Potential shows up everywhere in life

Potential shows up in everything in the life around you.

For the past two months I've been regularly listening to lectures and podcasts by a Canadian professor named Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist. He talks a lot about overcoming suffering, finding happiness, building a life, and understanding yourself.

On January 1, 2024, I went back to the gym for the first time in 9 years. I decided to hit the gym again partly for health, partly to unwind (also health), but mostly to stop my own insane train of thought. If running, cycling, and swimming are the sports that help… amplify thinking, then when you lift 120kg in front of your chest, the brain only has one thing to think about — if this thing drops, it snaps your neck, kid. One thing I agree with Jordan Peterson about is that this is extremely useful, right alongside getting blackout drunk.

My house is 200 meters from the Lý Đức gym, a name that sounds ironclad to anyone, and I quickly hopped on my bike one Tết holiday afternoon to run from my own thoughts, headphones on listening to JRE #1208 with Jordan Peterson. As if to test my resolve, Lý Đức had gone out drinking for the holiday, so it was closed. I decided to find City Gym 2km away nearby — City Gym had also gone drinking. Undeterred, I rode to Cali 2km further on (actually in a circle that brought me back next to my house) with the goal of having to lift today. Cali hadn't gone drinking. If Cali had been drinking that day, I'd have just gone drinking too.

Picking up a weight again I realized… shit, my old muscle memory is all still there, ba má ơi! Ten years ago I used to lock myself in the company gym every day wrestling with the weights. The reason I kept it up for 3–4 years was… I was too lonely. Back then every woman I loved left me to chase her own future… (they've all come back now, except one who still wants to be a citizen of the world). Lifting to a certain point, Jordan Peterson said: try setting a noble goal — clean your room and record the consequences that follow (clip: https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5v7uJpV6JJGhD0utW2poZY-L6UOo3Mw6 )

Listening to the whole thing, I froze immediately… shit, he said exactly what I'd been through…

Around before 2015, I shared a rented house with 4 other guys who'd been my high school classmates. Usually it was 3, sometimes 4. Single men living together means the blanket doesn't get washed for 10 years and the pillow never gets flipped. I'd read and listened to people saying live tidily and you'll improve blah blah blah something-or-other, then one day in a weird surge I went to clean up my nest. After cleaning I did feel I'd done something meaningful. Meaningful alone isn't enough — I posted it on Zing Me to show off the feeling of having done a small thing better than the other guys. A juvenile, showing-off, competitive move from Lộc that will never change in this lifetime. I figured the housemates wouldn't read it and… wouldn't get too pissed. Until one day the gentlest guy in the house asked me for a favor that required me to jump onto his computer to do. When I was done I noticed a huge-ass bookmark sitting on the Firefox Toolbar clearly linked to that post. Not believing my eyes, I quickly opened and quickly closed the bookmark as if to hide my own shame.

The shame toward myself forced me to do everything to make up for my mistake. I showed up at their weddings ignoring all time and distance just to be there! And often I found joy in cleaning the toilet bowl spotless down to the millimeter.

My showing-off streak can never die — the only thing that's changed: you have to actually do it first before you say you did it!