What If I see The Starry Night And Felt Nothing?

When I imagine myself standing in front of The Starry Night by Van Gogh, I always assume I’d cry. I’d stare at the painting, and it would somehow stare back at me. All the emotions I’d unknowingly kept hidden would finally pour out. The Starry Night is, after all, a painting that has inspired millions.

I’ve never seen The Starry Night in person, but I think I’ve already ruined it for myself. I’ve convinced myself that if I don’t experience some kind of spiritual awakening in front of it, then I’ve somehow failed both Van Gogh and myself. I think I do this with almost everything. Trips, concerts, meeting people, birthdays, and especially New Year’s. I spend so much time imagining these moments. And once I’m actually there, I don’t know what to do with myself.

Somewhere along the way, I think I convinced myself that meaningful experiences are supposed to look a certain way: goosebumps, tears, perfectly timed background music, and one dramatic inhale. I fear one day I’d stand in front of The Starry Night and think, Oh… it’s smaller than I imagined. Then I’d look at everyone around me to see if they’re having a better emotional experience than I am. It is ridiculous. It’s like trying to enjoy a sunset while checking whether you’re enjoying the sunset correctly.

I once read that our brains are surprisingly good at imagining rewards and surprisingly bad at receiving them. That probably explains online shopping. And crushes.

But anticipation is real. Maybe it’s just doing a different job. Maybe its purpose is simply to get us there. After that, we’re on our own.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the moments that change us aren’t obvious at all. Perhaps we’re busy looking for fireworks that we don’t see what’s really happening.

Maybe, when I finally see The Starry Night, I’ll stay a little longer. Maybe I’d notice the silence, someone coughing in the corner, or a little kid walking straight past The Starry Night painting without a second glance. Its incredible how childrens ignore what everyone else has agreed is important, while adults spend half their lives wondering if they’re reacting correctly or how to react or what to feel. I guess that’s the reason why I keep waiting for life-changing revelations, when our lives really are often built from small moments that seem ordinary at first.

I’m afraid of feeling nothing but I’m more afraid that I’ll miss what was actually there because I was too busy comparing it to the version I’d already lived a hundred times inside my head. If that ever happens, I hope I remember to stay a little longer or just look again but not harder.

The Art of Adjusting

Last month, I started watching Totally Spies as part of learning a language.

There’s this language learning technique called the movie method. Its where you watch a show with English subtitles first to understand the story then rewatch it without subtitles or with the subtitles of your target language. You write down the words or phrases you recognize or the ones that felt important or interesting then add it in Anki as custom cards. It’s surprisingly fun.

Somewhere between memorizing vocabulary and following the plot, I found myself paying attention to something else. If you’ve never watched Totally Spies, it’s about three teenage girls who are constantly interrupted by a giant machine that literally yanks them out of whatever they’re doing because the world needs saving. One minute they’re shopping and the next they’re hanging upside down over lava, accidentally pressing the wrong gadget, getting captured, escaping, getting captured again, and somehow still making it home to relax at the end of the day. Everything always goes wrong but somehow… everything works out.

Of course it’s unrealistic. It’s a cartoon. The villains always lose and the girls never seem permanently traumatized by anything that happens to them. I kept noticing the same thing every episode: they never spend very long panicking because they adapt. They simply make a new plan instead of stopping to mourn the old one.

And I thought, that must be a nice skill to have.

Whenever life starts feeling overwhelming, when my plans unravel halfway through the week or something changes before I’ve had the chance to mentally prepare, I like to pretend I’m one of the girls from that show. Somehow that tiny mental shift helps me snap back into problem-solving mode instead of panic mode. By convincing myself I’m on some ridiculous secret mission, my brain stops asking, “Why is everything going wrong?” and starts asking, “Okay… what’s Plan B? What’s the new mission?”

As an adult, I’ve realized that life has absolutely no respect for your schedule. It rarely waits for you to finish one thing before handing you another. There’s work, your social life, your health, hobbies, books waiting on your shelf, languages you want to learn, about fifty other interests competing for your attention, and dreams that tap you on the shoulder every now and then, asking if you’ve made time for them yet. They don’t take turns.

That’s probably why I’ve become so attached to my little systems: Google Calendar, Google Reminders, Grit, a digital journal, and a paper to-do list. They’re less about productivity and more about giving my brain somewhere safe to put things so it doesn’t have to carry everything at once. Having a system really matters if you don’t want your thoughts turning into complete chaos.

Aside from that, having a daily routine gives me something to return to when life starts feeling messy. Without it, it’s easy to lose track of everything, jump between tasks, and end the day wondering what you actually accomplished.

With that said, your system doesn’t always need to be perfect. I had the mistake of being a perfectionist. The moment I missed one task or skipped one habit, I felt like I’d already failed. Then I’d procrastinate, lose all my momentum, and eventually abandon the very routines I’d spent so much time building.

These days I try to remember that small progress still counts. Some days are simply heavier than others. You won’t finish everything.

Speaking of feeling heavy, I’ve also become fascinated by the idea of transmuting difficult emotions into something else. Stress, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, negative thoughts—or maybe something someone said that lingers in your chest a little longer than it should. Instead of letting those feelings consume you, maybe they can become fuel. Not for revenge, of course, but for creating, learning, improving, or simply taking the next small step forward. It’s not about pretending those feelings don’t exist but about giving them a better purpose. There’s something comforting about believing that something painful can become something beautiful.

Lately, I’ve started thinking adaptability might be one of the most underrated skills a person can have. When plans suddenly change, when something goes wrong or when you have to think on your feet all of a sudden, it sounds like an amazing skill to have the ability to adjust in real time instead of adjusting after you’ve had time to make new schedules and rewrite your routines right. Its like a superpower that can be applied to alot of things. I don’t know how people become like that yet.

Anyway. I started watching Totally Spies to learn a language. Instead, it accidentally gave me a new skill to aspire to have.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very important internet research to do now. Oh, to become the kind of person who can quietly handle whatever life throws at you without falling apart. Sounds like a dream.

Wearing Clothes that Intimidate

Here is a thing I know about myself: I do not like being approached by strangers. It’s not that I dislike people. I just prefer a comfortable amount of distance between myself and everyone else when I go out. A small invisible fence, if you will. I am, structurally, not built for small talk.

Umbrellas are underrated introvert technology. People usually avoid walking under the same umbrella with a stranger. If someone does try to share your umbrella, congratulations. You’ve encountered an extrovert of unusual power.

The other day, I went to the mall wearing something very casual. It was the kind of outfit I probably would have worn in high school, back when skinny jeans and fitted tops were a thing. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, but for some reason I felt strangely exposed.

People seemed to be looking at me. Now, there are two possible explanations for this. The first is that nobody was actually looking at me and I was experiencing a mild introvert-induced hallucination. The second is an evidence that I am, deep down, a little narcissistic, that I think I really do look like a certain P-pop artist, which three separate people have told me over the years. Three people is not enough evidence for a scientific conclusion, but it is enough evidence for me to occasionally stare into the mirror and think, “Do I?” The answer remains unclear.

Whatever the reason, I suddenly became hyper-aware of everyone around me. The guards looked suspicious of me like I just shoplifted or something. I was browsing through a store when a saleslady approached me. I told her I was just looking. An ordinary interaction. Yet afterward, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was watching me as I walked around. Five minutes later I had somehow convinced myself that she was secretly monitoring my movements through an invisible earpiece and reporting them back to headquarters. It was awkward. Then my brain decided she was judging my outfit.

That’s when a realization crossed my mind about clothes. Clothes are more powerful than we think. They’re like signals. Some outfits make you look approachable, some make you look confident, some make you look like you have somewhere important to be and some make people think twice before interrupting you.

So I’ve been wondering what exactly does the “unapproachable” outfit looks like. An outfit that says, please do not perceive me unless absolutely necessary. Or maybe one that says, I’m a little strange, and honestly you probably don’t want to start a conversation with me. Or even better: I’m so intimidatingly indie and aloof that approaching me feels like a social risk.

Either way, I’ve started thinking of fashion less as self-expression and more as a form of personal boundaries. Fashion as a weapon. Or at the very least, fashion as a “Do Not Disturb” sign.

Since we are talking about fashion, I’d like to talk about planning an outfit before going out. When going out, putting together an outfit, adding a few pieces of jewelry with it and taking extra time to get ready makes going out feel more exciting. It turns simple things like running an errand, attending a family gathering, even going to school into something a little more intentional. You become excited to leave the house, not because of where you’re going, but because you enjoy being the person who’s going there after all that outfit planning.

Another thing that I love to do before I go out is assigning a perfume to a specific trip. When you wear one fragrance while traveling somewhere new, and anywhere else, you smell it again long after and immediately be transported back to that street, that conversation, that train ride to a version of yourself that only existed in that place and time. Perfume might be the closest thing we have to time travel.

Back to the main topic, an example of someone whose fashion style I find genuinely intimidating is Frida Kahlo.

I’ve listened to podcasts about her life before, and I recently watched a video essay about her again. Every time I learn more about her story, I’m struck by how tragic it was.

Her last diary entry was – “I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return.” 

What I especially find disturbing from the video essay that I watched about her is what happened after her death. A woman spends her life suffering physically and emotionally, creates extraordinary art from that suffering, and then decades later her image becomes a commercial product, a totebag, a keychain, a marketing tool and something to sell as merchandise. Its seems disrespectful.

There’s something unsettling about watching capitalism turn a person’s pain into an aesthetic. Sometimes I wonder whether Frida would have laughed at the absurdity of it all, or hated it as much as I do. I think the same thing happens today, with people making content about public figures even while they’re still alive just to gain views. Someone’s crisis and breakdowns gets turned into content, as if they aren’t real people but products to exploit. I hate that. I think it’s one of the worst things we’ve normalized.

Wisdom Of Kindness

“Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan.”
— Jose Rizal

Because its almost Philippine Independence day, I thought I’d share a quote by Jose Rizal. In english the quote is translated as “He who does not look back to where he came from will never reach his destination.” His whole life’s work was about making Filipinos aware of their identity, history and dignity. People who don’t know their history can be controlled and manipulated more easily.

This quote feels especially relevant today, with so much misinformation online trying to rewrite history, turn good people into villains, and praise those who caused harm.I could write an entire post about that, but that’s not really what this is about. On a personal level this quote means that you can’t really know where you’re going (you’re lost) if you don’t understand your past or the lessons from your past. That’s why reflection is important, you can’t grow as a person without learning from your past.

Since this year started, I’ve had this recurring thought about the connection between intelligence and kindness but it gets complicated the deeper I look at it. Intelligence doesn’t guarantee kindness and kindness doesn’t require intelligence. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s some kind of connection between them.

Its not easy to be kind. We’re all carrying something. Stress, frustrations, disappointments, grief, worries and the like. I think there’s something wise about being able to separate your own suffering from how you treat others and choosing not to pass the hurt along. When you start considering perspectives beyond your own, you also start thinking about consequences. You begin to question actions that might hurt others. You see how much of a person’s story is hidden from view. And once you see that complexity, cruelty becomes harder to justify. Maybe intelligence isn’t the word I’ve been looking for all this time. Maybe what I mean is wisdom.

I used to think wisdom naturally came with age. Now I’m not so sure because as I get older I start to notice that just because someone has lived longer doesn’t mean they’ve learned from life. They may repeat the same patterns for years, avoid self-reflection and blame everyone except themselves. They age physically, but their mindset stays stuck. Maturity is about how willing you are to take responsibility, to reflect, to regulate your emotions, and to see beyond your own ego. A lot of people never get there.

Wisdom isn’t just about age, or knowledge. It’s the willingness to examine your own beliefs, question your assumptions, and remain open to the possibility that you might be wrong. Its the kind of intelligence that understands life, the one that sees nuance, consequences, emotions, and systems.

Once you truly understand how complicated people are. How much of their lives you can’t see, how many battles they’re carrying, it becomes harder to reduce them to something simple. Harder to judge them too quickly. Harder to hurt them without thinking and that starts to look like kindness.

In the end, maybe the real measure of a “grown” mind isn’t how much it knows…but how it understands. It isn’t the one that is most certain. It’s the one that can stay soft without becoming naive. The one that can disagree without dehumanizing and the one that can hold boundaries without losing empathy.