Thoughts

The Armor Stronger Than a Bunker

What comes to mind when I say "future-proof"? Lots of bubble wrap, in case you bump into something or something bumps into you? Learning a skill that will last in the age of AI? Buying a 55-gallon drum for emergency water, or even a bunker?

Perhaps all of these.

But let's not forget one of the best forms of armor: resilience. Knowing that what goes up will come down and the bad can turn into good, and not panicking when things change against our desire for comfort and stability.

The Chinese word for crisis, 危机, is often read as danger plus opportunity, one hand holding the other.

On one hand, we face the danger head-on. We can't avoid it, can we?

On the other hand, we look for the opportunity. Is it a chance to mend a fractured relationship? Time to start the side hustle you've always wanted? A chance, finally, to have some solitude?

Then, what's the worst-case scenario? Remember, the "worst case" is almost always much, much worse in your mind than in reality.

What we fear in the worst case is often not the thing itself, but what we make of it. In the Buddha's teaching, this is the second arrow: the shame, hurt and anger our own mind adds to the first blow. Going beyond it is easier said than done, but when you do, it's transcendence, a marvelous place where there is nothing to fear.

When you are not afraid even of the worst case, you have future-proofed your life. Ultimately.

Follow Your Dots

"With the end in mind" has nothing to do with goals. And that is why conventional goal setting so often backfires.

How long can you push a rock uphill? When there is genuine alignment, there is no need for willpower.

Goals are often the product of the ego. So even when you finally reach one, it quickly loses its meaning and its specialness.

What I mean by "with the end in mind" is living from the feeling of having arrived. It is to hold a state of mind as if you already have everything. Or, similarly, it is the state of a carefree child, when everything you do comes out of curiosity and interest.

It is to feel, think and carry yourself as if your desire were already an ordinary fact of your life, to step mentally into the reality where it is already done.

Laozi (老子) asked, "Can you be like a baby?" (能婴儿乎) A baby is our true nature, the original face.

The Dao follows its own nature, yet humans are shaped, bent, whipped and molded, to the point that many have lost their true nature. So they are unhappy and confused. They have abandoned who they truly are.

It is not about working hard. It becomes a flow, a sense of effortlessness. This is the place of the highest creativity and performance, and also of joy in the now, in every day, not something to wait for in a distant future.

Laozi called this place "strive for nothing, yet everything is done" (无为而无不为).

You don't need a to-do list to tell you what to do. You know without knowing. Work is not an obligation or a responsibility, but a series of inspired actions.

You have clarity, naturally. At the end of the day you don't feel drained or fragmented, as if your life energy had been sucked out of you. You feel the same as when you started: excited and peaceful.

"I don't have time" stops being a thing, because clarity guides you to the 20% that counts for 80%.

How do you get there? When you are excited, inspired or curious about something, follow it. This is not distraction but an invitation. Steve Jobs said we have to trust that the dots will somehow connect. These are your dots.

Don't analyze them. Oh, this doesn't make money. Oh, what would others think if I did that. You will kill the seeds before they get a chance to sprout. Do it in your spare time. You owe it to yourself to give attention to what draws your attention.

You do not need to search for what you love, your passion, your purpose, your calling. It is already built into you. The ideas you keep returning to, the ones you cannot let go of, are telling you what you should do.

Follow them. It is your own higher consciousness calling you toward what you are meant to do. And contrary to the conventional goal-setting rhetoric, it is also what will give you the highest fulfillment.

How perfect is that? Life is not meant to be lived like a donkey chasing a carrot that always hangs beyond reach. A human life is precious time to follow your inner compass, let it lead you to your own special destiny, and enjoy the scenery along the way.

Goalless is very different from traditional teaching, and traditional teaching is part of the reason for our collective unhappiness and eventual emptiness. It's time to think unconventionally and to explore fresh perspectives as we enter a new era.

I have followed my own dots, and they have led me to writing, conversing and advising. I do these things for the joy of doing them, and they anchor me in a feeling of being useful to others.

I wrote about my own goalless journey in my book, which will be published soon. Follow me if you are interested. I can also speak about "Goalless, The Way Forward."

Zhuangzi (庄子) had a name for a person who truly knows how to be human: the zhenren (真人), the "true human." What is a true human? Someone who, in this very moment, is unhurried, unafraid, unshrinking — who knows where they came from and where they are going, and who knows their own weight without needing anything outside to prop it up.

How do we get there? Through "reaching utter emptiness, holding fast to stillness" (致虚极，守静笃), through the fasting of the heart-mind (心斋), through seeing all things as equal (齐物). It is the opposite of how we modern people go about things.

That heart of ours, stirred up by desire for things and for the endless phenomena of the world — it needs rest. Is it simply too tired? Too anxious? From a head that is at times foggy and dull, at times ready to explode, at times nothing but scattered fragments (支离), it cries out: let me return and rest in my original heart (本心).

Liezi (列子) could ride the wind and did not return for five days. In the end he let go of his attachment to such small tricks, and came back to the smoke and fire of the human world (人间烟火), helping his wife fetch water and cook.

Laozi (老子) said, "Reversal is the movement of the Dao" (反者道之动).

All of this is teaching us how to be truly human. Buddhists call it training the heart in the red dust (红尘练心); Daoists call it borrowing the false to cultivate the true (借假修真). They help us find, within this dazzling world of ten thousand things, the nature we were born with — already whole, already complete (本自具足).

Only then, in the age of AI, can we have the open-hearted ease of letting the clouds gather and scatter while the heart stays at peace.

Otherwise, step by step, our chasing of outer things and our fixation on the endless parade of phenomena will carry us further and further away — until, eyes dim and legs weak with age, we may never find the way back.

Perhaps the future looks like what Player Piano once imagined: people given every creature comfort, yet who have lost meaning — lost the very point of being alive. Is that also a form of death, a scenario where AI doesn't kill humanity directly? That already sounds like the optimistic version of the future.

But on the other hand, we collectively want to give birth to AI — for efficiency, for convenience. So who do we blame, if we're the ones who made it happen in the first place?

Perhaps humans are flawed creatures: we have the intelligence to push boundaries, but not an equal wisdom to know when to stop, nor enough compassion to care about the consequences. And so we'll learn this lesson the hard way — do or die.

So what is the antidote to this potentially existential future? The antidote lives at the individual level. It's by each of us becoming wiser and more compassionate that, together, we can make wiser decisions.

Some may ask: what if I become wiser and more compassionate, but my competitor doesn't — they ship the thing first anyway. What then?

An eye for an eye leaves two people blind. Both blind. If humanity doesn't have the mutual trust to say, together, let's slow down — then that is exactly where we're headed: two blind men.

Is the most uncertain threat facing humanity extraterrestrials? A cosmic collision? Some future AGI? Anything out there that might destroy us? Is our push into space really about saving humanity? Is technological advancement the only measure for human advancement?

Of everything we're doing right now, how much of it is us refusing to face ourselves, choosing the easy way out instead? Someone might say: how could something so grand and glorious, a plan that pours in all of humanity's manpower and resources, be the easy way out?

Even if we invent the most extraordinary tools, a self that is still hollow inside, that doesn't know where it comes from or where it's going — even out among the stars, it's still that same self: the self that wrecked the earth and fled.

There's a saying: it's easier to defeat an enemy than to defeat oneself. That's why I say we're taking an easy way out.

And this "easy way" is abandoning a big part of our self.

Because our eyes are looking outward, and so we fail to see that we ourselves might be the very hands that destroy us.

What's inside AI now is endless, and it genuinely astonishes us. But is it an upgrade? In a certain sense, of course it is. It brings all information before our eyes in almost no time at all. But is it truly all information? No. I don't mean that much of it simply hasn't been digitized yet — that may just be a matter of time. I mean how much of this world has never been put into words at all, and how much simply cannot be expressed in words, no matter in what language.

There's a story from Zhuangzi: a wheelwright watches the emperor reading, and tells him that the truest essence of things can never be written down — it can only be grasped through lived, embodied understanding.

We need to remember that beyond the ocean of digital information lies an even vaster ocean — the ocean of being truly human. It is our family and friends, it is lived experience in body and mind, it is a deep breath, it is looking up at the moon, it is the lived-in warmth of ordinary days.

Otherwise, confined within the digital matrix, we may be gaining more while losing even more — and what we lose is likely exactly what can least be put into words: the very things most essential to our evolution as a species, body, mind, and soul.