Table of contents
Optimistic -> jaded
Fresh out of college, I was optimistic about the world. I thought I was the center of attention. I figured things would go my way. I spent a lot of energy on how other people perceived me. That mix makes you stupid in a specific way. You assume the room is watching and that the watching will work in your favor.
Right after graduation, I came to Japan. I expected deep friendships with locals and a fulfilling social life. I brought campus optimism with me and waited for Japan to match it. It did not.
The old optimism assumed cooperation. If I cared enough, people would care back. I treated their reactions as the main event. Ordinary silence started to feel personal. I turned blank faces into verdicts. It is a stupid way to live, and I lived it.
That hope was naive because I did not understand how the world works. I missed incentives. I missed the forces that influence people’s behavior and outcomes. I treated wanting something as a cause. People move when the payoff structure moves them. Ignore that logic and you will write the same stories about why strangers should cooperate with you.
Once I understood those mechanisms, I got jaded. The old model of the world fell apart. That jadedness is disillusionment with the story I had been running. Despair would have ended the looking. I stayed in the problem. The picture got sharper and meaner.
A lot of life does not answer to your expectations. Some outcomes sit outside your hands. You can push and still watch the thing you wanted stay out of reach.
Nobody gives a shit about you
The ugly truth is that nobody cares about me. Everyone is too preoccupied with their own life. They have their own problems, their own people, their own next hour. I am not on that list.
I feel inclined to comply within my imagination to receive approval from strangers who do not give two shits about me. An invisible jury sits in my head, and I edit my thoughts to stay in good standing with people who will never notice. The approval is imaginary. The compliance still happens. That is a bad trade.
It is cold and painful. Cold because the math is obvious once you stop flattering yourself. Painful because I reach for the imaginary review even after recognizing it as fake. The habit outlives the belief.
People dress this up until it sounds noble. I am not doing that. A lot of self-consciousness looks like unpaid work. You keep performing. The loop only continues if you feed it.
If nobody is tracking my every move, I can stop living like they are. Other people’s reactions and attention are not the center of life. The fantasy that I am being carefully watched was flattering. It was also useless.
Jaded optimist
I know enough about the world to no longer be the person I was in my twenties. I stopped waiting for the room to arrange itself around me.
I put effort into what I can control and try to influence what I can influence. Control is small. Influence is smaller than people pretend. Outside that, you are guessing. Energy goes where I can actually act.
Consistency increases my luck surface area. If I give my best over a long stretch, someday I may land something big and have the work rewarded. That is a bet with no guarantee. Individual effort does not lock in a prize. Waiting to be noticed because I exist is a worse wager. Repeating the work does not promise a payout. It only makes one possible.
My biological age is twice the number of a teenager. That number used to feel like a verdict. Age is a clock. Curiosity is still mine to feed. I want to see what happens if I continue.
Personal control and broader historical progress are separate. Running my side of the street does not write the century.
Despite the jaded reading, the world has become much better than it was roughly 20 or 30 years ago. That is why I am still optimistic. Humans keep unlocking more possibilities and are likely to continue doing so. The future can improve further because that process is still running.
Naive optimism came first. Understanding incentives and reality came next. Jaded clarity followed. What I have now is evidence-based optimism about human progress and about a future that can still get better. The easygoing twenty-something wanted to be liked into a good life. I will take the colder read and keep moving anyway.