but out of guilt. I did the math: if I played with it ten times, then each play was four and a half dollars, 18 times the full-size pinball machines at the local rink.

Ever since I lost my childhood obsession for Thomas the Train Engine sets, I have not been one for things. I gave a polite smile at Christmas gifts that I’d never touch, much to the chagrin of my mom, who’d always complain: I never know what to get you. How can I reward you or encourage you if gifts don’t work?

Despite my aversion to possessions, I want a lot of things. I want a six pack and to be 6’3”, I want to be a straight-A student taking difficult classes, and I want to bench 225 and run a six minute mile.

There’s so many sayings that I think about: you crave what you do not have, there are things in life that money can’t buy, and there will always be someone that is better than you at something. And since I never craved possessions, I craved traits, qualities, and achievements instead.

I really do believe them all of those sayings. I have learned all of these sayings myself. Yet somehow, I can’t stomach the last one. Something makes my heart pang and my stomach churn when I hear from my mom that so-and-so just won this huge piano competition! Family friend XYZ, look at how tall he is! You know my friend? Her daughter just committed to Genius University College for a combination of field hockey, lacrosse, and Jai Alai, what an amazing athlete.

Having dropped 30 lbs over a summer, having gone from a geeky introvert to a sociable well-adjusted person, having been unable to lift the puck to playing on a triple A team, I know that I’m able to do a lot of things. I’m confident in my ability to improve myself. And so, maybe sometimes when I hear that someone else is succeeding, when I smile and say “good for them,” a nasty voice at the back of my head asks: how can I one-up them? Despite being told to not show off and be humble as a kid, there was also this unspoken implication that to be able to be humble, you had to be extraordinary.

Being named “Close To Ordinary,” you’d think that my parents orchestrated this entire existence of contradictions as some kind of sick joke. But no: they meant that by default, I’d strive to be ordinary, being born the extraordinary person I am.

I don’t think I was born extraordinary. I am a firm believer in the Growth Mindset. It’s done so much good for me, yet it just made my envy worse. The curse of believing I can do anything is that I become so painfully aware of everything I haven’t done. Nothing is worse for the ego than thinking: I could do that too. I despise those who say it out loud, but I can’t help but inwardly saying it too.

Vanity and envy must be two sides of the same coin, but between the faces lies self-hate too. And I know that to love myself, I need to throw envy and vanity away too.

I haven’t earned the name Jinfan yet. But I’m working towards it.

Growth mindset 🤑🤑🤑