Terraria and being

This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I share a different perspective. You can also Subscribe on Substack to get future issues.

I’ve always loved collecting environments. And experiences in them. As a child I first did this with books. Brian Jacques transported me to Redwall Abbey in Mossflower Wood, Tolkien to Middle-Earth.

Later I did so with travel.

A semester abroad in Rome. A flight on a whim to Brussels.

Where I decided to live — first Washington D.C. and then San Francisco. The industries and companies I’ve chose. The music — and its associations — that calms my inner self. The games I play for fresh experiences.

The age old debate: Nature versus Nurture. Turns out its both. What? The byproduct of who you are and can become.

Reflecting on this is something you and I don’t do enough.

Success in Tech is defined by two ingredients: markets and people. It’s hard to understand them if you don’t first understand yourself. Clarity can be built through introspection and experience brought by variation.

See — environments are forcing functions for change and action.

Have you tried learning a foreign language? Despite Duolingo’s gamified value proposition: it’s much easier if you’re in a place where you’re forced to speak it.

Another note: the fascinating 1970s study1 on residual rates of heroin addiction for servicemen returning from Vietnam. When addicts were removed from their environment 95% became clean.

In programming we use and collect virtual environments to ease development, manage dependencies and see how our code performs in different circumstances.

But back to people.

Trying to figure out what makes someone tick requires understanding their values, beliefs, motivations and incentives. All of which is influenced by the environment they are in now and where they came from.

It hard to do if you can’t walk a day in their shoes — can you try? It might never be empathy but sympathy can be manufactured.

On the rollercoaster

You’re in an amusement park. The line is slow moving and the midsummer sun beats down on your forehead. Only a few more carloads and you’ll be strapped in. A slow ascent follows and then whoosh — it’s over.

Later on when the day is over and you’re walking back to your car did you stop and think how you felt on each ride? Had you done so in the moment?

Battling the fury of the crowd to get to the next ride (and the next) could have muted your ability to be present.

Society celebrates relentless ambition. You and I don’t always question whether we’re enjoying the ride, let alone how much is enough.

You can end up missing out on a whole lot of life like that.

It’s common to think that stress comes from working too much. Having been on the other side, its the other way around: we can end up working too much because we’re stressed2. It’s the grandest distraction from ourself.

Being

The first time I heard about imposter syndrome was in Tech. If Google’s on-campus doctors could have prescribed medication for the malady I’m confident they would have run out.

Another byproduct of environments and our place in them. Take the most talented folks you can find and put them in a petri dish. New behavioral health conditions result with needs to overcome.

Discard your misperceptions. Stop being jerked like a puppet. Limit yourself to the present. Understand what happens—to you, to others. Analyze what exists, break it all down: material and cause. Anticipate your final hours. Other people’s mistakes? Leave them to their makers. — VII. 27

How will you be comfortable with being? You know — still.

What if our environments are actually shaped — reflected — more by our inner world? I believe they are. We exercise our bodies to clear our minds. And exercise our mind to understand our self.

The components of a good story must include a compelling plot with external action and a third rail: the protagonist’s development of their inner self3.

Terraria and being.

How will you continue to cultivate yours?