To being, etc.

I turn 20 this month. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that 2 decades of life—of joy, sadness, triumphs, and loses—have already passed. Now, maybe this is just my quarter-life crisis kicking in, but recently, I’ve been finding myself pondering more on being, as someone that is being (or so, I believe to be).

Science keeps evolving, and with daily (or even hourly) advances in artificial intelligence, it does so at an unprecedented pace. During the final lecture of my class on the philosophy of modern science last Fall 2025, our professor asked if science is the means to searching for truth. When it comes to the natural world, there is a strong argument that it is a “yes”. But truth is not constrained to nature, as the perception of, and the attachment of meaning to truth itself is a matter that we, humans, should do.

With that said, starting this year, I have decided to start an annual tradition of taking the time to reflect on this matter. The way this will work is through a simple Q&A format—I lay down the questions that I find relevant, and I answer it in writing. The number of questions may change each year. There will be questions left seemingly unfinished (indicating I’m not sure of what to place yet); the grammar will not be perfect (no AI proofreading).

While this is a personal endeavor, meant for myself, and for tracking how my mental model has changed (and will change) over time. I am sharing it online, in hopes of encouraging you to also take the time to ponder. When I look back to this writing down the line, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find this amateurish. But, that’s the point, isn’t it?

1. What makes happiness?

As the stoic philosopher Seneca puts, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” This, I believe, is perhaps a key tenet to happiness. The more we find fulfillment in our time, the happier we become. Yet, what is fulfillment? Naturally, this is a “parameter” that would vary from person to person. Let’s consider two individuals (though a bit of an extreme juxtaposition): Person A is a career-oriented executive who works 9-5, meanwhile Person B is a painter whose favorite subject are, let’s say, rivers (I like rivers, too).

For me, perhaps influenced by my brief time so far in Kyoto, there is no distinction in the personal “fulfillment” between A nor B, regardless of the uncountable number of materialistic differences they may or may not have. If A finds satisfaction in what they are doing, and if B does the same, then happiness is equally achieved.

Now, while there is no single guideline to fulfillment, I find from my personal experiences that there are at least certain characteristics in, for lack of a better term, “mindset” that can help find one’s way towards this goal. Allow me to describe them.

1. Doing good. Humans are social beings, Fulfillment, while inherently a personal matter, can be made “easier” by leveraging this property that we humans posses. And what better way is there than making sure that what we do, while good for ourselves, is also good (or at the very least neutral) for others. [The meaning of good is a whole other topic, though.]
2. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Laugh, make jokes, find joy in things. Be serious when appropriate, but not always. This allows you to open yourself more. But more importantly, this allows you to change and not stick to what you believe is right or true forever. We make mistakes, after all.
3. Taking it “slow”. I don’t mean “take a long time”. I mean, do it step-by-step. Don’t rush through things half-done (as defined by what you feel is “done”). Get it done properly.
4. Appreciating the imperfect. I find that we have the tendency to only enjoy when something is of perfection. Yet, “perfection” is exception. For most of the things in the universe, there is chaos and incompleteness. May that be in the slightest crease of a perfectly-new A4 paper, to your ink blotting behind the sheet. It’s fine to mold “imperfection” into “perfection”, but that doesn’t mean we are to disregard imperfection itself. Observe it, and allow yourself to “like” it.

Now, there’s probably more, but four sounds good (and I like the number 4, despite its bad connotation in many East Asian cultures). I must admit, however, that while I talk about finding fulfillment in every moment of our lives, I am not a model example of this. I doomscroll (even midway while writing this exact sentence). I (sometimes) sit in a lecture room when deep inside I know I want to start doing something bigger instead. I haven’t finished more than half of personal projects I started (this essay was almost an example of that). I admit this is a work-in-progress for myself, and that should be fine.

2. What does it mean to be [human]?

After responding to the previous question, I am tempted to write “chasing happiness”, but I don’t think that would fully describes us. After all, the polar opposite of happiness, should we call it “sadness”, is itself an indispensable aspect of the human condition—for without sadness, shall we never understand happiness. With that said, while writing this, I realize that it is inappropriate to give a closed answer to this question—arguably, there isn’t even one. There shouldn’t be one.

Instead, here are some thing that, I think, make up the human being.

1. Love. To love (not just romantically) and understand that you are loved. Loving is natural, but I think we sometimes forget the second part from time to time.
2. Reason. To ask questions and act towards a greater good. To allow for change when new knowledge comes.
3. Experience. To journey through life and feel each experience, from wonder and cruelty, to laughter and tears, to excitement and distraught.
4. Sonder. To understand that everyone else is also human, and live their own human experiences.
5. Belief. To put your deep trust in something, may it be in religion, some principle, someone, or some thing.

3. What makes science?

While I began with the motivation that science’s rapid acceleration should push us to ponder more about our being, science itself is an integral part of what makes us human as well. As someone studying the sciences myself, I feel this text will not be complete without jotting down my thoughts on the science.

Firstly, what does science do? Returning to the question that my professor posed, I personally believe that science is not necessarily a search for truth. The American philosopher Thomas Kuhn says that science, like every other discipline (e.g., in the humanities, etc.), is simply an ever-evolving paradigm that gets better at answering self-imposed questions over time. Now, I wouldn’t go into how this occurs (see: paradigm shifts and crises), but the idea is that science’s “pursuit of truth” is based on the questions that scientists ask themselves. I don’t think we would know if those questions actually direct us towards real “truth”. Now, I do believe that science is particularly good, however, at giving us something else: understanding and control. Of nature, of intelligence (information), and even of thought itself. This is often times beneficial, but sometimes extremely dangerous. We should be careful of how we use this.

On the question of how science is done—Paul Feyerabend, a key figure in the field of philosophy of modern science, argues that science is “anarchist”; that is to say, there is no single “framework” (i.e., connection of facts, assumptions, and methodology) that defines science as a whole. In some sense, this is a rather contrarian approach to the “scientific method” that one may have learned as early as elementary school. Personally, this is a viewpoint that I rather enjoy. I feel it tells us that fitting into the mold of current methods is not the end, and that perhaps, we should test that one seemingly crazy idea. This is of course not to say that there should be no system; indeed, systems allow for great progress when used appropriately. We just have to continue remembering that systems should change, and I think that principle has been the driving force behind many breakthroughs today.

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