Garden of the mind

My New Year’s Resolution is to look for the good in people — as daft as it sounds.

Because you see and feel what you look for.

You can focus on bad shit and be totally right. But it’ll grow and grow until it becomes all of who you are.

You can only be happy once you start spending more time thinking about the people you love instead of the people you dislike — once you spend more time being grateful for what you have, instead of being resentful with what you don’t have. It determines the story you tell yourself about your life.

It works the other way around as well. The way you see others is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you constantly envy or distrust others — worry about the happiness they’ll return to you — they’ll react accordingly. And the way you see them is who they become.

If you stop focussing on negative ideas, you’ll find out they’ll disappear on their own. Ideas are only as important as you let them be. And you’ll find out that that vacant space becomes filled with love. If you live from love, nothing can make you sad.

Easier said than done, but we have the whole of 2021 to try.

(The mind is a garden in which you can grow colorful flowers or multiplying-weeds. And the thing with gardens is; you don’t just take care of a garden, it also takes care of you.)

Latest

The Path and Meaning

The Path and Meaning

“We walk down the path in Xikeng.” Three years ago, I started a note with that sentence. We visited a row of villages in the south of Zhejiang, and Xikeng (西坑) was at the end of the day — the least touristified town of them all. The village had dozens of old buildings, sliced by […]
February 4, 2026
Kunshan Diorama

Kunshan Diorama

Today, I’m visiting Zhengyi Old Street (正仪老街) in Kunshan — a city wedged in between Suzhou and Shanghai. This old street is a leftover slice in between other parts properly planned by the city. On the horizon, I can see construction cranes, as if they are threatening the area; ‘we are coming to you next’. […]
January 17, 2026
Hyperreality

Hyperreality

It’s 06:30 in the morning and I’m driving to the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles. I’ve been trying to sleep after an exhausting week at CES, but I’m too excited for this hike and can’t wait to depart the Airbnb we’re in. Every visit to the United States is an adventure. The most […]
January 15, 2026
In Praise Of Writing (And the Case Against AI)

In Praise Of Writing (And the Case Against AI)

If George Orwell, one of the best essayists, were alive today, he’d be firmly against AI. Not because of 1984 or ‘Big Brother’, but because in ‘Why I Write’, he listed four motives for writing; Historical impulse Political purpose Aesthetic enthusiasm Egoism   Neither of these motives survives if you let AI do the writing […]
January 14, 2026