by CJ Quines • on
actual conversations i definitely had at sparc
entirely verbatim, trust me
me: so, what do you think are the pertinent parts to your identity?
camper: huh?
me: i mean, what parts of yourself do you think are important to making you, you?
camper: uh
camper:
camper: i dunno
me: oh
me: what kinds of things do you like?
camper: video games?
me: oh same
camper: and books
me: wow me too
⁂
camper: so alice and bob are in different rooms and each see an infinite random series of coin flips
me: mhm
camper: then alice says an integer i and bob says an integer j, and they win if alice’s jth coin flip and bob’s ith coin flip are both heads
me: yep
camper: now if they pick randomly their chance of winning is one-fourth, but you can get one-third if you’re clever, and you can get an even higher probability if you do some work…
me: ok?
camper: and now i’m writing out some code to check if there’s an upper bound to the best chance of winning you can get for short numbers of coin flips, to try to see if i can prove something about this in general…
me: sure
me: i mean, cool problem
me: and you’re working on this alone?
camper: yeah everyone’s doing something else
me: is this what you want to be doing with your time
camper: uh
camper: yes?
[camper leaves a few minutes later]
⁂
camper: what’s something you’ve been confused about lately?
me: well i went to the gym yesterday for the first time in six years
me: and while we were doing stretches someone asked me why i was going to the gym for the first time in a while
me: and i said i didn’t want to go to the gym, but i want to want to go to the gym, you know?
camper: makes sense
camper: so why did you want to want that?
me: i mean, it’s one of the big depression interventions i haven’t given a try yet
me: or, well, i thought i’ve given it a try but a friend insisted that i haven’t given it a serious one
camper: mhm
me: anyway i was explaining this to her and then i said i’m gonna start crying
me: and then i started crying
camper: i see
camper: why
me: dunno
⁂
camper: where are you from
me: well i lived in the philippines for eighteen years, and have been in the us for the last five
me: you?
camper: i was born in shanghai and i lived there for two years
me: uh huh
camper: then we moved to singapore and i lived there for three years
me: ok
camper: then we moved to oxford and i lived there for two years
me: sure
camper: then shanghai for three years, singapore for four years, sunnyvale for three years
me: that’s a lot
camper: yeah
camper: i’m not sure how i feel about my cultural identity, what i identify with, or how much that even matters to me
me: ah
me: same
⁂
camper: my friends seem to think that my life is too perfect
camper: and i don’t want that
me: why not?
camper: i think partly it makes them harder to relate to me
camper: but also, my life isn’t perfect!
camper: there’s things about it i don’t like
me: and do your friends know about these things?
camper: no
me: well do you like, talk to them about it?
camper: no, i don’t want to complain about things
camper: because complaining is bad
camper: it only makes you focus on the problem, which makes you feel worse
me: well, per litany of gendlin
me: what is true is already so
me: owning up to it doesn’t make it worse
me: not being open about it doesn’t make it go away
camper: hmm
camper: i guess i’ve kinda been taught by my mom not to complain
camper: and i felt a sense of pride because my older sister complains a lot, and i don’t
camper: and i don’t want to be known as the kind of person who complains
me: but like
me: people complain to their friends
me: that’s a thing that friends do
me: it makes you closer, you know? you’re disclosing something you don’t like
me: which is more vulnerable than talking about something you do like
camper: huh
me: we can practice complaining now
me: what’s something you want to complain about
camper: uh, let me think
camper:
camper:
camper: i’m sad that i didn’t get into mit
me: oh, damn, that sucks
me: i was thinking closer to like
me: the dining hall food is bad
⁂
camper: so what is rationality
me: systematized…
other camper: winning!
⁂
me: sometimes i worry that my terminal values aren’t noble enough
me: because to me the thing that matters is feeling good
me: which doesn’t mean i want to only feel pleasure or joy
me: but i also want to feel meaningness and love and all the other stuff
me: a balanced diet of good feelings if you will
camper: i feel the same i think
camper: why are you so worried about it?
me: because the other people i talk to usually say they don’t feel like that
me: they say they value things like, being with other people, or making a difference
me: and i only care about those things because they make me feel good
camper: well if you care about connection and impact
camper: then it sounds like you value those things
camper: and you’re allowed to say those are your values
me: yeah, but only because they make me feel good
me: they’re values, but they’re not terminal values
me: the terminal value is a balanced diet of good feelings
camper: hm
me: people i talk to say they care about impact and that’s it
me: they care about impact, not because it makes them feel good
me: but because they care about impact, period, whether or not it feels good
camper: but does it matter though
camper: if your intentions are less noble?
camper: it’s not like you’d be doing different things if those were your values
me: huh
me: that’s
me: that’s a fair point
camper: cool well that’s all our time today, i’ll send the therapy invoice to your email
⁂
camper: does that mean you view yourself as getting more fractured over time?
me: not really? it’s more like, the self has already been fractured by trauma
me: it’s about discovering what parts are there, and integrating them as part of ourselves
me: rather than the parts being in conflict, the goal is to make them work together
camper: i see
me: yeah this is internal family systems
me: in the case of going to the gym, i think some part was trying to protect me
me: in the past i had some awful experiences from going to the gym with my father, so part of me avoided going to the gym with anyone to avoid getting hurt
me: and i had to talk to that part and say, hey, we’re with a friend, and they’re being nice to us, and we’re safe
camper: huh, neat
me: yeah
me:
me: so, let’s talk about typescript
⁂
me: how’s your day going
camper: not great tbh
camper: the past few days in sparc i’ve had one amazing day after another
camper: today was okay but nothing special
me: ah that sucks
me: but it happens
me: they can’t all be winners
camper: yeah, i haven’t had the energy to talk to people today
camper: how’s your day going?
me: today wasn’t a great day for me either
camper: why not?
me: the dining hall food was bad
⁂
camper: i’ve always wanted to feel my emotions more strongly
me: and why haven’t you
camper: i don’t know
camper: i try to pay attention to my feelings and all
camper: but that doesn’t work
me: hm
me: what are you afraid will happen if you felt your emotions more strongly
camper: uh
camper: i’m afraid that i might get too sad
me: mhm
me: anything else?
camper: hm
camper:
camper: i’m afraid if i get too angry i might push people away
camper: i’m afraid that i might not like what i feel about things
camper:
camper: yeah
me: is that it?
camper: i, uh, i think so?
camper: i mean, those feel like the main reasons…
me: i bet you can list some more
me: in fact, i bet we can get to twenty
me: it doesn’t have to be a super serious reason
me: name the first thing that comes to mind
camper: okay, uh
camper: i’m afraid if i felt my emotions more strongly then i might like, get addicted to feeling happy or something
[camper list sixteen more things]
me: and that’s twenty!
me: thanks for sharing
me: how do you feel
camper: that was
camper:
camper: that was a lot
[camper starts crying]
camper: but i think something changed
me: nice
camper: yeah
camper:
camper: i should go pick up my laundry
⁂
me: alright, you wanted a take two
me: what do you think are the pertinent parts to your identity?
camper: oh yeah, i’m ready to answer this now
camper: i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this in sparc the past few days
camper: like, what are the things i value? what are things i care about? how do i view myself?
camper: i’ve asked lots of people about this, and had lots of conversations about this
camper: i think i can say that i care deeply about problem solving
camper: i thought about the feeling that i get when things click together
camper: and how that gives me such joy
camper: i also care a lot about trying absurd things out and seeing what happens
camper: or as i say, “the funny”
camper: like, what if i raced across the room in a rolling chair right now?
camper: i could do that, and it’d be for the funny
camper: and i thought, maybe i’m only narrativizing why i make jokes and stuff
camper: that i’m saying it’s for “the funny” when really i want to get the approval of others
camper: after reflecting on it, i can’t rule that reason out for certain
camper: at the very least, that doesn’t fully explain why i do funny things
me: wow
camper: so, solving problems, and “the funny”
camper: i think these are the two most important parts to my identity
me: that’s deep
camper: ha i was just kidding
camper: i care about video games and books