Through years of self-reflection, I have gradually developed a worldview and a set of personal principles.
They serve as a guide for navigating the chaos of life and help me make sense of the world around me.
Please note that my principles are not exhaustive, and are subject to change as I grow and learn.
Nor are they meant to be applicable to everyone. Everyone is unique, and will have their own principles.
Life has no intrinsic meaning and no ultimate purpose. Meaning is not found within things themselves, but in the relationships between them. A game's worth exists in the joy it creates. Friendship exists in the bond between people. Achievements matter because of the people they affect and the experiences they enable. Strip away all relationships, and meaning dissolves. I do not need the universe to endorse something for it to matter.
The chaos and purposelessness of existence is not a problem to solve. It is simply the backdrop against which life takes place. Meaning is not discovered, but experienced. Happiness comes not from finding a cosmic purpose but from fully engaging with life despite the absence of one. To create, to love, to learn, to play, and to care anyway is my revolt against the absurd.
Society offers a script for us to follow. Default paths, default milestones, and default definitions of success. They are however at most suggestions, not obligations. Ordinary people live ordinary lives and reach ordinary places. If the expectations do not contribute to my happiness, well-being, or goals, I do not need to be bound by them.
Not every problem is binary, and not every question has a clean answer. When the obvious direct solutions fail, I prefer examining a problem through multiple perspectives rather than forcing premature certainty. Be patient towards all that is unanswered, live the questions now. Complexity is not a weakness of reality, but a feature. Perhaps gradually, without noticing, I will live along some distant day into the answer.
Miscommunication destroys people, opportunities, and relationships. Although honesty should be delivered with kindness, clarity is usually more valuable to both parties than temporary comfort. Difficult truths spoken early prevent far greater harm down the road.
It is tiring to try to maintain a persona, to try to pretend to be someone you are not and do not wish to be. The version of myself that hid my interests, my friendships, or my values to avoid judgement is less effective than the version that is openly genuine, and unapologetically me. Be the person I want to be, not the person society thinks I ought to be.
I value mastery earned through grit over status through compliance. If I got recognition for something I do not care about, even if society thinks it is a great thing, it only upsets me. I value the little thing that I actually put effort into much more. Whether in games, projects, leadership, or life, I care more about what was built and what was experienced than how impressive it is to others.
I have a habit of comparing myself against exceptional cases and then convincing myself I am behind. The pattern is quite predictable, I first perceive a gap, then I spend disproportionate effort to overcome it, then I overshoot without realizing, and down the line when I look back I realize the gap was never real. This has proven to be very useful for me, but if I have self doubts and am losing confidence in my ability, I should first ask myself who I am comparing to, and if they are representative.
I used to struggle with self-love. Eventually, I discovered the attitude I need to hold to love myself. Self-love is not a reward for a life going well. It is treating myself as I would treat my friends: unconditionally and fairly. It is the one relational node that must remain active independent of external conditions, a node that is not and cannot be contingent on external conditions. Just as my love for others survives their flaws, humility acknowledging my flaws should not kill my love for myself. Self-love built on my relationship with myself survives all. I am the one thing in life I can control, when meaning collapses, when no one is there, when there is no more relation to be had, self-love is the floor that cannot collapse due to external conditions, it's all I have, and it's all I need to start over.
A relationship is successful if the people within it are genuinely happy, healthy, and stable. It does not have to resemble a conventional script. I care far more about whether a relationship works than whether it looks familiar to other people.
My core dream is to make video games that bring joy to others in a chaotic world. I see this as my absurdist revolt in practice. My creative endeavours, my self-defined goal of bringing joy, is all the more impressive against the backdrop of a purposeless universe. When I am lost, this is my north star.
I care far more about creating visible, present-tense good than about future legacy. Legacy is at most merely relational meaning extended through time. It is nice if there's something I build, teach, create, or inspire that continues after I am gone, but that is a bonus rather than the goal. The point is the people I can help, the joy that I can create, and the relationships I care about in this lifetime.